Med School Update: Semester 3

It has been a busy semester for Scott, as the students jumped right back where they left off in Year 1, Semester 2, reviewing each of the body systems. The system courses are intense, usually two to four weeks long with one or two major exams covering the material.

So here goes my attempted interview with Scott...

Q: What systems have you reviewed so far this year? 
A: Endocrine (hormones), Cardio (heart), and just finished Renal (kidney).

Q: What kind of information are you tested on with each of the body systems?
A: I don't know how to answer that. There's a lot of information to learn - like function, diseases that affect the system, presenting symptoms, and drugs for treatment.

Q: Which system did you enjoy learning about the most (note: that doesn't necessarily mean that you scored well or it was easy, just most interesting to you)?
A: Cardio, because its the most relevant.

Q: What has been the most difficult part about school this semester?
A: Studying. There's a lot of it.

Q: What was your favorite moment from this semester so far?
A: I dressed up like Waldo for Halloween. A lot of the students dressed up for Halloween this year. We had a professor who was visiting from the California campus and likes to call on unsuspecting students to answer questions in the lecture. Knowing that I could be called on, I studied hard the night before his lecture. I ended up being called on to answer a question [which he answered correctly], and then after the break I moved seats so the professor would have to find me again to call on me. He was cracking up when he had to say, "Where's Waldo?"

Q: I hear you've taken on some new leadership responsibilities. What are they?
A: I was elected to be my class vice president for the rest of the school year. I help the president and attend meetings. Not sure what other responsibilities I may have.

Q: What do we have to look forward to the rest of this semester and next?
A: There's respitory (lungs), gi (intestines), and derm (skin) systems. We also have the rotation lottery coming up at the beginning of next semester. We will get more information on this in December, but basically the school tells us all the rotation tracks for third year, we choose our top preferences for what city we will be based out of and what rotation schedule we want, and then the school randomly assigns the rotations based on preferences.

Q: Anything you'd like to add?
A: Nope.

What Scott didn't mention was that he recently gave a fantastic presentation on the symptom "shortness of breath" as part of his Essentials of Clinical Medicing course (ECM, practice clinicals). He's extremely proud of it because he did a fantastic job putting together a summary of the potential causes for this presenting symptom and treatment. The ECM professor even complemented Scott on his presentation skills - particularly he said Scott was funny. It made Scott's day so much he made me watch the whole presentation like he was giving it for real when I got home from work that day.

If you have any questions (or comments from those going through it) about what happens in year two of medical school, please send them my way. I think Scott would be more keen to answer my questions if he knew someone cared about the answer!