It’s fine (insert meme) || FTM1 || SGU Term 1
White coat ceremony
IIt’s official! I’m a medical student! I survived the first 3 weeks and have been white-coated! Medical school is truly like being tasked to drink out of a fire hydrant and given the choice of a flimsy plastic bendy straw. SGU is awesome to have an overflow of resources including study sheets, peer learning groups, and really anything you can ask for. My problem is knowing what to ask for because you don’t know what you don’t know, right?
The white coat ceremony was about a week into lectures. Most people I talked to had someone flying down to attend, but some people planned to skip it. Since the first test is 3 weeks from the first day of the lecture, it’s understandable. We were split into groups for different ceremonies because of our class size. I didn’t have that many friends yet, so the white coat ceremony was actually kind of lonely. Especially since some people knew each other before this in Charter (an extra semester before term 1) or made quick connections during the first week. My boyfriend flew out for me and it’s nice to have a piece of home with me. I was able to get him a guest pass so he can come onto campus, but he can’t use the gym or anything while I’m in lecture so he stays at the apartment mostly.
Since I live off-campus, I’m still trying to adjust to the bus schedule. I missed the bus on the first day of class and tried walking the distance. It’s manageable, but it is so hot! I was walking and one of the buses (which are more like small vans) pulled over and told me to get in. I guess they could tell that I was lost, especially when I asked if the bus goes to school. The bus schedule is posted on the school website. There are several lines and the problem I had is you have to be familiar with the stops to understand which line you’re on. The schedules tell you the first and last stop and sometimes a major stop in between and a list of times. There’s no map or telling where your stop is. Coming from SF, this was hard to understand.
Clicker attendance during lectures
FTM Schedule
Our schedules change every week, but we do have lectures Monday through Friday from 1 PM-3 PM. Since I’m in the January class, we are fortunately small (~500ish) enough that we don’t have to be split into two lecture groups. The lecture hall reminds me of undergrad and almost every seat is occupied. That’s usually not a problem with the AC blasting, but a couple of times the AC went out. I was rolling up my scrubs and fanning myself with my iPad. It was gross.
We are learning mostly biochemistry and genetics. I can’t say I’m a fan, but there is a lot of content to cover. Most of the content was familiar, but with more detail. It’s like DNA replication and transcription, but every step and the names of proteins. Each lecture is around ~30 slides and we have 10 lectures a week. So by the end of FTM 1, I’m guessing I’ll have ~900 slides to learn. I’m not quite sure whats’s important yet. In college, you can filter out most slides for the good stuff but I don’t have that sense yet.
My summary notes
On top of lectures, we are required to attend small group discussions to cover histology and ethics and IMCQ sessions to practice test questions. My small group was assigned and I meet with the same people for each one, but the facilitator changes. The facilitator is usually a professor or SGU alumni. For small group, we are asked to prepare beforehand. The first histology small group took me ~3 hours to complete because I had no idea what I was looking at. I can’t imagine doing this much work every week, something wrong here.
I’m constantly changing my study process. I’m still shooting for 3 passes of content. I like to review slides 1-2 days ahead of lectures and complete the associated at home lectures (DLAs). Then Anki is my last pass of the information. I am making my own deck on top of using a version of Zanki tagged for SGU. It seems time-consuming, more than during MSAP. It feels strange to have to keep information long-term because I had been doing semester work for so long.
Study cubicles in the dorms!
In terms of extracurriculars, I still enjoy going to the gym about four times a week and SGU has so many fitness classes! I’ve currently tried boxing, zumba, and salsa dancing. I hope I can keep this up.
Outside gym at SGU
I have to admit that I’m feeling much more adjusted compared to when I wrote my last post. I’m so grateful to have found people I can call friends which I meant through my assigned small group. It’s strange to be in my mid 20’s starting all over again like freshman year in college. It was really humbling. I’ll admit I had a lot of feelings because it felt like everyone had linked up very quickly in the beginning. My wise mom consoled me and ensured me that it’ll happen. So for anyone starting over again, trust in time it’ll happen.