Final! || SGU Term 3
Life:
I actually published the vlog!
I honestly can’t believe I had the audacity to do it. At the same time, I can’t believe it took me so long to edit it. First, I never claim to be an expert or model student. For a long time, it felt like I didn’t have a right to share my adventures. Like who did I think I was to publish something like that. Well, let’s get that negativity out the window because I’m proud of it. I love creating things and I love sharing my life. I hope when my work is done here, I would have left something behind - a mark in this world. Can you tell I’ve been going through an existential crisis (lol)? Anyways, I would love for you to join my adventures and subscribe to my channel! Also if there’s something you’ve been waiting for permission to do, I would love for you to give yourself that permission. Permission to be seen.
My monthly read
My goal was to read one book a month this year. January I read “The Perfect Day Formula” and I actually loved it. This month I’ve been reading “Think Again” after I heard Adam Grant on a podcast. It found me when I needed it because it’s about unlearning things that are deep set in your habits. I’m still working on it (and Handmaiden’s tale and a finance book) so I’ll tell you what I think next time.
Office renovations
I’m thankful that my boyfriend helped me create a brand new space. Besides the other room getting all the afternoon sun and becoming a sauna in the afternoon, I was looking for a more “zen” vibe. I saw Letitia Kiu put this up in her house and knew I had to have it somewhere in mine.
Disillusioned by professionalism
We went over bioethics this term. We read a paper describing the hidden curriculum of medical school. It really described the stem of the disillusionment I felt because there’s a socialization process that occurs while in medical school. Even talking about this to other peers or physicians, I’ve been shut down with “maybe you aren’t passionate enough” or “if you’re even questioning the sacrifice then medicine isn’t for you”. I don’t think that attitude is scientific or helpful.
I wanted to be in medical school since I was 16 gushing to my friends how I wanted to be an oncologist. The thing is 17-year-old Rainee who left for university didn’t leave room for future Rainee to go and experience other things in life. I shut down opportunities to explore hobbies and especially anything that changed my “10-year plan”.
Also, the U.S. healthcare system is not nice to patients or physicians! It’s discouraging to see residents now burning out, how they can’t take care of their patients because of arbitrary red tape from insurance systems, the administrative bureaucracy. If a physician speaks against this, it’s always spun into a “how could you want anything more than to take care of your patients”.
There’s no neat ending for this rant, but if you’re feeling disillusioned in medicine - I’m right here with you.
The irony of a 90 page DLA on burnout
Post-Midterm Term 3 Content:
I can’t believe I finished Term 3. It’s so bizarre to be done with a term in just 6 weeks. The second half of Term 3 is bioethics and more immunology and microbiology. While the content is not the most complex, the workload is something else. There are a lot of DLAs and they are quite long. So long they have instructions. We continued to have small group almost every day. The most challenging part of Term 3 was the workload and figuring out what to learn.
Bioethics
What the heck.
I don’t understand my own aversion to learning things through lecture material. I read through the 73-page bioethics reading and even some of the condensed versions and I didn’t like them personally. It’s written like an essay to provoke thoughts and opinions. That’s great, but it’s harder to take away the application. Maybe I’ve become too dependent on highly structured teaching. What was super helpful to me was going through Kaplan’s Medical Ethics and Khan’s 101 Cases. I went through 10 cases from each every day and read through Kaplan’s chapters. Very helpful! Disclaimer, there are some differences in SGU ethics and Kaplan so beware.
Microbiology & Immunology
We continue on with the introduction to micro and immunology and I still love the professor. However, not being responsible for the depth of information presented and knowing that STEP is coming up in a year I understand I’m going to be responsible for a huuuge amount of information in a quick second. We went over the virus, fungi, and parasite clarifications. I can’t believe the level of knowledge I’m about to drown in next term.
Random public health things
There’s a sprinkle of biomedical informatics and things like that - I wouldn’t sleep on that.
My schedule for the last week of Term 3
Term 3 Pace
It’s fast, but I only felt a little overwhelmed at the end. It goes by fast because the amount of things you’re expected to do is more than T1 and T2. To make it manageable for me, I had to double book most of my days, get help where I could, and use my skips. I really don’t understand where I was supposed to get all this time to study.
I was able to end every day around 5-PM except for 4 days which I feel like is a pretty good record considering my past record.
What would I do differently
For bioethics, I think reading the bioethics companion, doing Khan and Kaplan puts you in a good place. Honestly, being tested on ethics is so weird because you could know the right thing to do in real life BUT the wording of the question is so strange that you’re just sitting there like “okay there’s no way I know what you mean”. Eh. Okay.
For immuno and micro, it was also strange. It seemed like you had to know details on certain things but to some ambiguous extent that no one would tell you. I tried to overdo it on the level of detail because I know I’ll have to know it for Term 4, but there were still things that I didn’t catch. I watched Boards & Beyond and Physeo for B and T cell development and activation because it kind of gets messy at the end.
Extracurriculars
I honestly didn’t have time to do much for extracurriculars. We ran maybe 2 PLGs this term because the exam schedules were so funky.
I’ve been trying to run Doctors In Politics’s IG. It’s been nice to use my voice to speak to healthcare issues. I wish understood how to do social media. It would make my life easier and would have been a nice side gig.
Okay on to Term 4, I’m scared.