I’m a second-year medical student?! || Starting SGU Term 3
Life After 1st Year
I can’t believe that I completed a year of medical school! And in about a year, I’ll be taking STEP. Wow, time flies.
It feels like there’s a trend of returning to old hobbies or maybe we’re all going through quarter/mid-life crisis I enjoyed some good books, playing video games, and bought some rollerblades. Doing all these things reminded me how much I missed being a human. Being more than a medical student. I hope I can keep my humanity through this journey.
Our big DIY project besides the yard was creating our DIY weight platform. In a past life, I was a competitive powerlifter so weights have always had a place in my life.
Term 3 at SGU
To preface, COVID-19 is still not controlled so this term is confirmed to remain remote. As far as I can tell, other than clinical skills the curriculum remains mostly the same. Term 3 is only 6 weeks long with 2 tests — which determines a whole term grade! Then I have a weekend to decompress and I’m straight into Term 4 until the end of June. This is will be a long journey and from what I hear, not in any way easy. I’m terrified really.
Winter Break
I started in the January term so I had about 5 weeks of break between Term 2 and Term 3. To be honest, I really only studied maybe a couple of hours and that was just cleaning up my notes and files. Knowing what’s ahead of me, I just wanted time to just enjoy being human. In Term 2, I really feel like I lost myself and let myself be consumed by school. It took a toll on my mental health. I watched a couple of videos for biostats, but gave it up after a couple of videos.
Term 3 Content
From what I understand, Term 3 is like a grab bag of things that just don’t go anywhere. I heard we’ve got biostatistics, ethics, and immunology - all jumbled around. In the first week, we are going back and forth between biostats probability/hypothesis testing and bacteria biology. I heard the content itself is not the hardest thing I have or will go through, but since there are only 2 tests and 6 weeks - it can be easy to slip up.
Example of one of the weeks in Term 3
Term 3 Schedule
So Term 3 will be 6 weeks with tests every 3 weeks. This term, SGU has scheduled everyone’s lectures to start at 4 PM Grenada time so that will be 12 PM California time. The small groups and IMCQs will be before lecture. Though I’m grateful that I don’t have to wake up for 7 AM lecture, it’s an odd time for lecture because my brain will already be fried after the small group and then I will post-read pretty late in the day. I didn’t see any labs or clinical skill small groups for Term 3.
As I was arranging my google calendar, I couldn’t help but laugh at our schedule. It’s no exaggeration that there’s almost a small group session every day. I struggled to prep for 1-2 sessions per week. Every day? On top of lectures and IMCQs? When will I find the time for actual learning?
There is a new thing my class is guinea pigging - Flipped Lectures. It’s fair that we did ask for more interactive classes, but now we have to prep before these lectures. That’s really all I know about them at this point. There’s only a handful scheduled so I’m thankful for that.
Outside Resources
I heard that Term 3 SGU materials are decent, but Term 4 I will likely need to rely on outside resources to learn. I was a little too excited and bought USMLE-rx to start the idea of prepping for STEP. Unfortunately, I learned afterward that SGU will provide (through our tuition money) UWorld and USMLE-rx so maybe I should have bought Kaplan or Amboss instead.
For Term 3, I have scoped out that I will probably be watching Dr. Neil’s biostats youtube series, Boards & Beyond’s stats series, and Pixorize’s immuno section. I have also heard physeo is good for practice in T3. Luckily, I am still using FreeMedTube and it’s been a wallet-saver for me.
Extracirriculars
I’ll continue to facilitate PLG sessions and I’m on E-board for Internal Medicine Club. Once again, I’m attempting to start a club at SGU. We’ll see if this is all doable!
Well friends, I’ll see you in 3 weeks! I’m a little nervous if we’re being honest.