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Day 15: Where to go, where to go

Amanda Xi

Today’s inane image of the day:

We use this fun device for most of our classes — it’s a part of the “active learning” part of our curriculum. For the most part, I think it does do its job of making sure we understand the material.

Just to keep you coming back, I’ve been promised guest posts from some of my inaugural-classmates… assuming I can squeeze one out of someone!

I’ve been meaning to write an entry about this for a while, but I’ve found other things to be easier to discuss and thus left it for a special day. Apparently, the day has come: let’s talk about specialties. Yes, yes, yes, I’m barely in my third week of my M1 year and I’m already concerned about what I want to be doing after four years?

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Getting things done

Amanda Xi

Today’s inane image of the day:

My new OU ID card! [I am a bit embarrassed at how my photo looks so I cut that out…]

The fact that I’m starting school on Monday is slowly starting to set in — I know it’ll feel surreal until the moment that orientation activities begin, but I finally feel more ready to take this new challenge on. 
On the tasks front, so far I have only gotten my immunization form and accompanying documents done, but now that I have my coffee, I feel slightly more ready to slowly chip away at all the other things piled up on my to-do list.
I just finished up Dr. Michelle Au‘s book, This Won’t Hurt a Bit (and Other White Lies) while I was flying back from L.A. yesterday. I absolutely loved the book and recommend it for anyone entering medicine, especially women who are looking “to have it all.” While I recognized a lot of the book from reading her blog [I have almost read it completely from the first entry to the most recent — I think I have the entries from 2009-2011 to read], I still enjoyed reading her words. One of the things I love the most about Dr. Au is her humor and very down-to-earth way of writing. I truly look up to her and aspire to be as successful as she is.
We’re supposed to get one more OUWB Admitted Student Update soon — I’ll be sure to post an update when it reaches my inbox.
Time to stop procrastinating…

Application resources and other recent ramblings

Amanda Xi

I was thinking about what I found to be the most consistently helpful resource for the whole medical school application process and decided that it was undoubtedly the Student Doctor Network (SDN) Forums. Although I distinctly remember stumbling upon the forums in high school, I only returned to the site as I was crafting my AMCAS personal comments last summer [I cannot believe it has been a year since I started my primary application!] and somewhat regretted not keeping tabs on application threads earlier [say, like a year before I was planning to apply]. While it takes some time to learn how to weed out pertinent information, read between the mounds of sarcastic lines and muster the courage to finally post in a thread you’ve followed for weeks [well… it took me a while to actually post something], there is so much valuable information available [and all for free — what a deal!].

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