Day 28: Final countdown and 9/11 reflections2 min read

Today’s inane image of the day:

Thank you S from my TBL group for creating this masterpiece of a brachial plexus, then offering to make color copies for each of us!

That’s right, I finally mastered the intricacies of the brachial plexus and tucked it away deep in my brain. Although I thought it was a lot to remember, I still don’t understand why Dr. Bee was stressing that we memorize it nearly 3 weeks before the exam… I kind of thought it was something fun and different to focus on after staring at Powerpoint lectures from 8am until midnight last night.

I find that I am the happiest in the mornings and I really should take advantage of that time to reflect. This weekend has [so far] proved to me that medical school studying is a completely different breed from engineering — in order to cure the pathology, we must understand the norm. And the norm is quite the chunk of material.

I do remember how incredibly frustrated and annoyed I would get when faced with an exam in engineering — the only thing I knew how to do for those was try the problem sets over again… but I never had the will to. Why should I re-do a problem that I already encountered? I already know the answer! But now, although I still feel overwhelmed by the material that I must learn by tomorrow, at least I love it. The spark generated by clinical applications for faulty nucleotide excision repair [skin cancer] or being able to appreciate the nomenclature of epithelial cells [structure-function relationships are really the icing on the cake] makes it worth it.

As you all know, today is the 10th anniversary of 9/11 — although I was not in NYC nor was I directly impacted by the losses from that day, I do remember the sinking feeling in my chest when I heard the announcement. I was in math class with my favorite teacher and enjoying the material when all of a sudden, we were on lockdown. What did lockdown even mean? Why would we be on it?

After the television flipped on, I understood. I was confused by the replays as the day progressed — was this a joke? A really big stunt? I didn’t understand how the sturdy architecture of the twin towers could fail, nor how any human could want to cause so much destruction and despair. I still don’t understand the latter.

I went into this profession to do the exact opposite of those terrorists on 9/11 — I want to bring more life and hope into this world through medicine.