Today’s inane image of the day:
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| We were awarded the Heller Outstanding Branch Award for the second consecutive year in a row! Go team! [Photo credit: Fatima Fahs, our branch’s new fearless leader] |
I apologize for the radio silence. The whole studying-for-boards excuse is already starting to sound like a broken record, but hey, it’s the truth. That, and keeping up with everything that has been going on in the past month [more on this later].
It has been almost a month since I last posted and I didn’t get a chance to respond to the comments from that post… so here they are:
Which track did you pick and why?
I picked a track that very few people wanted for their first choice – although I didn’t choose it because it was an unpopular option, it worked out in my favor. The order of this track is as follows: Surgery, Neurology, Pediatrics, OB/GYN, Family Medicine, Elective, Medicine, Psychiatry, Capstone. I liked this order because 1.) I’ll have a lot of energy for surgery at the beginning; 2.) I wanted OB/GYN in the middle in case I decided I wanted to go into it; 3.) the order is really balanced – generally a less-time-intensive clerkship follows a more-time-intensive one. In the end, I would have been happy with any of the tracks, but I’m still thrilled that I got my first choice.
Books we use for psych.
I’m not sure if you were referring to clerkships or pre-clinical, but either way, our Psychiatry course recommends the “Introductory Textbook of Psychiatry” by Donald Black. Since the course is only 2 weeks long for us, I personally am trying to rely on other sources to learn the material. When I get to my Psychiatry clerkship, I’ll be sure to post resources from that!
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This last month has been filled with assignments, boards studying and a couple of exciting trips. A couple weeks back I visited USC Keck School of Medicine to present a poster at the Innovations in Medical Education conference. Conveniently, Pasadena is not too far from Mike so we got to spend some much needed time together. Last weekend I flew to NYC for the AMWA 98th Annual Meeting [hence the photo for the day] and had a glorious time meeting inspirational women and chatting with fellow medical students from across the country. I also ran for Student Division President-Elect and Conference Co-Chair; sadly, I was unsuccessful at the former and appointed the latter position. I’m still somewhat disappointed by the outcome.
Lately, I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather. I think it’s a mixture of the actual weather [gloomy, snowy, cold] and the rejections I’ve been receiving left and right. In the last several months, I have invested myself into a number of applications for various positions or programs and been unsuccessful at just about all of them. Sure, I have had the opportunity to present my research at a couple of conferences, but I don’t think I get as emotionally attached to my abstract submissions, which means that my successes in that arena don’t make up for my failures in others. To add on another layer of misery, I received my non-cognitive evaluations today and was really disappointed in some of the feedback I received.
Apparently, I have a lot of reflecting to do as I move forward and into clerkships.
[I hope you have all been doing well! I’m excited that I’ve started hearing from students in the Class of 2017 – welcome to the OUWB family!]