It's official! I survived first year.
Apologies for the delayed update, but unsurprisingly life continued to be super-crazy-busy even after classes ended. After some well deserved revelry, I sat down to review the year for this post.
My first stop was my first post - nothing special, just moving in. This gave me the brief hope that I might be able to peruse my way through the year and share my favorite moments. O, how wrong I was. Turns out that I wrote quite a bit through the last year. I would try to add up the word count... but I'm not going to.
I also learned an enormous amount of information. Given that I only wrote between one and maybe five facts a day, butlearned was taught between a few dozen and a few hundred (I wish I were exaggerating) bits of information, it truly is an incredible accomplishment to simply survive a year. That being said, I am far prouder of my growth outside of the hippocampus (the brain structure central to memory consolidation).
My admittedly robust ego took so many hits in this year-long bout that I worried it might not get back up off the mat. Like a muggle-born kid from Hogwarts, I was often completely lost with things that other in-the-know students had learned years ago, either from parents or previous experience. For example: always assume you should wear a tie to a neurosurgery conference. Blood pressure cuffs do not, in fact, require three hands to hold. And always double-check the gender of your cadaver*.
I have also never been more stressed and generally miserable than during finals for the last two blocks. Most of you who know me know that I don't stress out easily. But excluding some of the worst days dealing with my own or my family's health problems, I've never been less happy than in the days before a test that could determine if get to continue this torture into the next block or the next year.
This is a subtle but important distinction. Even though, if I'm honest, I was afraid of being judged by my classmates, or failing the expectations of my family, or falling further behind my friends who are further in their education than I, my main motivation for passing my exams was getting to continue all the crazy, challenging, AMAZING things I get to do and learn every day at this school. I get to unravel the mysteries of the very body that allows to me unravel mysteries. I am (slowly) learning how to save lives not ten years after I was learning to heat up the "butter" they put on your popcorn at the theater.
I am so grateful for the privilege to be here and want to thank everyone who helps me get through the low days so that I can revel in the excitement of the exceptional ones. Thank you all again for reading!
* You may notice that my cadaver's gender as written in my posts went from male to genderless to female. When she was first introduced to us and throughout the first few sessions, the head and lower body were covered. Some combination of natural flat-chestedness and age-related tissue atrophy gave both the second-year who introduced us to the body, and my dissection group, the false impression of a male body. When the other group that shared our body started using female pronouns we were very confused before being very embarrassed.
My first stop was my first post - nothing special, just moving in. This gave me the brief hope that I might be able to peruse my way through the year and share my favorite moments. O, how wrong I was. Turns out that I wrote quite a bit through the last year. I would try to add up the word count... but I'm not going to.
I also learned an enormous amount of information. Given that I only wrote between one and maybe five facts a day, but
My admittedly robust ego took so many hits in this year-long bout that I worried it might not get back up off the mat. Like a muggle-born kid from Hogwarts, I was often completely lost with things that other in-the-know students had learned years ago, either from parents or previous experience. For example: always assume you should wear a tie to a neurosurgery conference. Blood pressure cuffs do not, in fact, require three hands to hold. And always double-check the gender of your cadaver*.
I have also never been more stressed and generally miserable than during finals for the last two blocks. Most of you who know me know that I don't stress out easily. But excluding some of the worst days dealing with my own or my family's health problems, I've never been less happy than in the days before a test that could determine if get to continue this torture into the next block or the next year.This is a subtle but important distinction. Even though, if I'm honest, I was afraid of being judged by my classmates, or failing the expectations of my family, or falling further behind my friends who are further in their education than I, my main motivation for passing my exams was getting to continue all the crazy, challenging, AMAZING things I get to do and learn every day at this school. I get to unravel the mysteries of the very body that allows to me unravel mysteries. I am (slowly) learning how to save lives not ten years after I was learning to heat up the "butter" they put on your popcorn at the theater.
I am so grateful for the privilege to be here and want to thank everyone who helps me get through the low days so that I can revel in the excitement of the exceptional ones. Thank you all again for reading!
* You may notice that my cadaver's gender as written in my posts went from male to genderless to female. When she was first introduced to us and throughout the first few sessions, the head and lower body were covered. Some combination of natural flat-chestedness and age-related tissue atrophy gave both the second-year who introduced us to the body, and my dissection group, the false impression of a male body. When the other group that shared our body started using female pronouns we were very confused before being very embarrassed.
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