First day of classes

First day of classes are over, and it wasn't nearly as exhausting as I expected. Maybe that's because I got a fairly good night's sleep. Or, maybe it wasn't so tiring because we get a 10 minute break every hour.

Classes started at 9, an hour later than they'll usually start. I arrived with about 10 minutes to spare after a brief scare with the chain of my bike falling off the grooves. Luckily, a man nearby offered to fix it for me. Something always has to go wrong on important days, and that was my something.

I brought my laptop to class, which is something I never did during either college or grad school. It's a mixed bag: on the one hand, I'm much better at typing quickly than writing quickly while still paying attention to the lecturer; on the other hand, wireless internet is a dangerous distractor. For me, the former outweighs the latter, which means that I have to be very disciplined in what internet surfing I allow for myself during class. My rule is only Blackboard (a course-related website) during class, along with any internet searches relevant to the topics being discussed. E-mail and all other internet surfing have to wait for a break. Many of my classmates aren't nearly as regimented as this, and others purposefully didn't bring their computers to class so they wouldn't be messing around on Facebook when they should be learning.

Speaking of regimented and structured (which I have to be if I'm going to survive medical school), a friend sitting behind me joked around with me about my mad typing skills, that she didn't even have to pay attention to the lecturer, just look over my shoulder to read the transcript. I may find out later that taking such detailed notes is unnecessary, but for now, I would rather have too much than too little. I have also devised a file naming system and directory tree that allows me to easily keep track of all the lecture notes I type up. The plan is (and we'll see how faithfully I stick to it) to review all of these notes that same evening.

One last thought before I go study bones: The curriculum here places an emphasis on "self-directed" learning. That means the lectures will not cover all of the material that I am responsible for on the tests. Having been a non-student for several years, I will need to quickly adjust to a mentality of proactively seeking out knowledge. I expect this adjustment to happen quickly, out of necessity.