First day of school

School starts tomorrow! I've bought my textbooks and school supplies, I've cleaned off my desk, and I'm ready for the new school year. In fact, I'm so excited that I can't go to sleep. I take comfort in knowing that I can look for solidarity to a fair number of my classmates who feel the same way.

Second year kicks off with neuroscience and an interwoven psychiatry class. Fun!

Orienting the class of 2014

Orientation Week for the first-year medical students happened this past week. I had so much fun during orientation week last year (particularly at the retreat) that I decided to volunteer the last week of my last free Summer to help out as an orientation leader. This consisted mostly of herding the first-years from one place to the next and making sure that no one got lost or swallowed by a whale or something else equally as frightening. I was also there to answer whatever questions they threw at me and to otherwise calm them that medical school really isn't all that bad. It was a completely different experience for me than last year, when I was the one awash in anxiety of the Unknown.

As with last year, the two-day orientation retreat in the mountains was a ton of fun. For me, the highlights of the retreat were the team-building games, hiking in the mountains with a group of first-years, and the party that the orientation leaders threw for the first-years. I don't know when else I would have had the opportunity to get to know the class below me so well. Especially because it's so easy to become myopic in my own medical education, I feel that it was very important to meet my future colleagues.

They're a great group. I'm every bit impressed by them as by my own class, which speaks to what a great job the Admissions committee has done.