Finding my Footing

I was warned during orientation week by a few of the Tulane faculty that medical school would feel like trying to drink water out of five different fire hoses at the same time. I was hoping they were exaggerating, but of course, they were not. We started our first week of classes for our first block this week, Fundamentals of Human Biology, and it feels like we have covered at least a third of the content I learned in undergrad already. Each day we are in class from 8:30 to 2:30 (at least). Our mornings consist of 3 lectures, and the afternoon is either another lecture or some kind of lab (anatomy or histology) or a Foundations of Medicine discussion group or workshop. Our lecture topics rotate between anatomy, histology, genetics, and biochemistry, and while they’re all mostly super interesting, it is a lot of content. After class, I usually spend 3-4 hours trying to wrap my head around what I just learned by reviewing the lectures. For the first few days of class, I was trying to create written summaries of the lectures that honestly just turned into me writing out ¾ of the content and essentially wasting my time because a) it took forever, and b) it was a passive way of studying. Luckily, I have enough self-awareness to know that that was not going to work for me, and I had to quickly figure out a more efficient way to review and retain the information since it piles on each and every single day. The week prior, a T2 representative from the Medical Student Government let the T1s know about a resource called AMBOSS, which is essentially just another 3rd party resource that helps medical students study. I got a free code to try it out for the month, and it is my saving grace at the moment. Unfortunately for me, that likely means that once this month ends, I will have to buy it to keep using it. What I like about it is that it has an AI mode that I use to ask it questions about parts of the lecture I need clarification about, where details fit into the larger context of what we’re studying, and reviewing questions I get wrong. Now, I get out of class, review my lectures with the help of AMBOSS AI, and then do the practice questions and review. It has saved me so much time, and I feel like I am retaining knowledge, which is so much more important than passively reading and re-writing my notes. Then, to top it off, I use Anki (a flashcard platform) to actively recall and review high-yield information from each lecture. Shout out to Tulane Medicine for having its own Anki decks already created. Now, I am not sure if this is going to be my method forever, but for now, it seems to be working (I’ll confirm or deny this statement once I find out the outcome of our first block exam happening later this month).

Like I said, on top of classes, we have labs and workshops. This week, we had our first histology and anatomy labs. Coming into medical school, I knew anatomy lab would be the hardest part of the medical education curriculum for me since we are working with cadavers. The reason I struggle with that is that I find it hard to navigate my feelings of that person being someone’s whole world at some point. Whether they were someone’s parent, sibling, child, etc., they are now someone I know nothing about and have to dissect various times of the year. This may sound morbid, but I imagine my own grandma, who recently passed away in February, and how much I miss her. Knowing her in that way and her no longer being with me feels heavy, and I believe that whoever knew my cadaver in that intimate way feels the same. It makes it hard to feel okay with doing these dissections, even though they fully consented to this before their passing and are doing it to support medicine and medical education. I am obviously so thankful to them for entrusting me to do these labs and build my education, but I guess grief shows itself in weird ways, and for me, this may be one of them. Hopefully, with time, it will get easier as I learn to navigate and cope with my own feelings in uncertainty and through being uncomfortable.

Beyond class, and the never-ending amount of material to review, you can probably guess that I have tons of free time…. Just kidding!!!! But with the limited free time I have, I try to use it productively. Since I switched to this AMBOSS method, I have been able to get back into the gym. I went 4 times this week, including 3 weeknights and a Saturday. During one of the times I went, there were alligators. Tulane Recreation decided that a way to advertise and get students to come to the gym they would bring in alligators. While I find this silly, since the gym itself is already incredible, I decided to embrace being in the South, so I got to hold an alligator named Gumbo. Gumbo is 3 years old and will be returned to the wild this year or the next, depending on how big he grows. As I said, Gumbo was a nice bonus, but the gym itself is so nice. The gym is 4 storeys, with an indoor lane pool, outdoor social pool, indoor running/walking track, cycle studio, pilates/barre studio, and 3 levels of weight and cardio equipment. It’s actually insane to me (in the best way) that this is the facility open to students to use. They also have so many fitness classes and activities that students can do for free. I will be trying a cycling class next week and using the lane pool to get some much-needed cardio in.

Besides the gym, I am also starting to hop onto the meal prep train to try and give myself the most time to study and sleep. Last week, I prepped breakfast sandwiches and did the same for this week. I also try to prep all my snacks for the week and plan simple, low-prep dinner recipes that I can cook with the little time I have. I will start sharing some photos of the fun stuff I make once I make some document-worthy recipes.

Since my weeknights are spent trying to review the stuff we learned that day, prep for what’s coming up tomorrow, and get a workout in at the gym, I don’t do many social things on those nights. But that’s what the weekend is for!

On Friday night, all interested T1s were invited by the Jewish Medical Student Association at Tulane to attend a Shabbat dinner at a local synagogue. To preface, I am not religious, but I decided to go, as I am trying to feel closer to my grandparents, who, unfortunately, have all passed away. Clearly, I am really missing them this week. All of my grandparents were holocaust survivors back in the Soviet Union, and had a strong connection to their religion through this lived experience. Growing up, I never went to synagogue or did anything necessarily “Jewish”, other than eat latkes once a year on Hanukkah, but now that they’re gone, I have had an urge to try to learn more about Judaism and the shared lived history of Jewish people. I do not intend to do this to become religious, but rather to feel more connected to my grandparents and ensure I am educated to share their history and culture with my future kids one day and get to know them from this new lens. Because of my lack of experience doing Jewish activities outside of eating Latkes, I felt like a complete imposter at this dinner. While the hymns were getting sung, I was the only person who couldn’t sing along. I also did not know a single story the rabbi read, and that Hebrew is read in the opposite direction from English. I hoped I wasn’t the only one feeling this way, but upon talking to others at the event, it felt like everyone else regularly went to synagogue or attended Jewish school growing up, while I did not. Again, I am happy to be quite unreligious, but it’s a little intimidating and embarrassing walking into a room where everyone knows stuff that you don’t (and it’s not like I can learn Hebrew overnight to sing along lol). Luckily, the food was good and meeting some of my Jewish classmates was fun. I also felt proud of myself for trying something new and a sense of connection to my grandparents. I think coming to a new city by myself has really pushed me to put myself out there and given me a strong desire to keep the parts of myself that resonate with home and the people I strongly associate with home. I hope to attend more events in the future to build that community and continue feeling that closeness to my grandparents. After the dinner, I called my parents and my brother, then went to bed.

Then Saturday came along. I spent Saturday morning at the gym, followed by another exhilarating day studying. I also made it to Trader Joe’s to restock on some groceries. I live so close to a Trader Joe’s here, and I could not be happier. It is genuinely the best grocery store to exist (besides Costco, which I also live relatively close to). We don’t have Trader Joe’s in Canada, so having it as my go-to store here is awesome since they have the best freezer and snack sections ever. I am currently obsessed with their Scandinavian Swimmers candy, which is the Trader Joe’s version of Swedish Fish. After that, I went out with some classmates to a super fun bar/patio vibe place called Wrong Iron. We sat together and talked for a couple of hours before calling it a night. I met some really amazing people, including someone from Seattle (shout out Pacific Northwest connection!). It always brings me comfort when meeting someone from the PNW down here because they know what you’re referring to when you speak about your ‘home’ city. Although I am still missing home, making new friends, doing new things, and honestly not having much time to think about anything besides school has really helped ease my homesickness.

Then Sunday came along. I spent the first 3 hours cleaning, meal prepping, and baking cookies. I then studied, had a call with one of my best friends from Ottawa, and played pickleball with the weekly T1 pickleball crew. We played for a couple of hours in the blazing heat. We started at 6 pm, and to no one’s surprise, the heat does not let up even in the evening. By the end of the session, I was exhausted. I genuinely am so happy for pickleball, as it feels so nice to take a brain break that allows for physical activity and socializing at no cost. I feel like few activities nowadays offer that, so having it be part of my routine is so awesome. After pickleball, I made some dinner, finished up Anki and wrote this blog.

I forgot to add, but this week I also got to pick up my fully embroidered white coat. I guess that makes me an official doctor in training. I get to wear it for the first time next week at a Standardized patient session, so tune in for next week’s blog as I let you know all about what that felt like, along with the many interesting and studious things that I do.

Thank you to everyone who subscribed so far. I hope you enjoy reading these and feel like you’re really along for the ride.