professionalstudentlife-blog

[professionalstudentlife-blog]

The ultimate sacrifice

When you are in professional school, you have to take this infamous course called anatomy. It is notoriously difficult because the complexity of the human body is unlike anything else and, similar to space and higher deities, there is so much we do not know. So while your professors are throwing hundreds of structures at you to memorize (all the triangles), you get the privilege of learning on a cadaver. Now to the general public, this seems cruel and gross, but to a future physician, this is the ultimate resource to learn how the human body works. Where do these bodies come from? People just like you and I agree to donate their body to science prior to their passing. Once they die, their body is brought to a morgue associated with a medical university of their choosing that they wish to donate to. The morgue then preps the body by draining all the blood and flushing it with preservatives (note: formaldehyde is no longer used, phenol is more common now because it is not carcinogenic), then it is sent to the proper college where it will be studied for the next two years. These bodies are not just sent to colleges within the single university they were donated to, other universities pay an average of $150,000 per single cadaver to a distributing university (sounds like you are leasing a car right?). Once the bodies (yes that’s plural because most distributors receive roughly 150-300 bodies each year) arrive to their proper location, the studying can begin! By ‘studying’ I am referring to dissection, which involves skinning the body, cutting open various cavities/regions, removing internal organs and limbs, and disarticulation. Those are just the basics, but you get the idea. Professional students spend hours in the cadaver lab and most of us act respectful towards the donor bodies. However, some students are not appreciative and act inappropriately in the lab by placing textbooks on the donor’s face, leaning excessively on the cadaver, not being gentle when turning over a body, and/or making comments about the weight/size/ethnicity/fat content/etc. This is just some of the more mild immature behavior that occurs, but in the past, there have been cases of students taking pictures of cadavers (yes I mean selfies) and posting them online. The utmost important rule of anatomy lab is to respect the donors, which includes not taking any pictures in the lab and always covering up the body except for the area you are working on. These cadavers are not just decaying bodies (even if they do look like walkers), they are deceased people, humans, who have families and friends who care deeply for them and are grieving because they never had a funeral for their loved one. Oh you didn’t know? Yes it is the unfortunate truth, but ultimate sacrifice of a donor, the bodies are immediately transported to the morgue, so a funeral cannot occur until after the body is done being studied (if you recall, that’s two years later), and by then the body is so deteriorated and in literal pieces that cremation is the only option for a ceremony (no open-caskets). Luckily, many universities host a ceremony to honor their donors that involves students thanking the families and friends of those who donated their bodies for the sake of higher education. Although it is not the same as having a funeral, the donors’ loved ones truly appreciate it and it reminds the professional students that these cadavers were once live human beings. So study hard for anatomy, learn as much as you can in lab, and respect the cadavers. You owe it to the donors because they gave the ultimate sacrifice in order for you to become a doctor. 

[professionalstudentlife-blog]

Re$ources

It’$ been $aid that money i$ the root of all evil, but for profe$$ional $tudent$, it’$ a valuable re$ource. It doe$n’t ju$t pay for food and rent, it pay$ for learning and connection$. For tho$e that have money in profe$$ional $chool, they can pay for all of their textbook$, the late$t tablet to take note$ in cla$$, a private tutor if they need extra help in a cour$e, and anything el$e they need to $ucceed. And people who have money tend to hang out with other$ who have it too. $o that older $tudent who i$ the top of their cla$$ and will graduate debt-free? How do you think they coincidentally are friend$ with your cla$$mate$ who drive Lexu$ $UVs and wear apple watche$? It’$ becau$e their daddie$ go boating together on the weekend and they live a $imilar life$tyle that include$ a nice apartment, paid tuition (no loan$ needed here!), and an endle$$ number of rich friend$. Now I don’t want you all to get the wrong impre$$ion and think that all profe$$ional $tudent$ who$e parent$ are paying for their education are $nob$ becau$e that i$ NOT the ca$e. Mo$t of them are great people and are ju$t trying to get through $chool like the re$t of u$, however, there i$ no doubt that tho$e who have money have better acce$$ to re$ource$ than tho$e who can’t afford a Loui$ Vuitton planner (ye$ that i$ a thing and it co$t$ over $300). $o $tart $aving up all your ca$h and make friend$ with the rich kid$ becau$e it make$ profe$$ional $chool a lot ea$ier. 

[professionalstudentlife-blog]

Get well now

In high school if you got sick, your mom just called the office and you were excused for the day. In undergrad, you emailed your professors and had your classmates take notes for you. In professional school, getting sick is just about the worst thing that can happen to you (other than getting kicked out of course). If you wake up with a fever, runny nose, chills, and nausea, you basically have two options: 1) suck it up and go to class anyways, or 2) go through the inconvenient process of getting excused. The latter is by far the greater of two evils because you have to contact student affairs to let them know you are ill, contact your professors, assure that student affairs will also contact your professors to back you up, and get a doctor’s note as proof that you are actually sick (who actually goes to the doctor’s every time they’re sick? who can get a same-day appointment? NOBODY!) That might not seem so bad, but now you have to catch up on the material you missed, which means hours of listening to recorded lectures online, scavenging notes from classmates, and trying to teach the material to yourself so you don’t fall behind (unfortunately, you already have). Professional school teaches you to take care of sick people, but you are not allowed to get sick yourself because if you do, the consequences will make you feel far worse than the stomach flu will. So rule of thumb, don’t get sick, but if you do, don’t get well soon - get well NOW. 

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Don’t sweat orientation

It’s the start of a new semester and a new class has arrived for the infamous orientation. You get dressed up in professional attire, awkwardly meet your classmates,and listen to boring lectures about your upcoming classes, professionalism, HIPAA, and all the ways you can get kicked out. This is the time when you get to make a first impression on your peers and professors, so to say you’re nervous is a bit of an understatement. The student affairs staff welcomes you in and they force you to participate in icebreakers, hoping it will build comradery amongst classmates. Why can’t they just put us all in a room and let us talk and meet as we please just like kindergarten? The worst part of orientation has to be professional pictures. They always do it on the first day because they figure you will wear your best suit and try your hardest to look good on the first day. Well, what they don’t realize is that we are the most nervous on the first day and stress sweat does not look good on anyone. Now you have a shine on your forehead, flushed cheeks, and pit stains to remember you by because that one picture stays with you until graduation. Good luck to all the new students and don’t forget to relax and bring extra deodorant! 

[professionalstudentlife-blog]

Pop that chill pill

Take a chill pill, they say. Trust me, if there was such a thing as a “chill pill” I would take one everyday like a vitamin. Professional school causes professional stress and sometimes we deserve a break. Whether it’s exercising, taking a hot shower, napping (jk, we don’t sleep!), or simply calling up a close friend to vent, the goal is to reduce stress. There are students that get massages after every semester, while others give in to retail therapy and buy themselves something shiny and new to make themselves feel better. Whatever it is, we deserve to relax after a hard week of class. The only problem is the guilt that floods into our minds when we go on a hike for an hour instead of studying for midterms. We all feel it, like we wasted time that could have been used to cram just a little bit more information into our skulls. What’s even is worse is when you get caught jogging by a classmate headed to the library and you feel like they are judging you for not having your nose stuck in Gray’s Anatomy. The reality is we work hard everyday trying to be physicians, so we should be able to chill out without feeling bad about it. So go ahead and treat yourself to ice cream, take your dog for a long walk, and don’t forget to schedule that manicure you are in desperate need of because your classmates are not judging you, they are envying you because they want a break too. That hour of relaxation will go a lot further than it would spent studying, so go ahead, pop that chill pill. 

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Professional Professors

Professors in professional school are of a different breed and are nothing like undergraduate professors. They vary in teaching style, age, education, ability to use technology, and expertise, but they all serve the same purpose: to teach us how to be good physicians. Some will build you up and refuse to give up on you, while others will tear you down, claiming they are using “tough love” on you. There will always be that professor that rubs you the wrong way and there will also be that professor that everyone despises, but for every mean one, there is a class favorite. The best professors get your exams back in a timely manner, give breaks throughout their lectures, and really try to get to know their students. School is hard almost all of the time, and professors understand what we are going through because they were once in our shoes. At times it may seem like they are being hard on you and you might feel like you cannot relate to them because many of them have foreign accents (hindi, chinese, turkish, and arabian are just a few of the accents students learn to understand), but regardless of the way your professors haze you, they really do want you to do well and if you make an effort in their class, they will make an effort to help you.  

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The end is just the beginning

Getting accepted is commonly believed to be the most difficult part of professional school. You study hard, join some clubs, volunteer, shadow, get a killer test score on the MCAT/DAT/OAT/GRE/etc., do research, have solid letters of recommendation, get work-related experience, TA, and receive your bachelor’s/master’s degree just to be eligible for an interview. It seems like once you are in the program of your dreams, the worst is over. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Now that you are in, you are placed on a new playing field with classmates that worked just as hard as you did and are just as smart and resourceful. Now every school and program is different, but it is no secret that competition will unfold among our “peers”, but can you blame us? it is in our nature and the only thing we know after competing so hard to get into professional school. The reality is the end is just the beginning, so when you start to breathe again because you got your acceptance call, be prepared to get the wind knocked out of you once again. 

[professionalstudentlife-blog]

Intro

Hi, I decided to use this blog as a means to anonymously journal my life as a professional student. I want to share with the world what I, along with thousands of others, go through on our road to be successful individuals. This is an insider view and I don’t want to hold anything back (even the truth). Just a brief intro: I am a twenty-something, second year professional student at a public university in the United States. I will talk about anything and everything that is part of being a future physician and I hope this blog gives you some insight (or you can relate) to what it truly means to be “professional”.