So, about this third year you keep mentioning

My desktop tells me I am 27 days from the end of my second year of medical school.  I just sighed out loud.  It's an idea that I want to place on the table in front of me and just gaze at.  Wait, scratch that, it's not tactile enough.  I want to really understand that fact.  I always have this weird sense that if I could just have a physical interface with an idea, I could get into it so much better.  Eat it, rub it into my skin, smell it, mess with it like silly putty.  Something.  Then I could really, on every level, know that this is coming to an end.  It might make me appreciate the present-future a tiny bit.  As it is now, though, I can focus on the next hour, and I can focus on third year.  I have some sense that I should be looking around and trying to milk a bit of something from right now to be nostalgic about later.  It's not even the desire, though.  Just the desire for the desire to enjoy this a little.

And so I have been dreaming endlessly of third year.  What will I do?  What will I see?  What will I wear?

What?  It matters.

...Yes, it does.

Yes.

Yes, it does.  I'm not arguing anymore.  Female professionals understand this.  Hmph.

I've heard a lot of people, especially from Other Schools (oh, those distant and slightly ominous places), bitch about how miserable third year is.  But I am determined to be excited about it.  I have successfully convinced myself that third year will be a vast improvement over first and second.  Example: my feet will hurt instead of my neck!

...Well.  Let's try another one.  I will be confused about what to do instead of what to read!  No, no, that doesn't help my case either.  Er...

...I will only have to study a week or two out of every month?  Yes!  You see, a definite improvement!  And on a more serious note, I am really looking forward to putting all of this teaching into a clinical format mentally.  Don't get me wrong, they really try to give us clinical experiences in the form of timed visits and lots of mock H&Ps (history and physical).  It could never be enough, though.  They teach us how the body is put together, and they teach us how to examine it; on the other side of things, they teach us how things go wrong and what is done to (attempt to) fix those things.  But synthesizing all of that into a huge algorithm that combines reasoning and behaviour can only be done in the clinics through endless repetition.  I know so little right now.

I am thankful that I already have the interpersonal part down, and that gives me a little hope for myself.  Some of my classmates are clumsy in the exam room; they fumble with instruments and forget what they're saying; they blush during exams.  That might be the only part I don't struggle with right now.  But several of my instructors have reassured me that all of the other stuff just needs to be taught and reinforced.  I just pray I learn well.

Oh, and I guess I have Level 1 to get through, which I have to pass to start my clinical years.  But whatever.  BRING IT ON, COMLEX.  I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU.  And by that I mean please go easy on me and let me pass through quietly to third year.  Please?