August 19, 2005

• A Quick and Dirty Guide to First Year Medical School Classes

  1)Histology

  

  Histology in theory is looking at slides. sounds simple, right? just
  like back in highschool where you learn to play with the microscope.
  Except for one thing…You get pictures such as the above, and the
  professor then wants you to identify all the cell types in the slide,
  along with their function, what tissue type you are examining, what
  organ the slide came from, the general age of the person the tissue
  came from (fetal or adult), not to mention their gender, religion, skin
  color, food preferences, and the day of the week the slide was taken.

  It’s like some kind of cracked out game of Where’s Waldo

  

  “You’ll never track me down, bitches!”

  2) Embryology

  After many years of hoping and waiting
  and wishing and wondering, medical school students finally get to learn
  where it is that babies actually come from! and the survey says…

  

  A textbook! Beginning with fertilization
  through the development of every known human system, i did not find a
  single picture or reference to a mommy and daddy loving each other very
  much. Apparently, these wacky scientists try to teach us some crap
  about developing from a single cell! Thank goodness for Kansas for standing firm and teaching intelligent design in their state schools. At least some people in this country will know that we all come from the great spaghetti monster. Me and my pastafarian brothers shall remain strong!

  

  
  

  3) Physiology

  

  The bread and butter of any medical
  student’s education. Or for those of you of the asian persuasion, the
  rice and soy sauce Physiology is the study of all the body systems
  and how they function, but with like numbers and graphs and stuff. In
  this course we learn about action potentials, how to interpret an EKG,
  how the kidney filters nutrients and water leaving behind only urine,
  and of course how the wheels on the bus go round and round. There are
  people who dedicate their entire lives to the study of physiology, and
  then there are those of us who spend just enough time dicking around in
  it to get a Master’s degree. Three guesses which one I am.

  4)ICM
  

  ICM, or introduction to clinical
  medicine, is the course that is supposed to start teaching immature
  folks like me how to at least pretend to be professional when
  interacting with real live people. In this class, we learn how to take
  patient histories and physicals using standardized patients. These are
  basically people who come in and pretend to be people going to the
  doctor. We have to dress up in business clothes (well, doctor business,
  so nice stuff with the white coat) and go through a list that is so
  ridiculously long I am surprised my doctor doesn’t just ask me “so,
  everything going okay? good times then.”

  5)MCB
  

  Molecular and Cellular Biology is a
  giant giant waste of time. Basically we learn about every single
  individual organelle in the cell what it does, who it hangs out with,
  what it connects to. This is a detail oriented, memorization course
  that will swell our poor overfilled med student noggins so much that we
  have to wear head shields like the above fellow lest our brains explode
  from the sheer volume of information

  6)Anatomy

  

  When the standard layperson thinks of
  medical school, this is the course that you all come up with. Anatomy
  is two parts…one is simply learning the name of every muscle, bone,
  ligament, tendon, etc in the body…this is a LOT. The second part,
  which is what i am looking forward to starting this wednesday is the
  actual dissection of a human cadaver so as we can see and become
  familar with all these muscle groups and what not that we learn. The
  cadavers are deserving of our full respest, having donated their lives
  to medicine even in death…however, expect the occasional joke from me
  nonetheless about this being the closest I may get to a woman this
  year. Expect this because i lack tact. I am a bad person, and make baby
  jeebus cry on a regular basis

  So that is the first quarter courseload of the standard student here at
  the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science for Kids who
  Can’t Read Good and want to learn to do other stuff good too.

  Now granted, I am only taking histo, anatomy, icm, and intro to medical
  spanish, but i am also tutoring AND t.a’ing physio, as well as serving
  as co-director for our a cappella group and a whol host of other
  activites. This post is basically my one defense/justification for why
  I am not posting every single day like I did last year…hopefully you
  will all forgive me and enjoy the semi-weekly dose of surreality I
  manage to provide you.

  If not, BEHOLD THE POWER OF SCIENTOLOGY!

  And because I promised Andrea the occasional news item, try going to your local library and “borrowing” a person! Good times will be had by all

  til then,

  -J

  Josh is rolling, rolling, rolling down the river

  • 10:32 pm
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