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As Twain remarked, “the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Yes, I am still here and have made it through the M2 year. I am sorry to have gotten so lax in posting but the grind of constant studying begins to wear on you and all non-essential activities seem to fall by the wayside. I have not read a book for pleasure since last summer, have let my website site sit stagnant for over a year, and have not posted a diary entry since way back in December. The time just seems to fly by. While most of my classmates are ecstatic to be through with the classroom based pre-clinical science part of the curriculum, I am sort of melancholy about it being over. I know most medical students will think I am crazy, but after working for The Man for 13 years, the best part of school was the freedom and personal autonomy it allows. I have loved wearing shorts and t-shirts every day. Don’t feel like sitting through a Path lecture today? No problem – just go read in the library instead. Or better yet review some notes while eating a burrito at Moe’s. I am afraid all of this freedom will come to a screeching halt on June 16th when I begin my Family Medicine rotation and once again become expected to dress and act the part. Don’t get me wrong, I am looking forward to being a student doctor and I know I will have a lot of fun, but it is still sad to know that two of the most enjoyable years of my life are over. I am sure that I will never have quite the same lifestyle ever again and it is kind of a bummer.

One of the reasons I have had difficulty finding motivation to write for my diary is the lack of pay. I have been writing class notes like a madman this spring. I ended up writing up 56 hours of lecture notes and made a little over $2000 for my efforts. After spending better than 10 hours a week writing for pay it seemed hard to sit down and do it for free! I was sick of MS Word there for awhile. I fell like I had written enough for my own Step One review book.

Speaking of the USMLE Step 1 exam, it looms for me on June 5th. Our last exam was on May 9th and since then I have spent each weekday studying and taken nights and weekends off. I am working my way through a bunch of subject review books – I am partial to the BRS series for most subjects as well as First Aid. The school has purchased each of us a subscription to Kaplan’s Q-Bank, an online database of simulated test questions. I am working my way through that also. After the test, the family will take a weekend trip to Lafayette, LA to watch Macey’s softball team play in a tournament. Check her team out at http://www.margoscargo.net. Then we will spend a week with some friends in Destin, FL before I have to get back to school. My M3 rotations play out like this: 6 weeks of family med, 6 weeks of peds, 12 weeks of internal medicine, 6 weeks of OB-Gyn, 6 weeks of Psychiatry and I finish up with 12 weeks of surgery. Whew! It will be quite a year.

To encourage myself to write I plan to post my opinions about each of my M2 classes later this week. I hope you’ll stop back by and read them …