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My blog and I are officially fighting right now because I just wrote the entire thing, was reviewing it, hit one incorrect button and now it’s all gone…I will try to recreate the magic.
So a few weeks ago my family sent me a package full of a few things I left at home and decided I needed out here, old notes, shoes, and my snow jacket and inside my snow jacket I found one of my dad’s dress socks stuck to the velcro. I decided that this very special sock did not make the long arduous journey from San Dimas to Newcastle just to be sent back, so I decided to turn him into my own flat Stanley. Except I’m going to call him Strumpa, it means sock in Swedish, yes I just put sock into google translate and looked at every language until I found one I liked…I need a study break.
So Strumpa, my computer, and the internet (if it doesn’t delete it again) are going to take you through a day in the life of med school in England.
We wake up at 7 to pre read for the activities of the day, Strumpa’s day at school was actually an easy one because we had a test the next day. So we only had Anatomy small groups and Histology lecture. I have been in school about five weeks and if you asked me “what is histology” I would not be able to give you a straight answer, but I can identify colon cells on a microscope, so I guess it’s not completely asinine…see what I did there?
Strumpa wanted to see what the weather was going to be like so he looked out the window and discovered another day of gray, you could say partly cloudy with some sun, but gray is just easier and sometimes more appropriate.
First we had Anatomy small groups where we get patient vignettes and we have to discuss and figure out what is wrong with our patient and how they would present. Example a man is riding his motorcycle, hits a pothole and is thrown from him bike. He lands on his shoulder and head severely stretching his neck, what problems will he present with. The answer is a lot and the message is don’t ride motorcycles.
Then for lunch, Strumpa wanted to go to the “high street” so we went to Marks and Spencers which is a mix between a Target, and a supermarket, and a bank, and a sit down restaurant, and a cafe. We went to the cafe and had a sandwich, there is a lot of sandwich eating over here, can’t really mess up a sandwich, sushi on the other hand, not the best.
Then is was histo time, with my Belgian professor who pronounces the word introduction “introdiction.” It becomes a game of was that pronounced with a Belgian accent or is that how you’re supposed to say that? Apparently Strumpa with his Swedish background could understand the Belgian and decided to reteach the class without an accent the second time around.
Then it was library study time, my school library has just begun its new 24 hour schedule, this scares me I can stay in the library overnight if I need to, I do not want to need to. So we started off studying drugs for Biochemistry, and coming up with stupid stories to remember the drug and what they do. For instance I remember Tetracycline being like the honey badger http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg for those of you who have not seen this video. Tetracycline doesn’t give a shit. Sometimes we listen to music while we study, then we do some group study. Then we finish with coffee and cadavers, I always kind of worry about the other people in the library who have to see the pictures of cadavers up on my computer screen.
That is basically the gist and the rest of school is kind of like a Groundhog day except with different subjects each day.
So now this study break must be over so I can go study some more histology! Yay! I hope everyone is well!
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Hey I live in England now!
I have a blog, here it is. I am finally writing in it. I had this great plan that I would write in this blog frequently so people could feel like they were here with me in my adventure. So if you’re reading this and feeling like you’re too busy to write a blog, you’re doing it right. Turns out med school is hard, Scrubs and Grey’s Anatomy did not prepare me for this.
So I live in England now, specifically in Newcastle. It’s a fun city and the people are very nice and accommodating, the other day I was trying to pay for something and the lady let me pour all my change out on the counter and she then counted it out for me. They have way too many coins here, 1 pence, 2 pence, 5 pence, 10 pence, 20 pence, 50 pence, 1 pound and 2 pounds, and I swear the 2 pence is the biggest one, where is that logic coming from? So the people are really nice face to face, but put them behind a steering wheel in a car and they become possessed by some evil force to allow no one to walk in front of them until they have successfully reached their destination. I’m not sure what kind of power their cars have over them, but it’s not a good one.
School is good and interesting, I’m learning a lot of new words and I think I’ll have to take a whole other course on trying to decide if I’m pronouncing them in the correct medical way or if these British people have tricked me. They have a lot of interesting prononciations for words like; skeleton, methyl, and many more. Then there’s my professor from Belgium, he’s just a whole other story, the first day we met him one of my roommates thought he was drunk. It reminded me of a Vince Vaughn movie when he said “I need you to take the french out of your mouth and tell me what to do.”
Speaking of roommates, mine are awesome, I’ve been really lucky with roommates so far in life. Three of them are from Canada, one from Florida, and one from New York.
So life here is pretty good just busy learning about body parts and drugs and stuff. I have a big test on Monday, but I’m hoping to go surfing with some classmates next weekend. Yes that’s right surfing, in wetsuits…don’t worry I already checked to make sure there are no sharks.
I’m going to try to throw some photos in here so you can get a taste of what Newcastle is like!
