KEVIN: Weekend!

I am consistently impressed with the durability (for lack of a better word) of my classmates. We took our pulmonary module exam last Friday. That evening, we had a date auction fundraiser, which I was far too tired to attend. Reports indicate that attendance was really high, and a lot of M1s showed up despite reeling from the exam.

I needed sleep to prepare for Saturday, which was our medical school service day. Medical students from every year got together and took part in different service events in the city. I was in a group that volunteered at Cafe 458, a restaurant that uses the profits from its weekend sales to serve gourmet-style meals to homeless people and their social workers on weekdays. We volunteers helped prep food, serve customers, and bus tables. I had the pleasure of finally figuring out how a cash register works, and I used my off-time to learn recipes from The Joy of Cooking. The highlight of the morning, by far, was when one lovely gentleman left a 300% tip for the restaurant, which made us all feel appreciated. It was hard to feel tired after that.

That evening, my dorm-mates and I went out to a local bar and ran into even more classmates. I’m sure there were social events on Sunday also, but you know, going out once every five weeks is all I can do to keep up with these kids nowadays.

JACKIE: Putting it All Together

Yesterday we started a new module- Cardiology. I am going to be honest- that first day was rather intense. At Emory, the faculty introduces each new module (actually, each new week), with a Case Presentation. A patient with a specific disease comes to class and tells his or her story- when he first noticed symptoms, how long it took to reach a diagnosis, how the disease has affected his life, etc. Usually we have ONE doctor monitoring the discussion and presenting background information on the disease and the patient himself. This time we had FOUR doctors! Dr. Felner, the Module Director, arranged to have a Geneticist, a Surgeon, a Cardiologist, AND an Embryologist (the case was about congenital heart disease) in class to present different perspectives on the case. It was definitely a lot of information to take in at one time, but I really enjoyed being exposed to the variety of angles from which one can observe the same disease. It felt like collaborative medicine at its finest- each person presenting a distinct point of view on the disease, and then integrating his perspective with the others’. In addition, the patient was there to discuss the more personal aspects of his disease, which made the presentation much more real.

The experience reminded me that one of the major reasons I chose to come to Emory was our new integrated curriculum. It is a great, great learning asset to have several aspects of the same disease, including the patient himself, presented at one time. It allows a breadth of perspective that is often saved for the final months of medical school when everything finally comes together. Instead, from Day One, I have been steadily building my grasp of medicine and all that it entails. I must say- it is pretty exciting to feel like you are actually “getting it”, albeit little by little, day after day.