JOSH: Dissecting My Life – Or – My Life Dissecting

Hey again, everybody! I just got back from an amazing two week break in which I was able to sit back and reflect on the whirlwind that was first semester here at Emory. It was amazing to think how much I’ve learned and how many new experiences I’ve had in such a short time.

To give you a blitzkrieg recap of where we’ve been so far, our “healthy human” module – a week-by-week progression through normal human physiology – has come and gone, and we’ve moved on to the real reason we all came to medical school, human disease. Furthermore, we’ve begun our Outpatient Experience (“OPEX”) internships in which we work side by side with doctors to integrate our new knowledge in a clinical setting.

However, as hard as we worked last semester, I’m now realizing that it was just med school spring training. If, on your interview day, you notice a group of bewildered looking M1’s stammering through the halls in surgical scrubs, it is because anatomy has officially begun to consume our lives. I’ve heard anatomy described as “the best time you never want to have again,” and I couldn’t think of a better way to put it. Yes, at times it can be incredibly frustrating as we spend hours a day searching for a particular nerve or vessel that often bears little resemblance to its picture in the text book, but at the same time there is something very special about being down in the lab, late into the night with your fellow students, taking part in a centuries-old tradition of medical education. After years of putting blind faith in textbooks, it’s very rewarding to be able to explore the human body first hand.

And just for fun….

Top 10 Signs that Anatomy is Consuming Your Life:

10) The first thing you notice when meeting a new girl/guy is surface anatomy

9) Everything you eat tastes like formaldehyde.

8 ) The sun wasn’t out when you got to school…or when you left

7) Your motivation behind mapping out your cadaver’s vasculature is to determine which of your peripheral veins would be ideal for your intravenous coffee drip.

6) When people see you in scrubs, they think you must be important…until they

smell you.

5) When your buddy says he’s going to the gym to work out his biceps, your response is “femoris or brachii?”

4) You don’t have time to round out your own top-10 list

To the untrained eye, this probably looks like Jessica Alba. But as per #10, all I can see is the sternal head of her sternocleidomastoid muscle. It’s just as pretty.

JOSH: To New Beginnings

Hello potential new best friends. First off, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Josh Levinson, and I’m closing in on 3 months here at Emory. But more importantly, before I digress and start sounding all “me, me, me” I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read my blog, and if you’re only here on a detour from Googling famous film producer and director Barry Levinson, then I still invite you to stick around. I’ll throw in a Barry Levinson fact somewhere along the way to make it worth your while.

I grew up a stone’s throw away from Emory in Dunwoody, GA, and I just graduated from the University of Georgia after taking what I like to call the “scenic route.” I majored in Finance, but I never really felt passionate about my studies until somewhere along the way I discovered that my true dream was to go to medical school. I traded my financial calculator for an orgo book and never looked back.

So now that I’ve given you the back story, I’ll tell you that the gut decision I made 2 years ago turned out to be the best, and probably most important, decision of my life so far. I’m working harder than I ever have, but I’m having fun. If there’s one point to take away from here, it’s that Emory is a fun place, and I hope that the rest of my blog entries can be a testament to that. If you come to visit Emory (and I suggest you do – it’s the only place that lets you eat back your plane fare in free cookies and Coke) then I’m sure you’ll get a chance to see exactly what I mean.

Below I’ve posted a photo for two reasons that I’ll get to in a minute. It’s a picture of my small group at our White Coat Ceremony – a very aptly named ceremony where our friends and family came to watch us receive the white coats that we will be wearing around the hospital for the next four years. Now you’re probably wondering “what kind of small group?” and that’s good because inquisitive minds are exactly what we need here at Emory. Twice a week we divide into teams of 8 plus a faculty mentor to discuss practical issues of medicine including learning how to complete physical exams. Now back to my reasons. The first reason that I posted this picture is that our small group is the best small group. Other bloggers and maybe even your friends here at Emory may suggest otherwise, but it’s simply not true. But the second (and real) reason that I am posting this picture is that somehow by a freak chance of camera angle, it makes me feel like I am the star of my own hit medical TV show (second from the left and way too close the camera).

So that’s me in a nutshell, and hopefully I’ll be able to give you an insight into this journey through medicine as we go. Oh, and just because I am a man of my word, you might be interested to know that Barry Levinson is a minority owner of the Baltimore Orioles, thanks for reading.