it's that time of year

It's mid-June and this has been quite an overwhelming week, especially for our first year students who were in a sort of 'culture shock' as they quickly realized that medical school is not like anything they've ever tried before. It is both a privilege and a heart-pain for me to see the young hopefuls, so eager and excited to come to school, and see the growing horror in their faces as reading assignments, exams, names of all the bones and cells in the body, enzymes and chemical reactions, and all other bodily what-nots, are summarily dumped upon them one after the other, morning and afternoon, all the days of their first week in school.

I don't know how many of them will finish to become MDs, or even finish this semester, so daunted have some of them become. I try to encourage them, with this and with that. One thing for sure, it's too early to quit, yet!

As for the teacher in me, I've been swimming in Guyton's first three chapters these past days, with mitotic spindles and polymerases floating in my conscious and subconscious realms, thus the images in yesterday's post. Each year I read the chapters anew, surf the net for better images for my powerpoint presentations, and write a whole new lecture all over again. There's always something new I learn each time, something that was overlooked or did not stand out previously or even something I had not fully understood. Amidst all the novel realizations, an old theme remains, we have been 'fearfully and wonderfully made' and I am just awed, awed, awed.