I’m writing this post at the end of the first day of my second year. It was surreal this morning to walk into a new lecture hall and catch up with my classmates, discussing our recent summer adventures over a continental breakfast from Student Services.
It is incredible to me that it has been almost a year since I started medical school, because it feels like it went by so fast. This is not to say that it wasn’t arduous at times! But even with the large amounts of studying and hours spent in the anatomy lab, it was a fast-paced and fun year.
Now, I’m beginning second year and it has a different tone than first year. First year felt transitional and like it didn’t count so much. Second year seems to come with great expectations. Throughout first year, there were times when lecturers or standardized patients would say, “it’s okay, you’ll learn that later” about disease states and clinical findings. In second year, my classmates and I are finally going to have to start integrating all we know into a more realistic picture of medicine, and that’s exciting and a little scary. Of course, the elephant in the room is Step 1. During first year, the boards seemed really far away, and now in second year, given how fast first year seemed to go by, I know that I’ll need to get serious about pulling together all the information to be ready for the exam this upcoming summer.
It’s a bit of a rude awakening to start school in July (it’s still very humid in Albany!) and this is the first year I will have ever been in school for my birthday… Nevertheless, it is great to see my classmates again and I’m excited to get started on year two!
