End of Basic Sciences is Near

It's November of my 2nd medical school year, and I'm close to the end of the part of medical school called "Basic Sciences"or "Pre-Clinical Curriculum." The view from here is quite different from when I started medical school. In a way I feel a lot better. I'm used to my new life, which is about to change again. The big change from basic sciences to clinics is one thing I remember from all the speeches from medical students when I was a pre-med. Right now I have a lot of freedom (I can work out, help drive my kids to swimming in the middle of the day, etc.) and soon I will have a more rigorous schedule that is much less flexible, especially in services such as surgery. In any case, I certainly feel like I have learned a lot and continue to build up my basic medical knowledge. I know the symptoms of many ordinary afflictions that physicians encounter every day and some not-so-common ones. My physical exam skills are still pretty poor (I'm very slow), but I will work on that so that I can do well on my upcoming OSCE exam. I have a lot of studying and test-taking to do between now and the end of the year. In another way, I'm somewhat burned out. I don't get as much sleep as I would like to (maybe 5 hours a night on a typical day). Mostly that's being a father. When I come home, I help out with my kids and a lot of times it is late when I finally sit down to study. At school, I miss the everyday interaction I had with people when I was working. While there are plenty of friendly students I like to talk to, studying is something that is more or less a personal activity. Although you can study with others, everyone needs to memorize the same material and there is no division of labor, where people are assigned to those things that they do best (at this point anyway). I understand the logic of laying a foundation of medical knowledge, but I still miss the teamwork I had at work anyway. Speaking of studying, I'm going to get back to that now.