Busy days!

Whew, long day today.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays our luxurious lunch break is cut short by half due to our Clinical Skills class. We are starting to learn the basics of taking a history. We begin practicing with standardized patients soon, and I think that might be fun. We will be videotaped and we have to watch and critique ourselves, which is the only part I'm not looking forward to. I recognize that there is a lot to learn from that exercise, but I *hate* watching myself on camera.

After anatomy lab, we had an "all-school" meeting in which our dean updated us on what's been going on administration-wise and alerted us to upcoming events that we can attend. I expected it to be really boring but it was actually quite OK. When that was done we scooted in small groups to the various Book Club meetings. My group was hosted by a wonderfully nice faculty couple at their condo, which was conveniently located only a block from my apartment, so I was happy about that. :) We had an excellent discussion about the book (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time) and I got to talk with some of my classmates that I haven't really gotten to know yet, so I thought it was a very worthwhile use of my time. The club will meet once a quarter, and I think that's just about right. No word yet on what we'll be reading next or if we're going to stay in the same groups.

Anatomy continues well, physio is fine -- I just need to put in a little more time in making sure that I have the few equations and transporters that we need to memorize down cold -- and that leaves biochem as the course to watch. Even after looking at old exams I find myself struggling to identify what we are actually supposed to know and exactly how we are going to be asked to apply it, so I'm looking forward to going to the review session on Thursday evening and talking with the TA's.