The beginning of the end

Today we finally had the verbal presentation to our business plan. It was ok, I guess. Anyways, the important thing about today was the meeting we had afterwards. All the 4th year medstudents in my school met with the dean of the clinical department for a brief introduction to next year (otherwise known as the year we sell our lives and souls to the devil).

I guess some explanation is in order. Here in Mexico -well, at least at my school- the 5^th year of Medschool consists of 4 rotations through the major divisions of clinical medicine. That is, Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, Ob Gyn and Surgery. According to today’s metting this is to prepare you in all the basic fields and to let you try a little bit of everything before deciding the field you want to pursue. The whole class is divided in 4 groups of 30-40 people; each group rotates through all the clerkships but in different order. The order of your rotations and the people in it is decided with a lottery. You get to choose your small team, which consists of 10 people. It’s good to think about your team beforehand, because otherwise you get stuck with all the anarchists, jerks, or questionable admissions in the class, and that is not good. You want to be with people you can work with, who can stand you on your worst stressed mood, and who you can tolerate in such mood too. A lot of people take this too personally. They just want to be with their ultra-intimate group of friends, even if they suck at team work or work at all, and then take it personally if they decide to join another team.

Anyways, the meeting started quite well. I'm already scared to death of the dean so his laughing and joking didn't fool me. (I'll call him Dr. E -as in evil heh- for the purpose of this blog) I never let my guard down, its like I'm always expecting the moment he uncovers his true self and starts eating us alive. Luckily, that didn't happen, yet.

• As I already mentioned, there are 4 twelve-week rotations to be covered next year. And well, if you do the math 4*12= 48 weeks and considering the year has 52 weeks... we'll have only 2 two-week vacation breaks next year (last half of Jun and Dec). In between the other rotations we have like a weekend (my dad doesn't believes this part, I bet he swears I'm just exaggerating as always, I wish I was)
• The typical workweek has about 80 hrs (here Dr. E added the sarcastically cheerfull comment, "and sometimes more or possibly less, but hey! You're 5th years know! You can't complain! Your soul belongs to me!! Muajajaja" well, that last part I added, but Im sure he though that)
• The first rotation starts January 4th, though originally it was January 2nd!! Sick doctors! Who in the world would want to star classes a day after new year? Luckily for us, apparently not that many docs.
• We are the bottom step of whichever hierarchy you can think of. Anyone you've ever seen in a hospital sure has more authority than I do.
  
  After these announcements, Dr. E. told us to give him the list of names of each team. A couple of friends and I started thinking about this group thing since last semester and sort of agreed on it. Well, this last week there was a series of unfortunate events (heh) that almost disintegrated the team. We ended up being 6 of the original team and 2 unexpected additions. I think it’s a fairly good group. Not my first option, but I hope we’ll do fine. So, after the chaos of writing up the names of the teams, Dr. E. made the raffle.
  
  The order of the rotations can be very important for a lot of people. What I think is the most feared is Internal Medicine. If only I believed in prayer, I would have prayed for anything but IM. It’s the most-failed clerkship, and I think it’s the hardest. I just didn’t want to do it first because so early on you just don’t know what the fuck you are doing, don’t know the hospital, don’t know anyone who has been through it, etc. It’s just scary, at least for me. I didn’t want to start with Peds either, basically because I guess I see Peds as an easy rotation (heh y andale que repuebo esa!), and also because Jan-Mar is flu season and the Peds department is packed with contagious and crying kids. Ob Gyn can be very bad if you start at a public health hospital. It’s too much work and in very poor conditions. Some people quit in the first weeks of that rotation. Surgery is frowned upon because you’ll finish 5^th year with Ob Gyn and that means no Christmas vacations. Anyways, it’s a lottery, so it’s not really up to you.
  
  My team starts with Surgery, which in itself isn't that bad, if you ignore the fact that you wont get Christmas vacations. My team is a good one, I like it. However I cannot say the same for the rest of the people in my rotation. Lets just hope it all goes well.
  
  So, my schedule for next year is:
  
  • SURGERY - January 4- March 30
  • INTERNAL MEDICINE- March 31 - June 20
  • PEDIATRICS - July 7 - September 27
  • OB GYN - September 29 - December 19 (theoretically... though they already told us they are moving the dates in order to ruin or Christmas heh
  And so... this is the beginning of my doom. I'm apologizing beforehand for whatever disgusting, whinny, rude, etc post I shall put up here next year. I'll try to record my experiences of my Hell year in here.
  
  Well, let me go back to obsessively checking amazon.com for book prices and recommendations. I've got a ton of books to buy and pretend to read this December.

PS: I don't know how I messed up the margins but I did. So, an apology for that. My lack of Html knowledge restrains me from correcting that