Block I Redux: Several hours post-open-book completion

Group dynamics are the ultimate mind-fuck, especially when you are knee-deep in them, with some awareness but not enough to reel yourself out the whole mess. Take middle school and Magic Cards, high school and pervasive faux-ness, college and Natty Ice, and now medical school and anxiety.

The correlation coefficient between exams and anxiety in medical school is approximately 0.99..., and that’s for the pass-fail system. I’m sure pass-fail grading has significantly dampened the anxiety-experience at UCLA, but it still exists because medical students are great at worrying and making you feel like you need to worry as much as they are because no one wants to be That Person who failed Block I.

Block I was an experience, and now that it is over, now that I’m finished test-taking and predicting how comprehensive the block-heads expect my knowledge to be re. the complement system, embryology, etc., I can press the rewind button and revisit these past eight weeks that have progressed oh-so-fast.

I can summarize Block I succulently: Shit, I have learned a lot. Before medical school, I took courses severely detached from medicine like quantum mechanics and NMR spectroscopy. Had you asked me a question about histology, the progression of cancer malignancy, adaptive and innate immunity, I would have responded with blinking. Now I can attempt to provide a bare-bones, over-simplified solution. But hey, something is better than nothing.

Baby steps, I’m telling myself. One step down, two more years’ worth to go. Now that I have grounded myself, my next goal is to balance myself. Medical school throws a lot of information at you. And you are supposed to examine this body of knowledge, as thick a body it is, and be able to manipulate and know the ins-and-outs of this body. I want to please this body, but I am only human, and I can do so much. I need pleasing too. So what’s the plan? I want to find the balance between learning what others expect me to know and what I want to know.

Med-school-Anthony has a lot of learning ahead of him; outside-med-school-Anthony has a lot of maturing ahead of him. My training will influence both spheres, but life exists outside of medical school, despite what some of our classmates may think.