Uniforms and brains

The thing with medicine is this—everything is crammed. You practically finish a book's worth of information into a week-long lecture, and there are exams weekly.

I'm glad my class—Labing-apat, walang katapat!—has a way of making things easier to handle. A group of four people are assigned to take down notes for a given lecture, encode these in a template sheet, and reproduce them for the 160 of us. Because of time pressure, most of us refer to these transcriptions (or trans, as we lovingly call them) to study, only referring to the books for the topics we don't quite grasp yet.

I'm also thankful for classmates who've gladly explained anatomy to me. I had a hard time with it, and I felt, at one point, that I was the dumbest in class. But God provided friends who've painstakingly answered my questions, explaining to me which artery goes where—among others.

Yesterday marked the first day of wearing white uniforms, as well as our first major exam. It was a surreal experience, walking around with the outfit (and I really hope someone posts those class pictures soon). I was exhausted after the neuro exam, partly because I hardly slept the night before. But then again, so did all of us. So, how was it? It was, to put it mildly, a beating.

But it was a joy to have finished my first major long exam in med. If I should pass it, it will be because of the overwhelming grace of the Lord, who is the "strength of my heart and my portion forever" (Psalm 73:26).

We've barely touched the tip of the iceberg that is med school, but we're all thrilled to see what's next.