Tomorrow marks the beginning of my 3rd week as a third year medical student – y’all, it’s still surreal to me. I AM A THIRD YEAR MED STUDENT! It feels like I’ve reached the mecca, the promised land, the land of patients, and all I’ve been working so hard to achieve. Yea, I still have a long way to go, and a lot to learn on the wards, but my goodness, this is an awesome feeling.

My first rotation is Internal Medicine and it began with a one week orientation, where I  had lectures and also got to practice procedures – thoracentesis, paracentesis, lumbar puncture, ABG, ultrasound guided injections, central lines – all via simulation of course (shout out to the dummies haha). This past week, I was officially on the wards. My general medicine service has been interesting – my concern going in was that Internal Medicine is pretty much EVERYTHING, and I’ld need to know everything about everything; so far, my assumptions seem somewhat accurate. Thankfully however, my residents and attending have been really great at teaching. I get asked questions a lot, and I am perfectly okay saying, “I’m sorry, I’m not too sure, could you explain that” or “I’m not sure but I can look that up.” Because to be honest, I don’t know the answers to everything (Step 1 was 4 weeks ago, and feels like ages ago), and it can be like, omgosh, omgosh I’m supposed to know this but I’m drawing a blank.

It is to say the least, humbling.

But alas, it’s only been week one on wards, so I’m trying not to be too hard on myself. Some of the things I was nervous would happen, happened already multiple times – for example, getting asked a series of questions on EKGs, and reading several in a row (oh cardio, my arch nemesis). So alas, I suck up my pride, take my L’s and use each experience has a learning point. All in all, it’s been great thus far.

I also started UWorld questions again. It’s funny, after you take Step 1, you think FREEDOM! No more UWorld, no more studying! Only to start third year, spend $479 for a year subscription of this question bank (I am quite salty about this – why so expensive?!) and begin the whole process again. Oh medical school. The sad thing is, there’s no escaping it. The best way to study for shelf exams is UWorld questions and the way my school’s curriculum is, I’ll actually be taking 3 shelf exams in one week – Internal medicine, Psychiatry, and Neurology. Furthermore, since Internal medicine is a lot, and known to be notoriously hard, every upperclassman I’ve talked to said start UWorld medicine questions immediately. So alas, here we are. There are 1300+ questions for medicine alone and I have 7 weeks of Internal Medicine to get through them and learn, learn, learn. And of course, I have to get through Psych questions as well – I’ll have 4 weeks of that rotation, and 3 weeks of Neurology, before the shelf exams. To sum it all up, the studying continues.

And so does the fun.

Cheers to week 3!