Now what...

Twenty four hours ago I asked myself what the hell I was thinking…medical school…I must be out of mind. All week I recited the same line over and over again from time to time. Examination time always makes a person reevaluate decisions. Today I completed an examination of the entire body. The rules were quite basic: 1) Anything regarding the HUMAN body goes and 2) Gray's Anatomy textbook is the bible. Needless to say, the conditions were ripe for people to fall into the grips of panic, anger, panic again, more anger, and ending with the final statement of 'Oh shit what is that test doing in front of me.' So far in life I've learned a few powerful lessons:

1) If you don't know where to start then just start.
2) Hard work pays off.
3) Don't be afraid to get dirty.
4) Believe in yourself.

These four lessons helped me tremendously during the 500 lb gorilla of medical school, Gross Anatomy. Something in me changed during the course of that class. I don't know when or where it happened, but something changed. Socrates' famous quote makes me smile. "All I know is that I know nothing" could never be more true than to the field of medicine. In a way, Gross Anatomy sobered me up more so than any other time in my life. I learned how impossible it is to learn everything about the human body much in the same way clinical cases relate to medicine as a whole. I now have in me a body of knowledge that could make me quite dangerous. Or should I say, the potential of this acquired body of knowledge makes me dangerous. The true irony of medicine is the more you know the more dangerous you become. It is the 'sober' physician and surgeon who make the best doctors, i.e, the ones who know they do not know everything and will not know everything. No wonder why Gross Anatomy remains the hallmark of a medical education...

I wonder what med school will be like now that I'm not elbow deep in a cadaver every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon (at least).