Wow...Hello Again!!

Hello again everyone!!
So sorry I ignored this blog for a bit.  We finally ended the summer semester that ripped me to shreds on August 9th (and by ripped med to shreds, I mean that it took all of my free time and all of my energy to finish). 

Summer semester was the most time consuming time I have ever had in school.  I can not imagine having to go through it again and am thankful that it is over.  We had a 16 week semester crammed into 12 weeks including the same number of exams, quizzes, practicals, and projects as a normal semester.  And, to top it all off, we finished with 4 final exams in a row that were all (but one) cumulative from the semester.  BUT...I can thankfully say that I finished with an even better GPA than I got my first semester.  So for that, I am extremely thankful and just happy to have had the past 3 weeks on vacation.

This past week we got to start choosing our clinical rotation sites!! I can not believe I am already at the point in my program that I am starting to think about rotations..only one more didactic semester left.  So for our choosing sites we choose based on counties in the New England area.  You rank the counties you would want from 1-10 of where you would like to be placed for each rotation.  Then a computer goes through and makes a selection for each person in the class taking our ranking into consideration and trying to get as many top choices as it can for each student.  I have chosen mostly close to home and a couple near my undergrad college where I still have many friends living so I know I would have a place to stay during my 5 week rotation.   We do nine 5-week rotations for clinical year (lasting from January till December) with 3 one week breaks scattered throughout the year.
The rotations that we do are: 
    2 General Medicine
    1 Primary Care
    1 Emergency Medicine
    1 Women's Health
    1 Surgery
    1 Psychology
    1 Pediatrics
    1 Elective (Ortho Surg is my chosen elective)

Choosing the sites has gotten me really excited for the next semester and learning a lot more clinical hands on procedures.  The college definitely chose the right time to get us excited and ready for classes again :) 
These are my classes for this semester:
Pharmacology III
Clinical Medicine III
Health Care Issues III
Medical Procedures and Surgery
Special Populations (which include Peds, Geriatrics, and Women's Health)
Emergency Medicine

I have already received a few e-mails from professors with our schedule for the classes and I am getting excited to see what we are going to be doing, especially in medical procedures and surgery (NG tubes, injections, IV lines, suturing, etc.).  We also already learned that on the 24th of this month, we will be headed to the nearby medical school to use their cadaver lab to practice suturing. 

I am getting very excited to start this coming semester.  I also have hopes that it will not be as crazy as last semester was so that I can continue to update this blog as frequently as I used to.  But thank you all that have contacted me privately to wish me well and for the continued support! 
Please feel free to ask more questions and I will write soon!