Island Med Student

Today was the big day: my very first day of medical school. So, things didn’t go exactly as I had planned. Let me explain. Because of my GPA and MCAT scores, I qualified for the Ross University Scholars Program. I promise to tell you all about it in another blog entry. For right now, just know that it is sort of an independent study program, which is intended to introduce you to a more clinically oriented way of learning. The big difference between the Scholars Program, and the normal curriculum is that the Scholars don’t go to lectures. Instead, you can watch any lecture via the internet. So, today, I didn’t go to my lectures (which was really, really difficult for me), and I went to the Scholars meeting instead. The only problem is that to access all of the class materials and the online lectures, you have to have your laptop configured by the IT department.

The director of the Scholars program informed me that if I went to the IT peeps and told them that I was a Scholar, they’d get my laptop configured right away. This most definitely did not happen. Instead, I waited in line for over an hour just to drop off my laptop. I was told to come back at 5:30 to pick it up. At 5:30, I came back to IT and my laptop was not ready. In the meantime, I found out that all of the Macs that they had been configuring were not working properly. Of course, I own a Mac. I’ll leave out all the juicy details since I’m dreadfully tired right now, but the short of it is that I have to bring my laptop back tomorrow morning, and they may or may not be able to configure it properly.

I also had some unpleasant experiences at the library involving printing some documents and their ghetto computers, but I won’t elaborate on that. Let’s just say that the majority of my day was spent being frustrated and pissed off. I realized today that I am a competitive student. My frustrations stemmed from the fact that every minute that the IT department took out of my day because of their incompetence was another minute that I fell behind my classmates. As I started to realize how upset I was becoming, I managed to calm myself down by trying to meditate and think happy thoughts. I also saw the humor in the whole situation, and was able to laugh at myself.

I ended up watching half of the lectures at the library, but I’m still behind in my reading, and have another two hours of lectures to watch just to catch up by tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m.

Even though my first day at med school was a rocky one, I’m looking forward to tomorrow. This time, I’m going to try and not let inpatience blur my vision.