Wayfaring MD: Missionary Physician

Hopefully everyone is done with finals now and can pay attention to the more important things in life, like hilarious posts from fellow students. You know, there are SO many things that can get in the way of studying. Sometimes important things come up and studying has to be put on hold.

You know, things like:

- Your Hunger Games book/blog/illegally downloaded video. 

- Increasing proximity to spring break or graduation. 

- Active Labor.

- Or Facebook. 

And at other times your upcoming test gets so inside your head that everything else that happens in your life is somehow related to your test performance. 

For example: 

- the timing of your favorite tv show’s ending

- the next song on your playlist. 

- your dreams 

But whether you are prepared or you procrastinated, your hope is the same. 

P=MD

We all have awkward professors, and we love them precisely for their awkwardness. 

We love :

1. How they make other students get naked in the name of science.

2.  How they constantly make references to drugs they may or may not have done. 

3. How they recommend we investigate our significant other’s fertility before getting too friendly. 

4. How they think doctors have superpowers.

5. How they talk about their preferred disgusting diseases. 

6. How your OB/GYN attending refers to her office as “Vaginatown.”

7. How they wax nostalgic about the pre-ether days. 

You might work in a hospital if: 

1. You thank the Lord for specialized H&P forms and order sets. 

2. You search empty rooms for ghost activity at 3am. 

3. You could teach Jenn Aniston a thing or two about proper flair display. 

4. Contact Precautions is the bane of your existence. 

5. You steal food from the already poorly stocked patient pantry. 

6. Your whole day can be ruined by just 5 little words: the Joint Commission is here. 

7. Your only source of entertainment at work is the “chief complaint” board. 

You might be a pre med if:

1. Your family has no understanding of the hurdles you have to jump to get to medical school. 

2. Every piece of clothing or make-up you own was purchased with the thought of “will this make me look good to med schools” in mind. 

3. You’ve perfected your note-waterproofing method so you can efficiently study in the shower. (ok, not a pre-med blog, but still applicable)

4. Celine Dion songs stir up images of SN1 reactions in your mind. 

5. You consider your organic notes to be artwork.

6. When you turn on spell check, your whole paper lights up like a Christmas tree.  

You might be a medical student if: 

1. You can sit through hours of lectures on depressing topics and still be excited about your education. 

2. You believe that popular songs are really all about determination to get through medical school. 

3. Better yet, you re-write popular love songs so they apply better to your asexual relationship with your textbooks. 

4. You can’t decide if your headaches are from tension, your worsening vision (thanks, small print Goodman & Gilman!), a brain tumor, or your chronic bruxism. 

5. You’re still struggling with the knowledge that you will, soon, have to touch a stranger’s breast or penis. 

6. You are so focused on learning where superior colliculus is that you fail to take advantage of the ample zombie-joke opportunities that presented themselves in neuroanatomy lab. 

7. You’ve responded to a call for medical assistance and have been turned away. 

8. You’ll practice physical exams on anything that sits still. 

9. Half the food in your kitchen has already been used for practicing medical procedures. 

You prefer to describe your ailments in basic science and physiological terms rather than just saying what your problem is.

Your iPod has heart murmur recordings on it. 

Pathology makes you hungry. 

You celebrate your fourth year of medical school by doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. 

Instead of studying, you prefer to just memorize everything. 

You love learning new big words and secretly look for opportunities to use them in conversation. 

1. Whether you’re studying Cardio, Pulm, or How To Use a Stethoscope 101, the first thing you do is auscultate your own chest. (Bonus credit if you use an heirloom stethoscope)

2. At any given time you have at least a dozen pens on your person.

3. Speaking of pens, you must organize them by color, brand, and type of point before you can properly study.  

4. Your Instagram account is full of awesome looking X-rays. 

5. You celebrate on Valentine’s Day with Science!

6. People give you dirty looks for looking at pictures of genitalia in public places. 

The only time you care about your appearance is when other students will be practicing physical exams on you. 

You have unidentifiable stains on your clothing that are just as likely to be bodily fluids as they are to be food stains. 

You’re not dating, you’re “focusing on your career” right now. 

The only people who hit on you are crazy, drunk, or on their deathbed. 

You listen to rap so you can better appreciate regularly irregular arrhythmias. 

You hate learning eponyms, but would definitely name a disease after yourself if you discovered it. 

You feel that your favorite study spot should consult you before they buy new furniture. 

Contagious diseases are just fodder for hilarious jokes. 

Grand Rounds is a collection of great (short) posts I’ve liked over the past few weeks, and may become a recurrent thing here. Enjoy. 

YOU MIGHT BE A MED STUDENT IF

You’ve ever over-analyzed the smell of your own urine. 

You’ve ever had a nerd crush on Dr. Linda Costanzo or Dr. Edward Goljan (AKA Poppy).

You automatically know what disease a person in a test question has just by reading their demographics.  

You’ve become a total hypochondriac. 

You diagnose fictional characters with serious medical conditions. 

Even your procrastination time is educational.

You’ve ever encountered a bucket o’ body parts (in my experience it has been heads). 

You now understand why we call it eternal medicine. 

You worry that your individual organs hate you for the abuse you put them through.