The repro/obs/gyne exam yesterday was not an easy one. GI starts on Tuesday, and will hopefully catch my attention better. Textbook reading has begun, although once again, I find that the text is an inappropriate length for the amount of time we have. 815 pages in one month? Hmmm... at least so far it looks better organized than either of my obs/gyne textbooks.
It turns out that this is the Remembrance Day long weekend over here in AB, so we have Monday off. Rococo, Magic Pants, Bejeweled! and I are starting things off right, by heading to Nellie's to work on a skool project over breakfast, dealing with the influence of socioeconomic status on choice of medical specialty.
In other news, Stephen Lewis came to talk at our medschool last night; Car Hermit organized the whole thing. Lewis is a former Canadian ambassador to the UN, and is currently the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. Pretty interesting guy, obviously. Apparently, he's a big fan of Bill Clinton; he had just met with him on Wednesday, after the US Democrats' big gains in their midterm elections. Apparently, the Clinton Foundation has been crucial in the negotiation of lower prices for antiretrovirals. Lewis sees this week's power shift in the US as potentially resulting in a big changes in their policies in regards to sub-Saharan Africa. We'll see.
On the Canadian side of things, our current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has also been floundering on international health issues, but I'm guessing that he'll be dumped by Parliament sometime in spring. Hopefully, Michael Ignatieff will do a better job. He did, after all, work at Harvard for a few years, so he should be a smart guy!
In contrast to last night, tonight's agenda is Borat.
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5 comments:
Sucks that ob/gyn wasn't easy, ours last summer wasn't too hard, which made me like the subject ;) Talking about specialty, your project seems interesting, you'll have to tell us more about it (and btw, did you choose your 3 specialties?)
How many credits are your classes generally? GI is such a big class, here it's a 5 credit course and there's no way we could do it in a month only. But then again, I'm not sure I could tolerate 815 pages of gastroenterology during a month. You must be working very hard!
I was thinking back on how excited I was before obs/gyn started. A real letdown. But, like I said, this was really a reflection of the past, when women weren't really welcome in medicine. Now, men aren't really welcome in obs/gyn, and wow, that is a really uncomfortable feeling. It gives me a new respect for women who broke into meds in the past 30 years... and for women breaking into science now.
Well, we're collecting our data this week, so next weekend, we should have analyzed it to the point that we'll know that we didn't collect anything meaningful! :(
We don't actually have a credit system. All of our classes are required, and they're all pass/fail, so there's no need to give them weights. If we fail one course, we fail the year, and must repeat the whole year.
I swear I'll work harder for GI!!! It's relevant to gen surg, my current favourite specialty de jour (and specifically, peds gen surg). Internal is number two, and there is no number three. :) Peds or psych would fit the bill, perhaps.
Your specialty list sounds like mine, broad and all encompassing.
I think you will like GI. It was a pretty good course (good in my terms means organised and useful, with lots of practical content). But don't work too hard. I would say that reading the text book is not useful but I don't actually remember any text book so my opinion wouldn't be very educated.
Based on the first two lectures, I'd have to agree with you. It looks like it will be a good course. I'll take your advice, and hold off of textbook-buying. :)
Yes, it changes everything.
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