Sundays are Such a Tease...

...they're awful, really. It's technically the weekend, but wait, not really. It's actually like, the week-start. Because tomorrow there's school, and as such there are the last-minute studies (both forgotten and procrastinated) that must get done. Not to mention all the chores that were put off for the weekend that failed to be performed. And the pangs of the Mondays that start early, anticipatorily. Ah, Sundays.

Med school is a tease, too, I've decided. It lures you with the promise of patient interaction! and anatomy lab! and problem-based learning! and never take an uninteresting course again! and be a member of the medical community from your very first day!! But really it's not any of that, it's little hints of all of that but not any of it at all. I've learned a lot, but I've learned hardly anything. If I were to witness a medical emergency, I would promptly take my cell phone out of my pocket and dial 911. I would then sit as inconspicuously as possible, hoping to God that nobody noticed that I was a medical student, for fear that they would expect me to actually know something, or worse yet, to be able to do something. I can tell you all sorts of stuff about what muscles have which function, about protein-protein interactions, about the genetics of Fragile X Syndrome. But I can't help you, I'm sorry. I'm so very very sadly sorry.

So you can probably tell that school has been extremely monotonous lately. I've been, in a word, lackadaisical. More and more, I feel like a memorization machine, spewing facts but not knowledge, performing amazing acts of information retention and regurgitation. Poorly taught information, at that. The hoops we jump through as medical students--the useless hoops! All the workshops and PBLs and "Case Conferences"... I'm getting so tired of it. It's bearable only when I look ahead to the time when this will all have been worthwhile, when all the rote is actually applied to the act of caring for patients. It's fun when I philosophize about the ethics of issues in healthcare, and their implications on medicine and my personal future. But for now, the novelty of the first year of medical school has faded to pale miserable gray, and with it, the fun.

I want to think again. God, I miss critical thinking. I miss reading and writing for fun. I miss having things that I like to do--are they called, like, hobbies? or something??--and things that I'm good at that aren't involved with medicine and science. I miss dancing, I miss singing, I miss carefree thought and free association...

It's Monday now, officially. Here's to living for the weekend...