Bad to the Bone
A web comic aiming to shine a creative and Rather Humerus spotlight on med school.
Columns
Columnist and in-Training Staff Member
Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland
A philomath expressing enthusiasm for anatomy and puns, Nikita is a Class of 2018 medical student at The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. She balances science and art, as artist of the medical web comic Rather Humerus. She is passionate about poetry, reading, writing, gastronomy, animals, LGBT rights, women equality and having a strong WiFi connection to the Internet. She currently lives in Dublin, Ireland and has lived in India, Dubai and most recently Singapore.
Rather Humerus
A web comic aiming to shine a creative and Rather Humerus spotlight on med school.
Medicine is Magic!
A web comic aiming to shine a creative and Rather Humerus spotlight on med school.
Teen Mom
It’s weird seeing a mother waiting to deliver her baby while watching Nickelodeon on TV. That’s because she’s 17 years old and is having her second child. I’ve met several women who were 30 years old and having their sixth child after ten pregnancies. I think this mother is on that track. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is an excellent resource during your medical career, states that about four percent of …
“Life is all About Peaks and Valleys. For Every Valley, There Will be a Peak.”
Remembering this pearl can be either humbling or comforting, depending on whether you find yourself in a peak or a valley. I hear it most often from my mother during “valley” moments. It’s the “silver lining” or “light at the end of the tunnel” concept. It is by no means a new sentiment, but it is one that bears repeating. Whether you’re a comrade in the midst of Step 1 studying, making a difficult transition from …
“I can’t do this anymore.”
Room One With one eyebrow arched and his thin lips pressed together in a smirk, Vic Davis’ face was in a perpetual state of bemusement. The twinkle in his eyes belied his own protracted health struggles. A diagnosis of prostate cancer had truncated a successful business career, and signs of wear were beginning to show. His hair had fallen out and his eyes were sunken in. His speech was encumbered by a slight stutter and …
Step 1 Survival Guide (Uncensored)
[ca_audio url=”http://in-training.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/1-15-Million-Voices-feat.-African-Childrens-Choir.mp3″ width=”500″ height=”27″ css_class=”codeart-google-mp3-player” autoplay=”false”] Going crazy yet? After some obligatory panic moments, I’ve reconciled my fate for the next month. To avoid emotional breakdowns, here’s my list of dos and don’ts list for the next month of cramming all of medicine into your head. This is all based on true stories. Do: Taking a leaf out of a prep course tip: preserve the temple that is your bed for sleep and whatever other …
Medical Illustration: Shadowing an Artist in Medical School
Art has been one of my passions ever since I could hold a pencil — an important outlet for expression, relaxation and reflection. However, I never found an intersection between art and medicine until I discovered medical illustration in college. This is the field in which artists take medical school classes alongside medical students to become experts in anatomy, histology and pathology, the field which is responsible for providing the textbook and anatomy atlas illustrations …
Keep Calm and Carry on the Interview Trail
Buckle up — the interview trail for residency is a bumpy ride. It is time consuming, costly and stressful. There are things you should know beforehand so it won’t be so overwhelming. First things first, submit your ERAS application. It’s crickets after that. Then, a barrage of emails come soliciting you for an interview spot. Depending on the specialty and program you apply to, there may only be two or three interview dates offered. You …
“It Takes Two Hands Clapping to Make a Noise”
Ever since my siblings and I were in elementary school, my mother’s pearls have been circulating in our minds. For a while I may have thought there were no new pearls to be shared, but my mom continues to surprise us with hidden gems of wealth, right at the moments we happen to need them. I heard this particular pearl recently when venting my frustrations about difficult people to my mother. I later learned it …
Chirurgia: The Mythical Practice
Maybe it’s the early mornings, maybe it’s the sleep deprivation, or perhaps it’s an early sign of caffeine intoxication, but a certain mythical feeling hits me when I walk into the OR. Not that I’m much of a spiritual person, but there’s just a whole hushed reverence that takes place. It’s a special “hallowed” space. No, I’m not trying to imply that the surgeons that I’ve worked with have such egos they demand to be …
Do They Teach Fear in Medical School?
Room One Wendy Smith had thinning hair, penciled-in eyebrows, and a frame so thin that you could see, in painstaking detail, bluish-grey veins emanating from beneath her pale skin. Cancer had taken so much from her that she almost didn’t look human. But the feeling in the room was extremely human. Fear — palpable fear. Fear made all the more palpable because this was an aggressive, rare form of cancer. Fear made all the more …
Nutrition, Cognition, and Longevity
The world’s oldest person, a 116-year-old Japanese woman, Ms. Misao Okawa, recently shared with the media her secret to a long life: “Eat and sleep and you will live a long time. This advice is certainly appealing to sushi lovers (Ms. Okawa’s favorite meal!) and those who desire the return of “naptime” in school and the workplace. While the benefits of sleep were discussed in detail in a previous article on Bridging the Gap, the …
Columnist and in-Training Staff Member
University of Illinois College of Medicine
Mariam graduated with a BS in microbiology, immunology, and molecular genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she conducted undergraduate research in B-cell development and lymphomagenesis as well as the neurobiology of stress. In high school, Mariam spent several years studying mechanisms of induced pluripotency in an embryonic stem cell research lab at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla. She now studies computational neuroscience and medicine as part of the Medical Scholars Program (MD/PhD) and the Neuroscience Program (NSP) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Outside of research and clinical experiences, Mariam has earned a black belt in Taekwondo and enjoys yoga and San Diego beaches.
Bridging the Gap
Bridging the Gap focuses on the relationship between basic research and medicine, in order to develop an appreciation for the science that underlies the foundations of modern medicine.
