Contributing Writer
University of Tennessee Health Science Center
I am currently a medical student at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, and a proud contributor to in-Training.
I feel like many of us talk about our lives before medical school as if we were recalling memories from a past incarnation. It’s almost as if it wasn’t us who traveled the world and studied music and worked as an engineer. As for myself, I had a passion for environmental science and religious studies. I traveled through southern Africa and South America working in national parks, reporting on conservation policy and enjoying the diversity of the …
When we pulled back the crimson tarps, other than his abnormally impressive endowments, Mr. S did not strike me in the profound fashion I had anticipated upon witnessing a cadaver up close for the first time. After some reflecting (and a brief self-doubt as to whether I possessed sociopathic tendencies), I concluded that this was due to the acceptance that death is a very natural part of life and seeing its consequences ceased to stun …
You know you have a problem when you can’t fall asleep at night. That’s where I was nearing at the end of anatomy in my first year of medical school. I couldn’t sleep because I was terrified of what the next day held. My sympathetic nervous system was on full alert, ready to handle the next day. The only thing between the next day and me was a night of sleep that seemed harder and …
From my personal experience as a first-year medical student, medical school so far can only be described as a strange suspension of conflicted time-space ironies. During short increments of approximately one-and-a-half months each, we powered through full themes with overwhelming amounts of information—new pieces to memorize, new conceptual dots to connect. To provide some context, our medical school curriculum is divided into organ-based themes lasting approximately five to six weeks, coupled with the appropriate anatomical …
“Would you like one meatball or two?” The words stumbled off my tongue as I smiled sheepishly at the people I was serving dinner to. Throughout my first few weeks of medical school, I had frequently experienced the same acute awareness of my own inadequacy. From long hours spent in the gross anatomy lab in a mixed state of amazement, perplexity and reverence, to the scrutiny of seemingly cryptic pink shapes in histology lab, I …
I remember the accident vividly—up until I fell unconscious. I can still feel the wind whirling past my ears, roaring at me, smacking my face, forcing tears from my bulging, dilated eyes. I remember traveling at what seemed like the speed of light, my heart pounding wildly in my chest. I weighed my options in a split second: dismount and lose a leg or remain aboard and lose my life. The pulsating hoof beats hammered against …
We are not just students. We are medical students. I never thought there was a distinction between these two terms. To be a student, one is actively learning the material presented to them. They are engaging their minds to pick up the knowledge and store it away for later. I believed being a medical student involved the same process.We are presented a plethora of information for us to meticulously store away in our internal hard …
When I first wrote the acronym “B.A.M.,” I worked for a financial company and its meaning was very different then. Now that I’m in medical school, “B.A.M.” still stands for “believe, achieve and motivate,” but the meaning behind each letter has changed based on my new reality. Believe! I decided that, based on current and future med school demands, I needed to take control of the only thing that’s truly mine to control: my attitude. I believe …
My hands were a bit sweaty; my heart was fluttering. As I was driving , questions and doubts surfaced in my mind. “What if my preceptor is mean?” “What if I put my stethoscope the wrong way?” I had shadowed physicians and worked with patients in hospitals, but this was different. This was the first day when I would become a part of the medical health professional team and would utilize the physical diagnosis and …
From the pectoral region dissection on August 1 until our final practical in December, we have undergone one of the most intimate and transformative experiences in medicine: dissection of our cadavers. Shared by only the select few who have taken this journey in medicine before us, our cadaver donors—our first patients—have given us a glimpse of what it means to be a doctor. Our donors are the first completely vulnerable set of bodies with which we …
Okay. So, I am in medical school. As in, really in medical school. Let’s take a moment and let that sink in. Tilt your head back and think about it. There aren’t many people that get into medical school. I won’t simply say it’s competitive; that belittles that fact that medical school has a significant lack of enrollment opportunities compared to the much-talked-about demand for future physicians. But really, I am a first-year medical student. …
It took one day of medical school to kick me off the high horse I rode through the months leading up to it. “Repeat after me,” said one of our administrators as he quieted down the eager students. “I am a first-year, and I know nothing. Remember that.” It was completely true. (A year later, it probably still is.) To all of my family members who keep asking me what that rash is: I don’t …
Contributing Writer Emeritus
Cooper Medical School of Rowan University
Daniel Lefler is a member of the Class of 2016 at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in Camden, NJ. He studied neuroscience at The College of William & Mary. His passion is the medical sciences, but he also enjoys the performing arts.
