I wanted to give a little information/background on it, and just why we are so excited. People that attend UNTHSC also refer to it as TCOM so if I say TCOM you know what I mean. In the past year TCOM was ranked the number 11 medical school in the country as far as producing family doctors and number 19th in primary care (two behind Harvard for 1/3 of the price!). Now, I am not necessarily interested in those specialities, but I still think that it is a noteworthy accomplishment. TCOM has a brand new state of the art facility and is located in the beautiful cultural district of Ft. Worth. There are a lot of things to do and see in Ft. Worth which is vastly different than some of the others schools we could have ended up at! TCOM has a great systems based curriculum, and I will be doing my clerkships or rotations around the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.
The first and second year of medical school are referred to as the PreClinical years and they are were you learn all your fun basic sciences again (biochemistry, molecular biology, etc.) and then also systematically learn anatomy and pathologies (diseases) and the mechanisms by which drugs can be used to treat those diseases. So what that means for family life is incomprehensible hours studying and taking advantage of family time with my wife when it exists. Now that sounds morbid, but we will have to become experts at time management and not take any time together for granted. My beautiful wife knows that the only reason I am ever successful at a task is because I outwork people which in medical school means studying a super rediculous amount instead of just a rediculous amount. Sadly I am excited about this and the opportunity to compete and work alongside the "best of the best" that generally make up a medical school class.
Besides working a lot (i love manual labor) these past few months, I have been doing as much research as I can about the best ways to study and be successful in medical school. It has been very interesting to see what works for different people, how to deal with the stress, and to witness the nostalgia that people experience when they look back on the "toughest years of their lives". I will be contributing to this blog and giving my input on medical school for several reasons: the first is that as I mentioned I have learned a lot about preparing for school by reading other peoples blogs. If any premeds or med students are out there and can get anything out of this than that would be great. Secondly I look forward to looking back on this blog in four years and seeing how much we have grown and how I went from an excited optomistic first year out to save the world to what I will become once the process is over. I am praying that it is not a cynical, grizzlied, doctor who forgot what I set out to do. I also think that jotting down my ideas, stress, and memories will be cathartic and a way to decompress and really think about what I am doing. I know we both really look forward to starting this new chapter in our lives, but I have been praying that we would not take the time we have for granted now and that we would enjoy it and make some great memories.
Just for fun and for comparison my entering specialty choices are:
1. General Surgery (and a further specialization later on ie. cardiothoracic, trauma, vascular, etc.)
2. Orthopaedic Surgery
3. Emergency Medicine
4. Cardiology
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