So tomorrow marks the end of our "Transition to Clerkship" week, which means at this point I'm supposed to be pretty much transitioned to whatever this "clerkship" thing is supposed to be.

In the past I had (arguably) witty food analogies for the first two years of medical school. First year is like a hot dog eating contest. Second year is like trying to polish off that 72oz steak at Billy Joe's Steak Emporium. If I had to come up with an analogy for what transitioning to MS3 would be like... it'd probably be analogous to that NBA commercial involving Yao Ming (still one of my faves):

Yes, third year is like trying to eat a live crustacean. It's new, it's exciting, it's exotic, and you have no idea what the f*ck you're supposed to be doing. You can google how to eat a live crustacean, people can tell you how to eat a live crustacean, but until you've actually gotten out there and done it, you really have no sense of what its like. And when you try for the first time, its awkward, you fumble around, and you generally look like an idiot.

Our week started off with a morning full of "talks" from the big wigs in the School of Medicine who never appear unless something "important" is going on, which basically consisted of them reminiscing to us about their own days at the beginning of their clinical days. Luckily things picked up at that, and the rest of the week has been very fun. Finally had my first quasi-patient which I had to do a full H&P on and present the next morning. The rest of our time has been filled with workshops filled with how to scrub for the OR, knot tying and suturing, intubation, accessing/reading/interpreting path reports, how to place an IV, managing acute patients, etc, etc. The material has varied from interesting to repetitive, but the best thing is that is have all been HANDS ON. It's all been simulated, but actually getting your hands dirty and having things be interactive beats the hell out of sitting in lecture all morning and then hurrying up to sit in front of your syllabus the rest of the day.

Start peds on Monday. 2 weeks on the general wards then 3 weeks in the PICU. Hoorah.