today i finished my first quarter of medical school. apparently i now know 1/6 of the material i need to know before i start actually working with patients. i'm not convinced that i'm there, but here is a top ten list of what i have learned this quarter:
1. never trust a name. things in medicine are not named logically. for example a common form of colon cancer, HNPCC, hereditary non-polyposis colon cancer, actually is first defined by the presence of polyps on the colon. hmm. not really very intuitive unfortunately.
2. cooking takes a lot of practice. but trader joe's is amazing, and i'm so happy now that the new one opened that is in walking distance!
3. always trust the name. in some subjects i guess. in anatomy, the name tells you exactly what it does: the pronator pronates, the supinator supinates, the extensor pollicis brevis is shorter than the extensor pollicis longus. i guess this is why anatomy was my favorite subject (until our exam today). my favorite anatomical fact? the presence of the anatomical snuffbox, a corner of your hand which, according to my professor, is "where you snort."
4. palo alto is not a city. it is a town. or a suburb. anyway, it is not my favorite place in the world, but it is a nice place.
5. fly biologists have a sense of humor, if it is sort of skewed. since developmental biology was pioneered in flies, many of the signaling molecules in human development are named for what they do (or the absence of them does) to flies. for example, the gene smoothened, or smo, causes smooth flies. you can guess what frizzled and patched do. the absence of the tinman transcription factor causes flies without hearts (in humans, this gene is less creatively called nkx2.5). and our favorite signaling molecule? sonic hedgehog, along with the rest of the hedgehog family. google it. i swear i am not making this up.
6. there is a reason stanford has its own zipcode. it is way too big. i spend half my life traipsing across campus. considering i never learned to wear sensible footwear, it is lucky that there is no snow here.
7. it is necessary to take breaks sometime. when those breaks come in the form of trips to london, it is very lucky. now i just need to figure out how i can go back for spring break.
8. weather is relative. when it is colder than what you are used to, it is cold. thus 55 can be cold and 45 is frigid.
9. with so many chances to get screwed up while developing in utero and after, it is a miracle that we all turn out as normal as we do. seriously. we all got so scared by the awful diseases and other possibilities that my professor found it necessary to remind us that although there are some potential problems, yes, it is worth it to procreate.
10. going to school next door to an amazing mall is both very good and very, very bad.
11. stanford medical students are normal people. they all have flaws. they have to study. but they all have a problem: they do too much. i guess i may fit in here after all.
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