All my stuff is finally packed. I’ve got one hour before throwing it in the car and leaving for Kingston. What does anyone do with a single hour, when all your stuff is packed and you’ve already said goodbye to all your friends? Blog, I suppose. This week is going to be a roller-coaster ride! I’ll try to give regular updates here, so watch for some fun pictures and stories!

Took a trip to Kingston today, along with my younger sister Kristin. The goal was to spend some time together before she goes to school, and show her my new school, Queen’s! Having only been there twice before myself, though, we were exploring together.   It was a good opportunity to hit up the bookstore. I drooled over the medical textbooks (which take up an entire wall!!) but was very disciplined to only buy a few. The recommendation from previous students has been to wait for classes to begin before making any big textbook purchases. But when there’s one on sale, well, I just couldn’t help myself. Kristin also bought this mug for me as a welcome-to-Queen’s gift!

Grabbed the ferry out to Wolfe Island – it’s free! It was a nice way to see the Kingston waterfront, as well as Fort Henry from the water. Actually, as our ferry was going past it seemed like there were some cannons being fired from the fort. Not sure why.

We also peeked into the lecture hall that will become my new home starting from next week, and perused the walls where portraits of the previous med classes are hanging. The older class photos tell stories of overcoming inequality: you can pick out which years were the first to have women in the class, and also non-whites. The photos also show a shift in how we respect the cadavers. Seems like it was a tradition for the students to pose with their cadavers, in this case infants:

Today that tradition is rightfully seen as disrespectful to the people who donated their bodies. 

Well, it was a beautiful day in Kingston, and a great chance to get excited about starting classes a week from tomorrow!

Kristin and I get a little crazy when we hang out together:

Just recently, the class of 2011 (the one above us) released the schedule for the orientation week that they’ve been planning for us! It looks like an eclectic mix of fun activities, an introduction to the school and its academics, and even already some time in lectures and labs. The fun activities include a med. school olympics, a dance, barbeque at the Dean’s house, movie night, pub crawl, and a boat race on lake Ontario!

This week will also involve meeting our first patient: the cadaver that will be helping us to learn anatomy. After a memorial service for the people that have donated their bodies to this purpose, we have six hours scheduled during which time we’ll be looking at the thoracic cavity, lungs, and pleura. Now that’s diving into the deep end – couldn’t we start with the hand, or a shoulder or something? 

During orientation week we begin a program-long study of the history of medicine. Instead of being a distinct class, Queen’s teaches the history of medicine fully integrated with the curriculum. So as you study pharmacology, you may have a lecture about its history. During O-week we actually have an assignment that should help us get started on the right foot for history. In groups, we study the contributions of some well-known doctors and decide whether they were ‘heroes’ or ‘villains’. The lesson is that each of them is neither, or both. Historical judgement is warped by the subjective perspective that we view it from. That’s an important lesson for analyzing the past, and for questioning our current dogma.

So I’m looking forward to a packed, thrill-ride, inspirational week! Oh, and did I mention that I have to move mid-way through it? Heh heh … should be fun!

It’s finally here !!! I’m a child at Christmas time.

Last-night at the Toronto Island, one of my future classmates organized a first get-together for those of us Queen’s Meds 2012 who are close enough to Toronto to make it. She had a great BBQ for us at the fire/ambulance station on the island (she’s a paramedic!), and we even got a ride back to the docks in the ambulance!

Anyway, it was an immense pleasure to meet some of the incredible people that I will be studying with. And I know it will be a relief to recognize a few faces when I walk into class on that first day! We’re a diverse bunch: many master’s students, some who have been working, and others fresh out of university like me.

It was neat to observe how although we all come from different backgrounds, somehow we are already uniting in common purpose. Right now that purpose consists of finding housing in Kingston, getting bank loans, furnishing apartments, and taking advantage of our last moments of freedom.

I did learn a couple more things about our program…
- We will learn anatomy in 4 months. All of it. Gulp!
- I should be able to do a full physical by December. Now that’s a little surreal!

Yesterday I received the fabulous news that I have been accepted into the class “MEDS 2012″ at the Queen’s School of Medicine in Kingston, Ontario! This comes at the end of an application process that lasted more than a year and has dominated much of my time. The Queen’s MD program has a strong reputation and, because of its smaller size, boasts a unique character and personality. I feel immensely privileged to be starting there!

And thus, next week I will graduate from the University of Waterloo and begin an entirely new pursuit. It is an exciting time! For the moment I feel entirely unqualified, but also that this is the right direction for me. I anticipate a steep learning curve and lots of challenges.

Along with that, I expect having lots of interesting stories to share! And as I take leave of a wonderful community in Waterloo, I’m looking for ways to stay in touch. Hence the justification for this blog. I hope that it will become a chronicle of four years in medical school, and just one way that I can continue to share daily life with you.