<p>I think DS has joined the related face group. He also decided to live in the dorm instead of outside apartment because it is cheaper and he thinks he wants to live with other MS1s. (He would miss his kitchen though.)</p>
<p>As of Today, I think he knows more postdocs or PhD candidates in research labs than MS1/2 students. He socialized with them many evenings in a week recently, because his research work is kind of winding down. It is surprised me a little that he almost becomes a socialite. I heard there might be a dozen of MS2 students who might have come from the same background as his. Hopefully, some of them could give him some guidance.</p>
<p>We decided to ask him to turn down about $5000 loan from the institute, even though it is a type of loan without interests while in school. All loans are subsidized ones so we just declined the one (actually, only a part of it) with the highest interests after graduation. (I know we are kind of stupid not to take it, as we could keep the money in the bank and pocket the interests and pay back the principal right after graduation.)</p>
<p>D1 is fortunately to know a number of MS2 and MS3 students. (They all worked as science tutors together at CAPS for years.) She also climbs with 2 MS2s–so the social connection is there.</p>
<p>She and BF have rented a house near campus. (Less than 5 minutes by car to campus, 15 minutes by bike.) She wanted the greater privacy and quiet a house allows. I can’t blame her. The grad dorms are actually 2 or 3 times as far from the med campus as her house.</p>
<p>LOL! D1 had fill out a form to help match her to a mentor. She had to say what she would like to do if she had week off. There was a list of about 20 things, like work in soup kitchen, volunteer at a health clinic on the Rez, attend a play, go the symphony. She went down the list, feeling rather distressed since there was nothing on the list she actually wanted to do with her rare free time. She finally checked “other” and wrote she’d like to get the hell out of town and go camping in the mountains. </p>
<p>It’s going to interesting to see who she gets as a mentor.</p>
<p>Hi guys, congratulations to all those who have got offers and are starting next year. I’m at the end of my fourth year at medical school so will also try and offer some pearls :)</p>
<p>1.) For your preclinical years, don’t buy any textbooks even on the recommended list until you have got the lowdown from the older years.</p>
<p>2.) Don’t buy an expensive stethoscope until you start hospital. You are bound to lose it and won’t be able to pick anything up until then. Same goes for other ‘essential’ medical equipment like opthalmoscopes etc that are abundant on the wards.</p>
<p>3.) When you are slaving through dull preclinical material, try and read a clinical medical handbook at the same time so you make connections and correlations. This will help you see the bigger picture and let you hit the ground running.
4.) Look after your mental health. This is not an academically challenging degree, it is socially and mentally isolating and difficult. Call your friends and family, make an effort.
Learning about sickness and suffering can get you down!</p>
<p>5.) Keep your outside interests up. Life is not all about medicine; this is the means to an end (a job)</p>
<p>6.) Always remember that you are just a medical student. No matter what the medical schools and your teams tell you, you are not legally responsible for any patient. Make the most of this brief opportunity of freedom and lack of responsibility and don’t age before your years.</p>
<p>sine,
Thanks, added your stuff to Curm’s, printed 2 pages for D. She has less than one month. At least we have bought all furniture (or we think so). There are no dorms for Med. Students, she will live in studio, no rommie, no UG and no pets allowed in the building. About 45 MS1’s usually rent every year, other Grad. students, some faculty.
I do not think that declining loans such a bad idea, they all have loan fees, not exactly free money. Besides, I love to be loan free, no loans, no mortgage - no debt feels nice. Will try to stick to this for as long as we can.</p>
<p>Sounds ideal! I am living in dorms with first years and the late night parties do get a little tedious when you have to be up earlier! (Secretly jealous of them though )</p>
I suspect Perkins loan does not have fees. Perkins loan is therefore better than intitution loan, I think. I heard many schools stop offering Perkins loans.</p>
<p>Of course, we prefer not to have any loan, but each family’s financial situation is different. (MiamiDAP, I am envious of you if you are capable of declining all loans.)</p>
<p>^ I guess your D has not had access to the money from the loans yet, right? If this is the case, the short-term solution is likely from the bank-of-parent. LOL.</p>
<p>Yes. Loans approved but not processed and won’t be processed until “sometime” in July. Loans may or may not arrive before the first day of classes. And, of course, the med school wants its money before then.</p>
<p>Bank-of-Mom will be authorizing a temporary loan. But I hope it gets paid back quickly because D2’s college tuition payment for fall 2011 is due July 5th. Ouch!</p>
<p>I ran into this article on Dukechronicle. Likely an interesting read for some “beginners” who still have very little idea about the match process.</p>
<p>I wonder whether BDM happens to know the author of this article, Alex Fanaroff, as he seems to have written for Dukechronicle for a really long time. He seems to have just decided to stay in Durham for 11 years in his life!</p>
<p>A brief overview of the Match, for some background: In September, graduating medical students all over the United States (and the world) filled out a general residency application. With the help of advisers, we chose residency programs and sent our applications (along with copies of our transcripts and test scores) to those programs. In September, October and November, our chosen programs invited us to visit their hospitals for job interviews. In November, December and January, we flew all over the country for these job interviews, during each of which approximately 25 of us sat through information sessions about the structure of each program and the high points of each city before two half-hour sit-downs with members of the intern selection committee. </p>
<p>In February, with a lot of thought and the occasional fit of tears, we ranked the programs at which we interviewed from favorite to least favorite. The programs, in turn, ranked us the same way. All of our preferences are entered into a supercomputer which spends three weeks churning through the data before filling each program’s internship slots with the appropriate number of graduating medical students, giving preference to the students’ rankings over the programs’. Finally, shortly after noon on some Thursday in the middle of March (the 17th this year), nearly every graduating med student receives an envelope enclosing a sheet of paper with his or her internship assignment.</p>
<p>Duke’s tradition is for all of the students to simultaneously open up their envelopes… Afterwards, there is pandemonium as everyone celebrates.</p>
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