"WALKING INTO THE lecture hall, I didn’t really know what to expect. Sitting among a hundred other new first-year medical students, I began to take notes on the histology lecture but found I wasn’t sure what to write down. The professor moved through the PowerPoint slides too quickly for me to write down anything meaningful – in fact, everything he said seemed significant and likely testable.
In the first few weeks of medical school, the old adage of “medical school is like drinking from a fire hose” came true. After abandoning note-taking, I tried printing the lectures but found even that task not entirely feasible because I was printing 30 or 40 pages for a single one-hour lecture!
Starting med school is an adjustment, and a major one at that. I found I wasn’t alone having difficulty ‘drinking from the fire hose’ as my classmates shared the same sentiments. However, in time and with plenty of diligence and support from my peers, the first year of medical school and the subsequent years became some of the best years of my life." …