2nd Year of Medical School

I started my second year of medical school almost one month ago! Wow, time flies! My unofficial start date was on Sunday, August 2nd, since I (and a group of other students) was selected to facilitate a trauma workshop for the incoming 1st year medical students. As a second year, I wasn’t expecting to have an orientation, but we did. Luckily it was only for one day.

Although its not quite a month yet, I’ve so far had two exams and one basic skills assessment in my doctoring course. Yep, an exam every other week, except for this coming week. This coming week, I have a practical and another exam next week. I’ll finally have somewhat of a “breather” the week after that (thank God). My school has us hitting the ground running, which is what I was somewhat anticipating.

Transition from 1st year to 2nd year

The transition from first year of medical school to second year was much smoother than when I first started medical school. I guess it’s because I know how hard I have to work, how organized I have to be, and how I have to stay on top of things to do well. First year was a big trial and error basically. Now that I know what does work and what doesn’t, its easy to implement the right (efficient) study habits.

It’s kinda crazy know that I have to take boards this coming spring, but I try not to dwell on it too much. Just have to focus on whats immediately in front of me for now.

Medical School on Zoom

This is my second official semester having classes on Zoom. We first switched to online with the COVID-19 pandemic initially hit the United States back in March. My classmates and I went on spring break and never came back to campus. It was interesting then and was definitely a huge adjustment.

Now that I’m sort of a Zoom “veteran”, I actually enjoy the distance learning platform. Its easier, in a sense, since its self-paced. I don’t always attend my classes live on Zoom, nothing has changed in that area, however, I do go through my third party sources on the material before watching lecture. I find that understand and retain the material better that way.
Despite the uniqueness of online learning, I do miss physicially seeing and interacting with my classmates. In-person labs for doctoring and OMM is also much better in person than online. Hopefully things will go back to “normal” for spring semester.

School Activities

Although I (along with my fellow classmates) cannot go on campus at this time, school activities has also switched online on Zoom.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it on my page before, but I serve as a leader for a couple of clubs at school. Although it sucks that we can fellowship in person, the online format has shown to be actually quite fruitful. For instance, the Christian group that I lead on campus switched to Zoom last spring. We started having small groups over the summer, which allowed third and fourth year medical students to join in where every they are currently at in the world!

Soon some of my clubs will be hosting some larger scale events on Zoom. I’m hoping they all go smoothly!