And So This is Christmas…

“And so this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, a new one just begun.”  The reality of these familiar Christmas lyrics hit me this year as I led tours of the medical school campus for new applicants.  It’s still hard for me to believe that just one year ago I was in my interview suit, nervously making my way through the halls of Loma Linda hoping to make a good impression on those who would determine my future.  Now, just one year later, I’m the one giving tours and telling potential new students about my experiences as a medical student.

Just like the song lyrics, the question on these new students’ minds is, “Now that you’re in medical school what have you done?” It’d be easy to answer this question with the simple reply: “I’ve studied a lot!!!”  While this is VERY, VERY, VERY true, medical school has been so much more than just studying.  Amidst all the hard work, I’ve had plenty of time to make some incredible memories with my classmates.  Here’s a quick look at some of the things I’ve been up to in addition to hitting the books everyday.

Playing volleyball and football intramurals…

…going on a trip to San Diego after test week and visiting the zoo…

…baking cookies…

…enjoying Sabbath lunch at one of our favorite local restaurants…

…bonding over girl’s night…

…camping under the stars…

…volunteering at the Kids Rock Christmas fiesta…

…dressing up in Christmas attire for our class Spirit Week…

…and celebrating the end of our last test set of the year with a class Christmas party.

The question remains: “And so this is Christmas, and what have you done?”  Well, I’ve officially completed 1/8^th of my medical school education, I’ve met some of the most incredible people I’ve ever known, I’ve had opportunities to serve and give back to my community, I’ve grown in my faith as I’ve learned how to care for patients in the context of faith, and I’ve created countless memories that I will treasure for the rest of my life.  This Christmas, I look back over the year and thank God for all of the incredible blessings in my life.

Thankful

The holiday season is by far my favorite time of year.  It’s the time for snuggling up in cozy sweaters and warm blankets, sipping peppermint mochas, spending time with friends and family, and celebrating all that we are thankful for.

This year, the holiday season comes during a hectic and harried time.  According to our second year predecessors, our upcoming exam set will be the most difficult exams that we will face all year.  This is made evident by the fact that I have been sorely neglecting my duties as a student blogger because, let’s face it, I’m busy being a student!  Yet in the midst of studying heart sounds, respiratory physiology, genetics, anatomy, biochemistry, and immunology the holidays remind me to pause and appreciate the things that matter most in life.

So, as I sit here snuggled up in a blanket, sipping a warm cup of tea on this last night of Thanksgiving break, I thought I’d share just a few of the things that I’m thankful for this holiday season.

Faith – The trials of medical school have taught me that faith is a crucial component of remaining grounded in what truly matters.  I am so blessed to attend a university that encourages me to grow not only in my knowledge of disease processes, but also in my knowledge that we are not the ones who do the ultimate healing.  We may suture wounds and treat diseases, but God is the ultimate healer and only He can offer eternal life.

Family – This Thanksgiving I got to spend time with my sister in Davis, California.  She is a fourth year veterinary student at UC Davis and her clinical responsibilities make this the first Thanksgiving that she has been forced to be away from home.  After not seeing her for months while she’s been away at school, it was amazing to be able to visit her in Davis for a few days.

Friends – One of the things that has made medical school the phenomenal experience that it has been thus far is the people that I get to spend each and every day with in my class.  I have made some of the most incredible friends along this journey and I couldn’t be more blessed.  Moreover, my long-time friends from years past have stuck with me through this time. Although I hardly get to spend time with them, they continue to support and encourage me.

Holiday Shenanigans – Part of the fun of the holidays is all of the holiday festivities!  This year our class had a Thanksgiving Potluck in the park to start off the holiday season right.  A special thanks to Theresa Tran and Lauren Parker for helping to plan this event!  We have a few more fun holiday parties planned for the class so stay tuned for more updates!

PSR – “Perfect Spiritual Rejuvenation”

Last weekend, the entire medical school was invited to put down the books, take a trip up a winding mountain road, and fellowship together at the Pine Springs Ranch Retreat.  Pine Springs Ranch is a little mountain oasis tucked away about an hour from our school.  We first years had heard about how fun this retreat weekend would be, but I don’t think any of us were prepared for the incredible experience we were about to have as we packed into our carpools and headed up the mountain.

My carpool group, which happened to be my main study group, decided to leave around 3 on Friday afternoon, foregoing the notion that we could stay at the school and study until sundown and then leave.  We thought, “We can study in the car and then once we get there, we can find a nice spot and study amidst the nature.”  We faithfully studied physiology and mastered the types of adrenergic receptors during the car ride, but as soon as we reached our destination, the clean, crisp mountain air whisked away any further thoughts of anatomy, biochemistry, or physiology.  We therefore finished the afternoon off with a self-guided hike and proceeded to share some of our favorite stories of past adventures with each other.  This was the first blessing that came from the weekend, a chance to spend normal quality time with a group of friends that I usually only get to study with.

That evening began the first of several very spiritually rejuvenating worship services as the school gathered together to sing, praise, pray, and hear God’s word through our speaker Barbara Hernandez.  She shared the message that the Bible is like one big storybook and that our lives are similarly full of many stories.  She encouraged us to mark the important stories and landmarks in our lives and share them with others.  Stories like the first moment we knew we wanted to become physicians, how God provided to get us into medical school, and stories about the people we encounter along our healthcare journey.  I couldn’t help but think about this opportunity that I have to blog and share some of my stories with those of you who choose to skim through these words.  I feel blessed to have an opportunity to share my story and I can only hope that it will have some sort of positive impact on you.

Saturday brought more opportunities to worship and play together.  After Sabbath school and church a group of us decided to try out the White Pass Mountain Trail that we had heard people talking about.  I thought, “I’m in decent shape, I can do this no problem!”  However, little did I know just how much work this hike would actually be.  After a large portion of our group decided to head back to camp and forego the rest of the adventure, I became the only girl amidst a group of very athletic boys.  Luckily they were kind and allowed me to stop and catch my breath every once and while and put up with my obnoxious questioning of,  ”Are we there yet???”  In the end, it was so worth the effort when we reached the peak and could look over both the mountain valley from which we had just ascended and the desert valley on the other side of the mountain range.   It’s amazing how caught up in our own little world we can be sometimes and it is experiences like this that make you realize that God’s creation is so much more expansive, intricate, and beautiful than we can ever begin to comprehend.

On Saturday night we finished off the retreat with the annual med school talent show where our deans and our students strutted their stuff and impressed us all with their comedy and musical talent.  Things like this make you realize that medical students aren’t always the type-A “let’s study all the time and have no fun” group that society makes us out to be.  While there was no shortage of nerdy med school puns throughout the evening, we spent the entire night laughing, singing along to silly to songs, and just plain having a good time.

PSR Retreat turned out to be one of the most memorable experiences thus far in my medical school journey and I am so thankful for the amazing friends that made it unforgettable, the dedicated faculty and staff that made it possible, and the God that showed me once again how beneficial it is to take time away from the drudgery of studying to worship him and gain spiritual rest and rejuvenation.

We’re Not in Orientation Anymore

If you read my first few blogs you may have thought, med school just looks like a whole lot of fun…all these kids ever do is go to the beach, hang out, and wear their fancy new white coats around.  Well, let me be the first to tell you that med school is HARD!  As you can probably tell based on my lack of presence in the blogging world over the past few weeks, once classes started, everything got a lot more serious and we have all been hard at work trying to stay afloat in the ever-continuous river of new information that is being dumped on us.

This past week we were all faced with our first set of exams.  The way test week works at Loma Linda is as follows: our tests were given over the course of 3 days (Tuesday through Thursday), we had 2.5 hours of testing on each of those days, and anything that we had learned over the previous 4 weeks could be tested on any given day because all of the questions are randomized.  My strategy for this past quarter has been to briefly preview the material before each day of classes, thoroughly learn all of the information the day it is taught, review each week’s material during the weekend, and then comprehensively review everything before the first day of exams.  And, for the most part, I was able to keep up with this schedule thanks to a phenomenal study group that kept me motivated and sane throughout this process.  However, just to show you how discombobulated I was the week before exams, have a look at this picture and realize that it is not a normal occurrence for me to wear 2 different colored shoes to school.

Despite my attempts at staying on top of the material, I always felt behind.  People tell you that you can’t know everything in medical school.  This is usually the biggest adjustment for us first years who came straight from college where we were expected to know every detail.  As much as I tried to know absolutely everything, test week still came and there were questions that I just plain didn’t know.  That’s where I learned my biggest lesson of med school so far: we’re not in charge!  As much as we study, as much as we learn, as smart as we may think we are, God is the ultimate physician, He is the one who is ultimately responsible for us being where we are, and He is the one who will ultimately see us through this process.

I found this Bible verse at the end of test week in the Message Bible, “It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life” Philippians 4:7.  I could sit here and pretend to say that I placed Christ at the center of my life instead of worry, but that would be a lie.  I was stressed and I was worried and, to a certain extent, a healthy amount of fear of failure is what drives us toward success. Nevertheless, what I can say is that without God’s gifts I would never have the capacity to retain the information that I studied nor use that knowledge to answer questions.

Test week was just one more reassurance of my belief that God has placed me here to study medicine for purpose and that I wouldn’t be here if I couldn’t handle the work load.  It was hard, it was long, and it was stressful but that’s what it’s supposed to be…nobody ever said medical school would be easy.  After surviving our first round of tests, we celebrated by planning a most epic weekend full of beach vespers, hiking in Sapphire falls, baking cookies, roasting s’mores, and spending time with the amazing group of friends that got us through the tough week of tests.  Here I go again talking about all the fun stuff that medical school has to offer because, as far as I’m concerned, med school is still the best experience of my life!

Where I Belong

The main reason I chose to blog this year is that I wanted my experiences to serve as an inspiration to those who are currently in the process of applying to medical school.  When I was in the process of going through the pre-med courses in undergrad and working on my application, I would read the LLUSM student blog regularly to remind myself of my ultimate goal.  It inspired me, challenged me to take a deeper look at my faith, and taught me a bit about what to expect in the future years.  Most importantly, reading the blog solidified my already strong desire to attend Loma Linda University because the stories the bloggers shared made it seem like a place where I would fit right in.  Now that I have experienced my first 2 weeks of orientation to medicine at LLUSM I can honestly say that I have found the place where I belong and I couldn’t be happier!  For all of you pre-med students out there who are reading this and looking to be inspired, all I can say is it’s worth the hard work and this school is even more incredible than you could ever imagine.

These past 2 weeks of orientation have included SO much!  We started off with a few days of basic orientation to policies and procedures, we received our white coats, we got a taste of what medicine is like on the wards, we had several incredible worship services, we took a personality test that taught us about how our personality best matches up with study techniques, we had a panel of physicians from all of the various specialties tell us about their fields, we had dinner at a faculty member’s home, and we had A LOT of fun!!!!!!

I feel so incredibly blessed to be in a place that gives first-year medical students these two weeks to spend time on the inpatient wards of hospitals and see what awesome things we have to look forward to after our two years of bookwork.  Even though I didn’t know much about any of the cases that our internal medicine team had on its service, the third year medical students on our team and the residents took the time to teach us as much as they could.  I learned that the proper presentation of the patient follows the SOAP acronym (Subjective Objective Assessment Plan).  I even got to practice presenting several patients using the SOAP method with my third year.  We also had the chance to interview a patient and gain a much deeper understanding of what it’s like for them to be in the hospital.  This interview taught me so much about what it means to be a doctor who can see a patient as a whole person instead of just a list of symptoms.

Remember how I mentioned all the fun?  Well, after these 2 weeks of med school I can honestly say that I am in LOVE with my classmates!  We have been spending time together almost every evening going ballroom dancing, playing volleyball at Drayson Center, going to the beach, having game nights and movie nights, going to church together, and having our own mini vespers.  It seems like I’ve known these people forever and yet we’ve only just met.  It’s the people in our life that make it worthwhile and I couldn’t feel more blessed to have made these new friendships.

If you can’t already tell how much I love this school, then let me just clarify…coming to Loma Linda University is the best decision I have ever made.  If you are a pre-med student looking for a school where whole person care is a priority, where faith and science are fused seamlessly into a first-rate medical curriculum, where each class begins with the acknowledgement of God’s guiding hand, and where the people are genuinely kind, loving, and Christ-centered, then look no further because Loma Linda University lives up to its mission of training doctors who want to continue the healing and teaching ministry of Jesus Christ.