It's Week One and I Already Broke the Shower

I've been at Case Western for a week now for the Summer Medical and Dental Education Program and I don't even know how I'm going to write down everything that's happened since only last Saturday. Long story short, it's been crazy.

Us in front of the school sign - ignore the thumb

Let's break down the academic stuff first, since that's why we're all here. Monday we got to listen to the dean of the dental school, Dr. Goldberg, which was super exciting, (at least for us pre-dental students. There's 20 out of 80 of us - the rest being pre-med.) After the dean spoke to us we had to take multiple pre-tests to determine what level we were at in a variety of different subjects. Most of them went pretty well - until the math test. Considering I haven't taken a math class since my junior year of high school, it's safe to say that my math skills are...rusty. So when I looked at the test and realized that I could only answer one out of 30 math questions I realized that my placing was going to be in the lowest math class - which was totally fine by me. I ended up being put into Biochemistry, Physics, General Chemistry and Intro to Calc.
After the pre-tests, we had our white coat fitting. Even though we're only pre-professionals at this point in time, it's still fun to pretend that we're worthy of wearing the distinguished symbol around the hospital. 
So now you've been brought up to Tuesday. Writing Strategies is another class that SMDEP gives us in order to prepare our personal statements. The idea of having to write a personal statement has given me anxiety for a while. How can you write about all of your accomplishments and how wonderful and amazing you are without sounding horrendously conceited? It's tricky to say the least which is why I was so happy to hear that we'd be crafting one this summer with the help of admissions representatives and grad school professionals. 
On Thursday, we had two major orientations; with the first being our HIPAA training. This is for learning what doctor-patient confidentiality is and how we avoid being sued, which is always a very good thing to know. Our second orientation was how to act in the OR. The things I heard during this half hour solidified my decision to become a dentist and not a doctor. I'm sorry, but I wouldn't be able to handle seeing a doctor up to their elbow's in some women's uterus during a c-section, much less be the person doing the fishing. 
Next, we had Dr. Haynie, the dean of students here at Case Western Medical School give us a talk about "packing for the overhead bin." According to Dr. Haynie, there are three type of people: those who know some things, and don't know others, those who don't know anything, and those who know some things, don't know others and think they know some things. The most dangerous of these people being those that believe they know things when they really don't because these are the doctors who end up harming their patients. It was a very interesting lecture and gave me some things to consider in my future career.
 Finally, we had a professor from UCLA, Dr. Doyle, talk to us about becoming a better learner. Some of the things he had to say were fascinating. I thought he was great, not to mention he taught us all of the carbon molecule intermediates in the TCA cycle in less than 4 minutes. Pretty helpful, if you ask me.
So now onto the fun things, because what's summer without a little adventure? 

A beautiful park in Cleveland?! Who knew?

The first day we were here we visited a park down the street. I honestly had no idea there were parks in Cleveland, so I was happy to see a little piece of nature.
On Sunday we went to downtown Cleveland and explored. I'm not going to lie, the bus ride was terrifying. Unless sitting next to homeless men with bicycles on their laps talking to themselves is your thing - because then you'd be totally fine in this situation. But the ride was ultimately worth it because historic Cleveland is awesome! Here are a few pictures.

Cleveland's Museum of Contemporary Art

Can you believe this is the outside of part of a hospital?

 As you can tell, I don't know what most of these things are pictures of exactly. But, it's fine, just use your imagination.
Our white coat ceremony was Friday. We had an ophthalmologist as our guest speakers who had done SMDEP at Duke university when he was our age. It was fun fantasizing that one day I would be in an actual white coat everyday for work, conversing with patients and improving their quality of life. Hopefully, this is just one of many white coats I'll have throughout my career.

Wallie, Dominique and I in our white coats.

Trust us, Angela and I are doctors.

Dr. Haynie! I was so nervous taking my picture with him!

Our RA/TA's for the next 6 weeks. Yssra, on the left is a 4th year pre-med student and Winnie on the right is a second year dental school student!

Roomie photo!

 

 After we got our white coats, we got to go ice skating! I hadn't been ice skating for a while, but I eventually got into the swing of things. It was a little odd ice skating to "Bands A Make Her Dance," and other related songs - but apparently that's just how they do things here in Cleveland. I didn't fall once, which was a miracle considering I have no athletic ability whatsoever.

Trying to stay on our feet on the ice.

 And now for the incident that brought about the title of this entry! To save you any more reading, I'll be brief. I was in the shower, trying to angle the head down so the water wouldn't shoot out of the shower and flood the bathroom. Apparently I didn't know my own strength and snapped the entire head off. Whoops. Did I mention that this was on Sunday, too? I find it's always best to make a memorable first impression. And that will bring a close to my first week at SMDEP. It's been a whirl-wind experience thus far and I don't expect it to slow down anytime soon. I cannot wait until our dental anatomy classes happen and I get to do a filling on a fake tooth!

Until next time,
PJ