Yesterday I played hooky from the lab since I spent most of the afternoon in the anatomy lab tying knots. But today I had to get serious again, because my proposal is due tomorrow and tomorrow is also my last day in the lab. I'm pretty much done with the proposal, but I wanted to see if there were any further comments from the staff scientist in my lab before I turned it in. Those corrections were pretty minor, so I'm going to make them tomorrow afternoon and then submit the proposal. I have to email it to the research education office and also upload it to my portfolio. I've already uploaded the drafts I wrote so that I can use them as evidence for my research competency evaluation.
So far my experiment still seems to be going well. I picked up where I left off on Tuesday and I haven't run into any problems yet. It helps a lot that I'm paying more careful attention to what I'm doing!
Tomorrow is our last day of classes for this entire block. We have our normal Friday schedule of PSS and journal club. Next week we have our research presentations and our orientation to the clinical block that we're starting in October (cardiovascular system), and then that's it for the first block. I will officially be one fourth of the way through my first year of medical school as of next Friday.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
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4 comments:
Hello,
I've been reading your blog for a while as I've been applying to med schools. The entire time I was just hoping I would have a shot at CCLCM. A couple of days ago I received an invitation to interview there!
I'm really excited, as CCLCM is probably my top choice. Thanks very much for posting all the information about the school as it has definitely made even more interested in it. I was wondering if you had any tips for my upcoming interview day?
Thanks a lot,
AES
Congrats on your invite. :-) I'll post some tips soon.
For what it's worth. I came to interview with a fair share of skepticism -- a new school (only one class took the Step I so far, btw, how did they do?). It's a strange kind of an offshoot program in some ways similar to Harvard's HST (small class size, heavy research emphasis), and in others to the "Yale System" (no class rank, no grades [actually, Yale is P/F, like the UP], no exams).
Yet, I came away with a warm feeling of a very good fit. When you separate the grain from all chafe they're feeding you and siren songs that they sing, what you get is a program in which you can mold yourself into whatever you want to be. And this is very important if you want to shape yourself in what you'd want to become. This school is for the mature kind. So many good schools, even top ones, tend to spoon-feed you. I can't tell for all schools, but only at Yale and CCLCM and may be HST did I see this insouciant attitude: you're a mature person, you know what you want, so go and get it, we will help you with opportunities and resources, but it's you who's got to lead the way, because we won't spoon-feed you.
I asked a number of my resident friends what folks in their programs were from what schools, and who they thought were the smartest or most skillful, etc. What do you think? Yale was not in the top by a big margin. Neither was Harvard. Again and again I heard good words about Case people. My friends from Yale (I've done years of research at Yale) felt ashamed of how little actual clinical skills they had during internship in comparison to others, including those from Case.
I agree with pretty much everything you've said---this program is definitely not ideal for everyone, and probably not even for most people. But for certain people, it's just the right fit, and those people tend to know it when they get here. I've written before about how sharp my classmates are. Many of them were deciding between CCLCM and various prestigious, more established schools, and in the end, they chose to come here.
There hasn't been any official word about Step 1 scores from the powers that be yet. But anecdotally, I've heard that not only have all the M3s been passing, they've been doing quite well.
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