OMW to med school - the first week: virtual edition
Tl;dr in bold.
So, I made it to my new apartment, I moved in, my cat and I have settled in well. Last week I had a three-day orientation, and my classes started yesterday. Earlier this summer, the school had announced its hope to be able to have a hybrid curriculum in the fall, with everything being virtual but with some classes/activities having physical (i.e. in-person) options for those students who wanted to opt-in. Sadly, given the current state of the ongoing pandemic, it became clear that a hybrid curriculum would not be a safe option, and at the end of July, my school announced that all courses and activities would be virtual. My greatest struggle is staying awake and alert during hours of virtual lectures. But I can get up and take breaks from non-live lectures, so I’m getting better at being focused. :)
I am really glad the school is putting the health and safety of its community as its main priority. During the last week, I have met quite a few students via Zoom in the various small groups I am a part of. I have an academic ‘family’ - my pre-clinical advisor plus his other M1 advisees - that had several orientation events together in Zoom breakout rooms. Then there’s the small group that I’ll be working with for the class where we learn how to interview (standardized) patients (virtually). I will also have a group of students with whom I have the class where we learn how to do physical exams (virtually) and a group for Team Based Learning (TBL), the class where students teach each other material. I don’t know if those groups will be the same group of students that I’m part of for the interview class or if they’ll be different groups. But having these small groups of ~10 students means we can kind of get to know each other. We all get to talk in these classes and we also have organized GroupMe chats where we can talk more with each other.
It’s kind of hard to know how to make friends. First, because it’s been a while since I've been in a new environment. Even after college when I went to work in a lab, and then went to the master’s program, I was in the same city as where I was for undergrad, so I had friends and a church community I the area already. I’ve moved back near my home town after seven years. I’ve got family and some good friends in the area, but not in the same city as school. And I’ve never had to make friends via Zoom and messaging apps before. But so far I’ve managed to make a few friends. There are also a couple of people I’m willing to meet with in person, but I have some pretty strict rules:
- you gotta wear a mask
- you have to have been in this town for at least two weeks
- you can’t have socialized with a group of more than 10 people within the past two weeks
- you haven’t had any symptoms of COVID-19 for the past two weeks
- if you have roommates, none of them have had symptoms of COVID-19 for the past two weeks AND they also respect social distancing, hand washing, and mask-wearing rules.
These rules may be a bit too strict for some of my classmates, but I’d rather come off as strict than get COVID-19. Especially now that I’m a full-time student.
One of my classmates meets these criteria and lives just a few blocks away, so we’ve gone on errands together a few times.
The weather here is pretty unpleasant, but this place has always been hot and muggy this time of year. Fall is my favorite season and I’m excited for it to start.
More updates to follow. One last thing, I have various advisors and mentors and they are all AWESOME, so that's really great. Stay safe everyone <3