.... Shelf!

Surprise! I have a giant subject exam next Wednesday! I'm terrified! Hence the exclamation points!

I'm terrified because it will be worth 20% of my final grade in my favorite class: Clinical Neuroscience. I had a feeling I'd like psychiatry even when I came to medical school, but it was never something I thought I'd seriously like.

I came in with a pledge to make medicine easier to understand for my patients. I fully believe I will have to see a lot of patients, but I want to make every single one of them feel in control of their health--by giving them the information and the support they need to make their own decisions.

This is why my final research project in college involved looking at the ways doctors communicate with their patients.

And psychiatry, I realize, sets itself up as the specialty that requires communication over everything else. Even with primary care--let's say family medicine, which is still my first love--you talk with the patient, and most of the time, talking is all you need. But you still approach a patient in primary care as an algorithm. History fills in some information, labs and tests fills in the rest. You shake it up, and you come up with a diagnosis. Or several diagnoses.

Psychiatry at the very start basically says: the only way you're going to get anything done is communication. There is no back up plan. You can't be that doctor who is really smart but also really distant--really bad at talking to people. I guess what I like most about psychiatry is that it really emphasizes medicine as an art form.

Regardless, I am now considering a double residency because hey--I'm young. But what I really want to do is qualify for an Honors Elective in Child Psychiatry. That was the most ... electrifying part of this course for me. Many of my friends, I realized, had these conditions. Most memorably, my best friend in elementary school had selective mutism. Which I always thought was interesting as a little kid, but now I understand it and I find it even more interesting.

Anyway, to qualify for the Honors elective I need an A in clinical neuroscience. And right now, without any extra credit, I have an 85%. SO FAR AND YET SO CLOSE. So, the next 6 days of my life will probably be panic, panic, panic.

Adding pain to misery, 50-55% of the exam is on "Central and Peripheral Nervous System" which is incredibly vague. Fortunately, the vagueness was removed by the course director who basically explained this chunk of questions as focusing on... you could easily guess it... my least favorite and, I am not exaggerating this when I say, my most personally antagonizing part of medical education... Neuroanatomy!

Trials and tribulations, right?

Here's to a weekend of staring at brains!