Change of plans

So things did not really go according to plans. For most of my interviewing days, I was very certain that I would end up at Temple, but it turns out that Tufts was a better match. I'm now at the verge of completing my first year of medical school at Tufts and all I can say is that I would have never thought that I could learn so much in so little time. I still realize that I have much more to learn, my level of knowledge is not even close to one needed to treat someone, but at least by now I can do a full physical exam. :) yay. Physical Diagnosis has to be one of the most fun classes I have had. Maybe it's the fact that I want to pursue Orthopaedics, and half of our physical diagnosis class has been taught by orthopaedic surgeons, or just the fact that I love to have a more hands on approach. Whatever the reason, physical diagnosis is been the closest to real medicine that I have been this year. Tufts does a great job matching subjects for every discipline we learn, so we learn it along the same time frame. So when we learn the cardiac examination, we are also learning the cardiac physiology, and dissecting the thorax in anatomy lab, even our PBL questions are focused on cardiac problems. The integration of all classes has been the best approach Tufts curriculum could take. No wonder last year's class scored an average of 235 on the step I ( I just hope our year keeps it up). So physical diagnosis got me so excited that I have decided to pursue my research interest with Dr.Matzkin, one of the orthopaedic surgeons who taught us the lower extremities aspect of the course. I start the research this Tuesday, let see how excited I still am after a couple of months.