Post First few days

Hey everyone. So i've had some pressure to post about my first few days of med school...fair enough. I can tell already that i'm going to need these reminders, as i'm already getting distracted by a relatively large 'to do' list...or more so "to learn".
Because of the floods we didn't get started until Thursday and therefore all of the orientation information was condensed into a few hours here and there. More than anything we just jumped right into it, and starting monday they say they're pushing us off of the deep end! So that sounds like fun lol. On thursday we had our first PBL session. For those of you that don't know, PBL stands for problem based learning. So we are allocated groups of about 8 people for the year and twice a week we get together to work through a case. Each case is based on a theme that they are trying to get into our thick heads. This week our PBL scenario was a young man who was in a car crash. So we go through one "trigger" at a time so that we only get a bit of information step by step. This way we have to hypothesise and think about what's going on and what to potentially expect, then we get more info and have to re-evaluate our hypotheses. So for example, the first trigger would be "you see the car crash, man is struggling to get out, agitated, blood spurting from leg, seat belt on, no airbag". And from that you talk about what you would do and be thinking between that time and when you get to him...(dangerous environment, conscious, likely arterial bleed, head or chest trauma etc etc). Then the next trigger may give you a bit more info, such as: "paramedics get their and find resp. rate of 35, BP 70/? etc etc"......and so on and so forth. The idea i believe is to emulate the actual way that you would have to hypothesise in practice, since you'll rarely, if ever, get all of the information you need to know all at once.
  So in addition to this we are starting into lectures on all of the biomed. sciences (a lot of review for me, but hey! I'll take it lol), doing histology, microbiology, anatomy and physiology practicals, clinical coaching in hospitals (next week that starts) and then some reading on the side...just because one gets bored with so much free time.

But yeah, so that's what's going on here..i'm doing my best to not always be studying...i've found that i'll work/study from 8am-7pm and then i'm done for the day...and i think i'll try to take sunday mornings off to sleep in. Life is balance! :D

Missing everyone at home, but glad to be busy again.

cheers,
     Harrison