First Day of a Long Journey

I finished my last class requirements for medical school one year ago at a community college, and three years ago completed my last quarter of classes as an undergraduate student. I was a bit intimidated to begin the rigorous medical school schedule and balance taking multiple classes while pursuing my research interests and extracurricular activities. In addition, I was a bit fearful of having been out of school for so long and have been questioning whether I still have the mental edge to be a student again.

When we sat down for our first lecture in molecular biology, I remembered the emails warning us to prepare over the summer. We were assigned four chapters of reading in the Bible of Cell Biology: The Cell. I prepared in earnest, balancing my time with completing my biochemistry video lecture class. Yet I wondered; how much can one prepare for a class? What would be the expectations? How do you evaluate your progress in a binomial grading system of pass/fail?

My personal fears and concerns soon evaporated as we listened to our first lecturer. Dr. Gilbert Chu, one of our class molecular biology professors, was captivating and explained his expectations for the course. He would mark on the board when a question was asked by our class and would not finish his lecture until 10 questions were asked. I was impressed by his teaching style and was relieved to find that many students were already voicing questions that I was concurrently entertaining in my own mind.

Later that afternoon, we began our highly anticipated human anatomy class. My personal interests in human physiology and anatomy from a sports medicine standpoint are mirrored by the objectives of the course, simply stated as understanding the structure and related function of the human organism.

Before we began our dissection of our human cadavers, our professor Dr. Lawrence Mathers asked us to bow our heads and allow a moment of silence and reflection for the bodies that were donated for our learning purposes. I found the experience touching, humanistic, and appropriate, especially after we unveiled our cadaver. Our class is divided into teams of four that are each assigned a body. Upon unveiling, my group learned that we had a female cadaver that we would learn from over the next two quarters. After visiting a number of anatomy labs during the interview process, I found the actual experience of cutting and examining our cadaver to be much different than what I had expected. The preservation process makes the skin look like a brown paper bag, as the skin its has become taut and devoid of many wrinkles. Observing my cadaver, I wondered many things such as how did she die? Did she have a family? Husband? It also humbly reminded me of my mortal existence and the inevitable fate that I too will die someday.

Examining the chest cavity and actually touching human flesh were different that what I expected. On top of visual examination, we learned to use tactile cues when studying our cadavers. I found it fascinating to explore the difference between fat and muscle tissues. Fat at room temperature lies between a solid and liquid state, and we could compare the tissues through touch (fat tissue feels more slippery than muscle) as well as appearance (fat looks more yellow and white compared to major muscles that have a striated appearance and are predominantly red in the chest cavity).

At the conclusion of our first day of anatomy, the teaching assistants invited us to an informal discussion titled: Anatomy Unveiled. We heard from the teaching assistants about their experiences with the course and were invited to share our thoughts and feelings as we continued throughout the quarter. The most insightful comment came from one of the teaching assistants, a statement that will stay with me through the anatomy course: one of the most optimistic things that someone can do is to donate their bodies to teach the next generation of doctors.

After my first day of class, I feel incredibly happy about my choice to be educated at Stanford Medical School and I have the utmost faith in my professors and fellow future colleagues in the mark we will make in the field of medicine; we will not merely become doctors but will be cultivated to grow as humanistic healers.