From DJ to MD: 1 Down, 4 to Go

Hello, everybody! Remember me?! It’s DJ!!! 😀

In case any of you happened to miss my announcement last year, I started Medical School last August, and have just completed my first term in December. This is why I have been absent from commenting on everyone else’s blogs, replying to comments on mine, why you no longer see me posting any more book reviews/book collecting, and why you only see/have seen an incredible influx in interviews posts on my page.

I knew my pleasure reading time would go down when I started school, but I severely misjudged how little time I would actually have. I had brought down 4 novels with me to read in my free time… and I read a total of maybe 50 pages and one short story? So yeah, busy, busy, busy.

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Here is my basic schedule:

Monday-Friday (no-lab)

7am: wake-up

7:30 – 8:30: gym

9am: breakfast

9:30am-12pm: study

12-12:30pm: lunch

1-5pm: lecture

5-6pm: dinner

6-8:30: study (days lecture)

8:30 dinner #2

9 – 11:30pm: study

12am: bed

Monday-Friday (with lab)

6:30am: wake-up/breakfast

8-9am: biochem lab

or

8-10am: histology or physiology lab

0r

8-12pm: anatomy lab

(If I don’t have anatomy lab, I will study until luch time)

12-12:30pm: lunch

1-5pm: lecture

5-6pm: dinner

6-8:30: study

8:30 dinner #2

9 – 11:30pm: study

12am: bed

Saturday

7:30am: wake up

8-9:30am: market

10am: breakfast

10:30am-1pm: study

1pm: lunch

1:30-4:30pm: study

5pm: dinner

5:30-8:30pm: study

8:30pm: dinner #2

9-11:30pm: study

12am: sleep

Sunday

7:30am: wake-up

8 – 9: gym

9:30am: breakfast

10am-12:30pm: study

1pm: lunch

1:30-4:30pm: study

5pm: dinner

6-8:30: study

8:30 dinner #2

9 – 11:00pm: study

11:30pm: bed

Honestly, when you do get done studying early one night, or have free time during the week or weekends… all you want to do is sleep.

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I know what you’re thinking: “DJ, where is the fun time? When do you hang out with your friends? When do you call your family back home? Do really study all day?”

Well, that is just a rough guide line of how each day goes. Obviously days vary and don’t always go according to schedule.

Those hours that I eat, also include time with friends, same with study time, and same with lecture. (I’m going to tell you a secret: even medical students still don’t always pay attention in lecture. In fact, I’m pretty sure more people sleep (there is actually a slumber Facebook where you post pictures of people sleeping) and play video games in lecture than they do in undergrad and high school) XD

Personally, I usually take a break every hour or hour and a half max. Just going to sit outside and look at the ocean, a brief walk around campus, or go back to my room or outside and talk to people.

We did have 5 exams throughout the term. And what did we do after the exam? BEACH. I mean, look at where I go to school XD Then later that night, pretty much everyone goes out, has a good time, and completely forgets about school – or, at least, tries to 😛

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It may seem kind of weird, or even OCD, to some to have every single day like this mapped out to the hour, but you have to. The thing about medical school is: it’s not that hard. Honestly, it’s only as hard as you make. The hardest part about it is actually doing the studying and being the most efficient possible. If you can study every day, and not study hard, but efficiently, then you will do just fine. I find that making a schedule like that, makes me most efficient. I tried other methods and schedules and planning, but those did not work… not at all.  But it varies from person to person.

I have friends who only needs to study maybe 3 or 4 hours outside of class, and they have an A average; on the other hand, I have friends who study more hours than me, each day, but have a lower grade than myself. Why is this? Because it’s not about the hours you study each day or how hard study, it is about how efficient you are with your time and how effective you are at studying.

And this is the secret to medical school: being the most efficient with your time. Because it is easy, so incredibly terrifyingly easy to fall behind – and the worst part is, it really only can take one day.

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I could go on and on about medical school – trust me, there is a lot – but that’s not the point of this. The point of this post is to let you all know what I basically do everyday, why I literally don’t have time to be as active a member of the SF/F community as I had been before, and why all the interviews.

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I love this blog, I love the SF/F community, and I have put too much effort and time in to this blog to just let it suddenly die of. I plan to keep on doing interviews for the next couples years while I am still in class. Once clinicals start, we’ll see how the time goes, and see if I will have time to do some reading and reviews outside of my breaks.

I do hope you all are enjoying all of these interviews, though! I put a lot of effort in to making up these questions and finding out which books are coming out before each term starts, and then reaching out to publishers to make them happen while in class. So that fact that people are still reading my blog, and that my blog is still growing (had over 15,500 hits last year!!!!!) is really an incredible feeling 🙂

So I sincerely want to thank all of you so very much for staying with my blog even though I don’t have to time do the same for yours 🙂

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Through the first couple months of this year, you will see some content outside of interviews. I have been on break since Dec 14 and are heading back Jan 6, so I’ve had some time to comment on all of your bogs; to read books (finally!); and put together a couple of reviews, various best of lists, and a ton of book collecting posts that I didn’t get to do when I was in school.

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Before I go though, I thought I’d share some photos of…

My campus:

The beach we all go to:

And a hike I went on:

Like I said, the hardest part about medical school is studying every day 😉

I’ll be sure to take more photos this term, give you all a better look at my campus and the island.

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Happy New Years and Reading!!! 😀

-DJ

-DJ