Spring break is over, and it is the start of a new semester.  I always have such high and lofty goals at the beginning of the semester…pay better attention in lectures, study more so I don’t have to cram before finals, that kind of stuff.  Then by the end of week two, I’m like This lecture is so boring, I’m going to play games on my iPad….

It is nice to start with a clean slate, though.  New semester.  New classes.  However, the bad thing about being done with anatomy, is that now we don’t spend our afternoons in lab.  Instead, we have lectures.  So we’ll have four hours of lectures in the morning, and then more in the afternoon.

I have a pretty hard time sitting still for that long, as well as paying attention, so it’s going to be hard for me to get used to.  One thing I’ve discovered that I really like doing is skipping lectures and listening to them later on double speed.  I am always about efficiency, so if I can listen to a lecture in half the time, that is usually preferable.  Some professors I like to be in class, though, it just depends.

I just don’t like starting new classes. It is hard to get used to new professors, and how I study for each class is different.  I usually summarize the professor’s notes in my own words, but sometimes it can be a waste of time, like for physiology where there are a lot of important graphs and charts.  It is usually after the first block that I finally figure out how I want to study.  It takes a long time to figure out what professors emphasize and what questions they like to ask on exams.  Once you figure that out, it is usually a lot easier to study.

Anyways, the next few weeks might not be much fun.  I have standardized patients tomorrow, a house call on Wednesday, and my community experience with a dermatologist next week.  Yay for a new semester!