overwhelmed? who, me?

Not by courseload, necessarily, but by sheer volume of information. Each class is actually multiple classes, with multiple sections: one course is comprised of physiology and histology together (and histology is both a lab and a lecture course); anatomy is a lab, and a lecture, and has some radiology thrown in for good measure, and the 'doctoring' course has a seemingly infinite number of sections, subsections and small groups. In a few weeks I'm sure I'll be fine; for now, I'm basically just buzzing with a combination of excitement and anxiety.

Not to mention the information our instructors are actually trying to convey to us INSIDE lectures and labs--and the fact that while some of it is hard and fast (insert your double entendre here) a lot of it is open to interpretation--for instance, when one of our anatomy instructors looked over our cadaver today and told us,

"I'm going to say that's the deltoid branch, but someone else might tell you it's the clavicular, and really it could be either." (Yes, I cut an artery by mistake and then we couldn't tell where it was supposed to be branching. "You're going to cut important things," she added. "It happens. Some people get really bent out of shape, but if you just expect it to happen, it's not that big a deal." What? Someone not advocating rabid perfectionism? Hot damn, I did come to the right school!) Same in histo. "Is that a macrophage?"
TA: "It could be. It could also be a plasma cell; it's not a textbook example of either one, though."
What I DON'T say: "So how helpful is the textbook then? And how can anyone ever be sure--like pathologists? Let's talk about the epistemology of the macrophage and the illusory nature of nomenclature and classification."
What I do say: "Also, could you tell us what this structure is? It's not in the lab manual."
TA: "I have no idea."

I kid, I kid. The TAs are great, the instructors are awesome, and I couldn't be happier to be here. It's just that enzyme kinetics AND all the structures of the thorax AND the classification of cartilage, bone and epithelium AND biostatistics (even though it's not called that) AND how to take a history and physical...all at once...is a lot. Check in with me again a week before midterms and no doubt I will laugh at the naive and spoiled me of August who wrote this entry; but here it is.