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I've never really been one to be massively 'affected' by things. Earthquake hit at home, dealt with it. First dissection, dealt with it. Relationships ending, dealt with it.
But today in the dissection room I saw something that hit me. Hard. I don't even really know why.
It was a face. Just a face. A prosected human face.
And it looked almost peaceful, like someone sleeping (minus the skin, of course). And it reminded me of people I loved, and I almost imagined it would wake ...

So today I desecrated my first dead body.
It went rather well.
Went into the dissecting room quite quiet, trying not to think about what I was about to do. The first half hour of the lab was pretty agonising, as they showed us videos of the 'This is a scalpel, and these are scissors' variety.
Then finally it was over to the tables.
There was nervous silence as the body bags were opened, and people fumbled around trying to find the right instruments, and flip their cadavers ...

I'm actually quite glad I was never sat down in an interview and asked this question.
Because, in all honesty, I don't really have a well-formed answer. I kind of like sciencey-stuff that isn't too maths-based, I don't openly despise all human beings, and I watched a lot of Scrubs and House during high school.
So I got to the end of year 13, kind of stuck. It's a big thing to put on a 17 year-old's shoulders, the decision of what they should do for, well, ever. And eventually I was ...

Recently there have been a few 'this is why I hate/love studying medicine' blogs. This sort of annoys me, because I'd been planning on doing one, and now I'm just going to look like I'm following the cool kids. But you know what? Screw it, I'm writing one anyway.

1) We're scientists, by and large.
The majority of my cohort came to medicine via the health-sciences first year category (just under three quarters). The quarter of the class who came in through graduate entry mostly ...

Tonight, I was talking to a health-sci from this forum. She was freaking out. I wasn't very nice about it, because she was freaking out about something I, and plenty of others, have already told her isn't true. I apologise for how harsh and un-empathetic I may have been. But it got me thinking: The start of HSFY is a shock to the system. And it can be very difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel. So I thought I'd try to remind everyone that it's there
Health-science is a b*tch. ...