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From the Deans and Directors
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From W. Edwin Dodson, MD
From W. Edwin Dodson, MD
Medical school is serious business, but it is also full of happy moments, successes, plus some funny experiences. So now that you are a medical student, don't abandon your sense of humor - especially your ability to laugh at yourself. You are going to do some really dumb things, but it's not the end of the world if you are honest about it, accept your mistake, make amends, laugh at yourself, move on, and don't do it again. That's why it's called medical school. Now some specific advice:
- Have fun every day.
- Learn to fly fish and get your best friends and partner(s) to join you.
- When in doubt, send a thank you note. (Not by e-mail.)
- Have a conversation with every one of your classmates before the year is out. They are incredible people, many of whom will be your friends from now on.
- Learn to cook and share the recipes with your classmates. Here's one to get you started:
Key Lime Pie
3/4 cup of key lime juice (only key limes will do)
1 can Eagle Brand condensed milk
4 egg yolks
1 (pre-made) graham cracker crust
Directions: Mix ingredients. Pour in crust. Refrigerate. Eat and tell everyone how difficult it was to make.
W. Edwin Dodson, MD
Associate Vice Chancellor
Associate Dean for Admissions and Continuing Medical Education
Professor of Pediatrics and of Neurology
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From Koong-Nah Chung, PhD
From Koong-Nah Chung, PhD
Your first year at Wash U is pass-fail. So stop competing and start collaborating. Form strong bonds with your classmates and help each other. You will spend the next four years with your peers, and they will be your life-long friends and colleagues. Get to know the faculty, administration and staff; we are here to help you succeed. Find an advisor or mentor who takes an interest in you. Your mentor will help you to navigate medical school, and if you're lucky, you could get a home-cooked meal out of it. Stay grounded by volunteering in the community. Have fun and stay sane by getting involved in school clubs and continuing with your hobbies. Get to know St. Louis; there is no shortage of entertainment, including the Saint Louis Zoo, the Missouri Botanical Gardens, the Saint Louis Science Center, art museums, and the world-champion Cardinals. There are also many music venues, an amazing symphony, and plenty of nightlife. Pay attention to your academics. Take your basic science courses seriously; they will come in handy in later years, and your future patients will thank you. Don't worry about your residency match yet. Most importantly, get enough sleep, exercise, and have fun. Oh, and if you want to do research, just email me (chungk@wusm.wustl.edu).
Koong-Nah Chung, PhD
Associate Dean for Medical Student Research
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From Will Ross, MD, MPH
From Will Ross, MD, MPH
Welcome to the Washington University School of Medicine. In St. Louis. While the latter distinction was added to differentiate us from an array of high-performing institutions that don't provide as much free food (U Wash, George Wash, Wash Lee and that coin laundry on South Hampton Avenue), we've found our association with St. Louis to be one of mutual benefit. Where else can you attend a world-class art museum, zoo, and science center; get a frozen concrete (you'll hear about that elsewhere in this book); eat flat pizza; get a ticket to Les Miserables; and hear jazz at the Bistro all for a total of 50 bucks?! The living is good for some, but, for distinct populations, the modern world has been less kind. True enough, several blocks from the medical center you will find neighborhoods grappling with generational poverty and escalating rates of sexually transmitted infections and chronic diseases. We accept our unique urban enclave for all its glory - the good and the not-so-good. As an incoming student, you should immerse yourself in the fascinating world of scientific discovery and medical innovation but never forget that the true purpose of medicine is to uplift the human condition. During your years in medical school, connect to the greater community and experience the tremendous personal satisfaction of service, acknowledging the marked difference you can make on the lives of those less fortunate. Allow yourself to be trained, in essence, in a medical center without walls. Your overall experience as a medical school student will then be much more rewarding, at Washington University. In St. Louis.
Will Ross, MD, MPH
Associate Dean for Diversity
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From David W. Windus, MD
From David W. Windus, MD
When I moved to St. Louis some years ago to finish my training in nephrology, I figured I could stand anything for a couple of years. We had heard it was really hot and there was crime everywhere. Okay, so it was pretty hot in the summer, but we thoroughly enjoy this city. St. Louis has a lot to offer ranging from the arts, to old neighborhoods, many ethnicities, and recreational opportunities. While there is no question that most of you will need to put much effort into your studies, the city is a great place to break away from the gravitational pull of the medical school from time to time. You will make many friends among your classmates and will likely spend many non-work hours in their company. I would also encourage you to get involved in non-med school community activities such as music, recreation, or religious organizations. You will rapidly discover that people in St. Louis are incredibly friendly and helpful. Although this seems overused as a phrase, I believe your success in medical school and as a future physician will be best achieved by this balance of studies and nurturing your life beyond our doors.
David W. Windus, MD
Associate Dean for Medical Student Education
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From the Course Masters and Professors
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From Wayne M. Yokoyama, MD
From Wayne M. Yokoyama, MD
Phew! You made it. You got into one of the world's great medical schools and certainly the most selective. Things are going great - you're excited about meeting new classmates, decorating your new apartment, starting classes, learning to be a doctor. ... Then it hits you - there's sooo much to learn! And it seems to be more important than ever that you memorize everything you hear in class and read in your textbooks. If you don't remember that one formula from your biochem lecture, your (future) patient could die! Not only that, but it seems like all the other med students remember everything! Relax. Feeling overwhelmed is normal. Take a deep breath. Take another one. (That's enough, otherwise you might pass out from hyperventilation! More about that in second year.) You're here because we know you can do the work and that you will make a fine physician. If you're still stressed out, you should know that there's no embarrassment in getting help from others, be it your fellow classmates, family, or a counselor. The best advice I can give you is a perspective from my own anatomy professor who told me that he knew that our recall for his class material quickly waned with time. But he was confident that when we needed to use the material we forgot, we knew where to find it. And that we could assimilate and use it very quickly, certainly much faster than learning it for the first time. He was right, perhaps even more so in this age of electronic information and internet search engines where information is readily available, but it's really helpful to have a good idea of what you are looking for and a sense for the accuracy of that information. So remember, there's no room in medicine for know-it-alls because they simply can't know it all!
Wayne M. Yokoyama, MD
Levin Professor of Medicine
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From Stephen S. Lefrak, MD
From Stephen S. Lefrak, MD
I am honored to write a piece for the Advice section of the Dis-Orientation Guide. As a clinician and teacher, I have been privileged to advise many in intimate and difficult circumstances, although no one will mistake me for such celebrated advice writers as "Dear Abby" or "Miss Manners." Entering medical school is very much a life-cycle event, as defining as marriage, birth of a child, and other vital life experiences. Precisely as these experiences alter the direction, quality, and meaning of a life, so too does initiating a medical career. But even though the first day of parenthood is transformative, parenthood is a lifetime process and not merely a one-day triumph. Similarly, physicianhood is a lifetime process and not simply the achievement of a series of delineated goals. The best advice I can give you is that while it is important to focus on the goals at hand, you must enjoy the process of achieving them. Goals, once seemingly realized, have a way of replicating and moving into the distance in an almost infinite progression. The only way to maintain one's spirit is to enjoy the process entailed in attaining the goal or of devising ways to make it enjoyable regardless of how difficult, tedious, or challenging the process appears. The preeminent characteristic of the professionalization process you are now initiating is the privilege that it bestows of sharing incredibly intimate and personal moments with vulnerable people. Our patients need us not only for whatever expertise we may bring to the bedside, but they require our human presence in their moments of need. Whatever your specific goals, I urge you to embrace the process of earning privileged personal access with your patients as you move through your life of physicianhood. After all, this is both medicine's definitive process and ultimate goal.
Stephen S. Lefrak, MD
Professor of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
Assistant Dean
Director, Humanities Program in Medicine
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From Gregory M. Polites, MD
From Gregory M. Polites, MD
One of the unique things about being a clinical physician, a college professor, a medical school course master, and an assistant residency director is appreciating the value of perspective. Because I have the unique opportunity to work with students at every rung along the educational ladder, I get to understand the concerns and worries of students at every stage. One common concern that medical students have is that there is simply too much to know. The volume of information is enormous and the pace of learning is fast. Medical students always wonder when that magical ability to translate "book knowledge" into clinical skill will happen. What I tell them is to simply "trust the process." Medicine is an ongoing process of learning, forgetting, and then re-learning what you just forgot but now in a different context. With hard work, a humble attitude, a conscientious mindset, and a consistent effort, one's knowledge base matures and develops. Combine this with clinical experience and in time you will be transformed into what you've always hoped to become - a knowledgeable, competent and compassionate physician. Just trust the process.
Gregory M. Polites, MD
Course Master, Practice of Medicine I and III
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From Robert Wilkinson, PhD
From Robert Wilkinson, PhD
- You are all very bright, yet diverse in other ways. Share your individual insights and knowledge. This will help you learn and provide you with informal teaching experience.
- Take advantage of student-run activities. They are what is special about this place, and they probably contribute to your education as much as anything else.
- Realize that you're already successful and will remain so. You're still No. 1 even though you might be number 90 at WUSM. That's what happens when all of the No. 1s get together.
- Medicine is a profession of trade. To the extent allowed by your instructors, try to focus on learning your trade and not on taking tests. The goal of scoring test points helped to get you here but, ironically, now is the time to lose what is often called the "student mentality."
- Basic science has been taught at medical schools ever since the Flexner Report. (See, for example Wikipedia's entry or read Ken Ludmerer's book "Time to Heal.") Including basic science is an improvement over a purely clinical education, because the physician's knowledge remains current. Skipping out of first-year classes to get clinical experience by shadowing, etc., is unwise according to all competent clinicians that I know.
All of the above IMHO, of course.
Robert Wilkinson, PhD
Course Master, Cell and Organ Systems Biology - Physiology
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From Austin Wesevich
From Austin Wesevich
If our body can teach us anything, one of the most important lessons is counter-regulation. There is a constant push and pull, a yin and yang, that keeps us healthy and homeostatic. This is the key to a happy, healthy, successful medical school student. Now that you're in graduate school, you will realize that life is a lot more focused. You're working toward a career, and there is always more to learn. Innervations, biochemical pathways, and steps to the physical exam will be swimming in your head as if you were in organic chemistry all over again. Plus, you're driven to learn more. On the flip side, you still have some youth left in you. Going out to bars or clubs, playing music or singing, going running or hiking or climbing - these are all still part of you, even if they do not directly relate to medicine. The efficiency of the human body relies on set points that can fluctuate up or down. I urge you not to push yourself to the extreme but instead to do your best to find a balance. Pursue the things you love and expand yourself through the opportunities and people available to you here. You will grow in ways you never thought you could.
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