I've now officially completed TWO clerkships! I finished clinical duties Sunday evening and took my ob/gyn shelf exam this morning.  I still consider myself to be quite the novice when it comes to babies, but I'm a good deal more knowledgeable about pregnant ladies. I've also learned that crying new daddies are officially the cutest. I had the opportunity to do my rotation at an outside hospital which definitely had both pros (awesome health-conscious cafeteria, far superior parking situation) and cons (oh good a new and entirely unfamiliar building in which I can get lost forever, stranger danger). Truthfully, it was an easier adjustment than I expected and I'm going to miss seeing many of the delightful people I met and worked with in the past few weeks. I will also be forever grateful for how kind and accommodating everyone was in light of my… "special" condition.

What on earth am I talking about? Glad you asked! Let me set the scene. It's the evening of Tuesday, July 12^th. I completed orientation at the hospital early this afternoon and, sweet – had time to study before my first real day of ob/gyn! It's now about 8:00 and I'm walking from the parking lot to my apartment building in eager anticipation of going to sleep (don't judge me). I'm strolling at a leisurely pace, in perfectly reasonable footwear, no obstacles in sight. Suddenly, TOTALLY UNPROMPTED COMPLETE INVERSION OF THE ANKLE ACCOMPANIED BY DELIGHTFUL SOUND OF BONE SNAPPING. What did my natural grace gift me with that evening? A fractured fifth metatarsal and a very fashion-forward boot for a minimum of 6 weeks. Also, a riveting visit to the ED that didn't conclude until 3:30 in the morning. Yaaaaaay. On the positive side of things, I get to hear lots of fun stories from (clumsy) random strangers. The "Oh, Stefanie…" looks I get are even more heartfelt than usual. Eh, it could be worse.

Before...

My trackmates and I recently received our grades for internal med, our first completed rotation. I didn't do as well as I'd hoped, but as well as I honestly believe I deserved. I had a really tough time with the amount of knowledge necessary to be successful in internal med. I mean, it can almost literally be anything. I'm glad that the truly quantifiable components of our evaluation (exams) matched up well with my ultimate overall grade (which is to say, I was stalking the class mean). What I fear will happen at some point in the future is that these will be incongruent (say, I actually do really well on the written exams at the end, but not-so-hot on clinical performance evaluations and end up with a 'meh' overall grade) and it will feel incredibly unsatisfying. I have some experience with performance- based evaluation from "juries" as a music major, but there was still a much more systematic way of going about grading and averaging across evaluators such that it doesn't feel the same.  Ah, the trials and tribulations of being an M3. (For the record, singing in front of a bunch of professional singers who are specifically tasked with judging you is WAY more terrifying than anything I've been asked to do yet in medical school. Here's hoping it stays that way.)