Wanna know what they are?
The mental challenge, definitely.
Memorizing 200+ bones, 600+ muscles, and countless hormones, cytokines and drugs (medicines). And if there's something wrong with the body parts, they change their name immediately. A normal backbone is also called the vertebra - if it gets inflamed, it's called spondylosis; if it gets fractured, that's spondylolysis. To be honest, I got confused and looked this up on Wikipedia just to get it right.
The relationships that you're exposed to is wonderful. At least 300 are in the same year in the course, which means that there are always new things to discover by talking to my fellow coursemates. Everyone's different, e.g. one of my prac buddies performs in a circus over the break next week, and things like these spice up my life.
The learning opportunities are diverse. I've found that textbooks are not the only source of knowledge. Throughout these 3.5 semesters, I've learned a great deal from PBL mates, doctors who teach ICM, and even patients. This morning, Dr Ross told our group about an interesting case of a woman with shoulder pain. Guess what was causing it? An ectopic pregnancy, causing fluid build up beneath her diaphragm, which then stimulated her phrenic nerve, so the pain was referred to her shoulder.
I'll be a bit biased to Melbourne Uni for a while now. I love the 16-hour average weekly contact time. How much freedom! That's the way it's meant to be anyway, because doctors (I think) gotta be very good at managing themselves, whether it's learning, working, socialising, etc.
Can't thank God enough for bringing me here to spend my student days. I'm not exactly sure why I'm here, but I guess it's to see people look to Him and get healed.
And Dinesh, thanks for this photo!
