despite the newly connected smart bro at unit 603, i'm writing this entry from home sweet home in qc. why so far, you may ask? well, because i need to get a uniform set from home. and why in the name of God would i have to get a uniform set from home tonight? because we'll be having our first patient exposure tomorrow morning, care of os 203: skin, muscles, and bones. and that's four weeks into classes. don't we just love the new curriculum?

tomorrow, the oh-so-kind consultants of the dermatology section will be expecting us to march into the outpatient department or some other location in the pgh and take histories and physical examinations of the patients they'll be having that morning. it'll be one thing for us to enter the opd as a gigantic, milling, frightened mass wearing white, announcing to the whole world that we're med students, but it'll be another thing to be expected to act like a real doctor, with fair warning given only days in advance. not only will we be examining real, suffering patients with the consultants' judgmental eyes hovering behind us, but the patients probably won't even know that we're just first year proper students, with nary a shred of experience between all 160 of us. and as such, they'll be expecting a proper, professional exam, which we will then be obliged to give them.

maybe it'll be better if we had a few trial sessions ahead of time, a few lectures on proper physical examinations and history-taking, an interactive sample here and there. but no, all we have are a few handouts (which i'll be burning through like hell tonight), our wits, and the pressure of holding the fates of the patients in our hands to help us pull through tomorrow. i'm pretty sure i'll remember tomorrow for the rest of my life as the day i couldn't write a full line of text or stutter a whole sentence of speech, or maybe the day a freshman in the upcm caused a scandal in the opd by rushing out of a consultation room crying his eyes out after a severe bashing from a maltreated patient. of course, i'm only exaggerating *a bit*, but you know where i'm coming from, right? (or not...)

oh yeah, i'm writing this entry right now with my pants looking freshly-laundered and my torso practically drowning in its own apocrine secretions. tonight was my first official medrhythmics practice session, but that's another story for later.

a week ago, we were discussing cell membranes, and now this. med sure does pick up its pace real quick.

**edit: okay, so maybe i did overreact up there a bit. i just read the tutor module for derma, and it says we're not going to do any exam or diagnosis, just check the skins of the patients and describe the skin's condition and stuff. we'll even be having a lecture the entire morning to prepare. we're not even going to be in the hospital proper at that. oh well, there goes the melodrama. but still, the prospect of studying actual people rather than slides and transes is a bit daunting. wish me luck, still.**