Fast-forward....backwards from August to March, by July blogger of the month Maayan Melamed

I checked out the blog site and realized that I (and the rest of my class) got booted from first year status. We are now officially second years. So to clear the blogosphere for the newbies, I decided to give a fastforwarded post of the rest of my year--March backwards to August of last year. Enjoy.

The beginnings of the Astroblasts. M and S playing acoustic at Ashan Hazman (and although I’m fluent in Hebrew I can’t figure this out yet, Smoke of the Time?) and they were awesome. And then slowly but surely a vocalist, a flautist, and a cellist were added (in that order) to create the best cover band MSIH has ever seen.

I know you can probably judge for yourself but I need to just tell you that this kid was really friggin’ cute. Our lovely AMSA Volunteer Chair organized a visiting day in the hospital for Hannukah. Volunteering was pretty liberally defined here considering we got free doughnuts and beer afterwards. In any case, my group went to a pediatric ward. The Chair has some great experience doing medical clowning, and she had the support materials to lend us for a dice game where the kids had to put on the costume quickly. The kids really enjoyed it (although we may have been more amused than they by their costumes).

 In November I attended the EKG workshop hosted by the Emergency Medicine Interest Group. We had some lovely male volunteers that showed their bare PQRSTs, if you know what I mean. Much fun was had by all.

During Sukkot break, I joined some friends on a trip to Egypt. This is a picture on the way back. It was a really interesting trip, a bit much to go into here. Not to mention the unwelcome gifts I carried back with me to Israel… intestinally… but that’s an even longer story. Anyway, travel in general was a pretty big highlight of my year.

Oh how naïve we were. First day in white coats. Where it all began. We would spend many more days in these pathology labs, most of which looking at computer slides with no need of white coats at all. But herein we began our medical education. Good luck first years, here’s to you. - Maayan Melamed, July blogger of the month (and now rising second-year medical student!)