4th year already??

Tomorrow is the beginning of the 4th year advisathon... After 3 years of being told what to learn and when to learn it, we are finally given the opportunity to choose our own schedule.

This can be good and bad. For my friends still trying to figure out what they want to do, this comes with the stress of the unknown. They don't know what electives to do, when to do what, and on top of all that they are still trying to figure out what to apply to for residency. For those of us who know what we want to do, comes the stress of trying to figure out what electives would be best to prepare us for the future (I know, definitely the better place to be).

4th year at my school only has 3 required rotations, and 5 electives. The 3 required rotations are emergency medicine, ambulatory (outpatient) medicine, and the sub-internship ("pretend your an intern... and try to impress the socks off your attendings in order to get a STRONG* letter of recommendation"). As for electives, up to 3 can be away electives (I'm going to try and do 2 away electives: transplant surgery and surgical intensive care**)... and I get a free elective for doing Co-Curricular during 1st and 2nd year...

Which means only 2 other electives to figure out.*** I'm debating between anesthesiology, cardiology, and radiology... all of which would be really good to have for the future.

Anyways, tomorrow marks the beginning of becoming that individual everyone else in med school envies: a fourth year student. A year considered to be the easiest of all 4 years, replete with plenty of time to relax, and outside of USMLEs, without studying for exams!****


* I swear I'm going to hit the next person to tell me not to ask for a letter of recommendation, but a STRONG letter of recommendation. I get it... strong... it needs to make me look good. Can we move on now?
** Which I'm going to try and make into a medicine month... cause I mean, really, it's the ICU... although they're surgical patients, it's all medical management... and if I can get it to count as a medicine month I get to do Advance Surgical Skills.... Which I otherwise wouldn't be able to do, due to limits on the amount of electives in one specialty (the school wants us to be more well-rounded, whatever... I volunteer, play in an orchestra, and was well-rounded in college)
*** Please note that an 8 month year means I'm done at the end of March/April (depending on months off)... which means TRAVEL!!!!!
***That's not to say 4th year is not without stress, a lot of stress: USMLE Step 2, Residency applications, Interviews, and Match to name a few.