It's always a thrill for me working with medical students. In the every day grind of dealing with insurance companies, lawyers, and those people working against docs, it's refreshing do a little bit of teaching once in a while. It helps keep me grounded, and hopefully not too cynical on medicine.
Every summer, there is this huge medical student meeting that I look forward to. I attended my first one over ten years ago when I myself was a student. Through the years, I've used it as kind of a yearly benchmark on where I was in my life both professionally and personally. This meeting has been on of the few constants in my life over the past decade.
This is where I was at the beginning of this month. And, I was looking forward to blogging from my hotel room to give the day-to-day updates, but, as we all know, that didn't happen. But, it was four days of a totally positive environment. People excited to talk about medicine, excited sharing their experiences why they chose medicine, and not embarrassed to do so. These four days definitely energize me for the next twelve months and make me look forward to next year!
There are workshops, lectures, and one of the biggest exhibit halls that I've ever seen. Every year, I cannot help but get sucked into one of the publisher booths and buy whatever the latest text book is to try to keep updated on things.
I did mention adult beverages before, didn't I? I have this group of friends that I actually met at this very meeting when I was a medical student. We have managed to keep in touch through the years. I'm just a lowly guy in private practice, but they have gone on to bigger and better things being an assistant professor at some university somewhere. Don't get me wrong, same person, but who knew that she would have this important title years later. The only time I get to see some of these people is at this annual meeting. There were a lot of late nights, and we all discovered that we're not a young as we used to be. I'll continue with this story a little later...