Moving to 'hot'lanta. . .

Wow!! I love to write and to share information with you all. Sometimes, I have to write after the fact; that is the case with tonight's post. I have already moved to Atlanta for my medical rotations. In fact, I have been here two weeks. There was so much going on while I was moving that I didn't have time to write, but don't lose heart, I took notes--mental and written- on what I thought was most pertinent to share.

RENTING IN ATLANTA-

What a major headache!!

I have five children and I knew that they would be going to school here so my situation is a little different from most students. So while I have a little different perspective, I'll try to address both situations adequately.

• With Children-

I researched the location of most of my rotations with my university and found that mostly they are located in close proximity to Decatur, Ga. (An awesome suburb just on the outskirts of Atlanta metro.)

The best school districts based on my criteria- free, diverse, free, good test scores, free, myriad of activities- were Decatur High School, Lakeside High School, Grady High School. 

Further research and with much help from my realtor Sandra Durham and Frank Golley at Golley Realty revealed that Decatur High School and Grady High School districts had very little for rent and the homes were either too small or too, too, too expensive. 

Sandra was a huge help with the logistics of where the best neighborhoods were and where we could get the best place for our budget. She has kept in touch and is just fantastic! I have linked there website above and I was not paid for my review, but I so apreciated all that they did for me.

Basically you can expect to shell out about 1500-2000 per month for a three to four bedroom home that is in a nice suburban style neighborhood. If you want to live closer in the city prices increase considerably and the size of the apartment decreases.

At the final moment I found an a apartment at Embry Hills. It has been a headache and I am suffering through some growing pains, but it is large (2200 sq ft) and it has a pool and my apartment that I will be living in has new flooring and will be basically a brand new interior, but not without much ado and considerable amount of time in negotiation.

If you choose to look here make sure you ask to see the apartment that you are renting. Long story short- the model homes in apartments look amazing, the apartment that you will be renting . . . eh, not so much. Save yourself a headache and look at the exact apartment. The price is about 1200 per month and the layout is great and the area is nice. It would  also be a good choice for roommates due to the spacious rooms and the number of bathrooms. There are two and half bathrooms and four bedrooms. I am close to I-85 and I-285 (both major routes aorund the city) but I am also in an area that has multiple other ways to get around the city which is nice because Atlanta traffic is horrendous!!  

• Without children-

This is much easier. Pretty much there are many nice neighborhoods in Decatur, Ga. You can live anywhere near Emory, CDC, Midtown, Oak Grove. If you look in the same high school districts listed above you can find many places with one bedroom reasonable. You will be close to town and in a good location.

One thing to consider.  TRAFFIC

If you can find a place that will allow you to be traveling away from the city in the morning and toward the city in the afternoons then you can save yourself a lot of time. 

I have more to add but for now this will have to suffice. It is late and I finally have a sleeping baby and family medicine rotation in the morning.

All the best,
Amy Jones

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Professionalism in Social Networking

This blog is hard one to write, but I think it is necessary. I read a few blogs in my spare time . . ok well not really my "spare" time, but you get the point. One that I particularly like is Mothers in Medicine  for the most obvious reason--I am a mother and I am going to be in medicine. But I also like it because they write about issues that women face in the workforce as mothers. Topics such as taking maternity leave, dealing with the children while dealing with the ER patients, and other topics that are more about parenting than medicine. The mothers are all physicians but have different specialities so there are some topics that are specific to certain specialties, which I also like. Somewhere in reading that blog and diverging onto others from there I found my topic for today. Professionalism in Social Networking (as a physician in my case but for others too.)

YIKES!!! A medical student and social networking, and professionalism should not all be in the same sentence. I know. I am guilty too. But the truth is I am aware of the fact that future resident directors and colleagues will be seeing my facebook page and even though I have my security set high, I know that if someone wants to know something about you and it is on the internet it can be found. My sister is an attorney and I have learned that internet content, in many cases, is the secret weapon. Usually, the silver bullet.

The reasons for being careful are obvious. We know that the pictures we post on facebook don't represent our entire lives or our whole being. For instance, when I look at my facebook pictures I see that  in most of them I have been "prepared" for the photo. In other words they aren't of me when I am studying or when I am in class or hanging out at my house all day. No. Those pictures are boring and not attractive to say the least. I also post to my facebook wall frequently about my daily events and goings on , thoughts, and also a lot of scripture and references to my religion. Now, I am not ashamed of my religion or having children/ a family, but I might choose to not disclose this information to a residency director. While relgion and sex and having children are not supposed to factor into the equation, I fear that in some people's minds, whether they admit it or not, does creep into a decision. For instance, if you know that your resident has four children and is married, you might not think too much about it, but what if she was a single parent? Would you question whether she could handle the load? Would you think about what she would do when one of the four, or all of the four, had a virus? And how many sick days will she take vs the candidate without the children?

But it can be followed beyond your resident years, what about when you are physician? Your patients have access to your facebook postings via a friends, friends, sisters photos. The swear words, and half written words and your hatred for drive through wait times, are not what your patients want to know about you. Nor do they need to know if you have a great sex life or a terrible one.

I am guilty of all of these things.

Your patients that want to know that you have more than a good looking physique, and you know how to spell that, the and you. What if your facebook pictures and posts (in txt lingo) don't really say to them, "I am qualified to have your life in my hands"?

That is the point. I think as future physicians we must realize that our patients respect us as doctors and expect us to be "smart" and to know how to treat their illnesses. They have to first trust us in order for us to treat them. We rely heavily on their trust. We need for them to tell us what is going on with them. If we are blogging about X patient and speaking about patients or our job in a negative way on facebook that could negatively affect our practice, and moreover, how our patients view us. We need to command respect, honorability, and trustworthyiness.

Furthermore, when we enter the workforce there are going to be standards that the hospitals and offices we work in have set for us.

I understand this, and I know that my blog and my facebook and my twitter are all open to the public and I need to be reminded of this ever so often.

If you want to know what the American Medical Association's stance is then check it out here. 

So today I challenge my fellow classmates and colleagues to hold to a higher standard in social networking. May you be viewed as you are : Honorable, trustworthy, dependable, respectable with a brilliant, bright mind that has the ability to make the tough chioces when it comes to medicine. I commit to keeping my blogs, facebook, twitter, likdn (and what ever other social networking site that I join) an outward expression of my desire to help others and be deserving of my patients' trust.

Until next time,

Amy Jones, B. Sc.

Future MD.

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My Advice: an oxymoron

So as this semester comes to a close I have been thinking about how I could have studied harder, better, more, and made better grades. I think about what I have learned and worry a little about how close I am to taking Step 1. In my examination of myself I have realized that I rely too heavily on others advice and opinions of certain classes with respect to their level of difficulty and what books to buy and how to study for them. The fact is that I am not those people that I am asking. While I greatly respect their opinions it is all too often not my experience.

So this is the part where my post is an oxymoron. I am about to give you advice to not take others advice. Do with it what you may.

You must know yourself first. Then use what others tell you to your benefit. For instance, I am an auditory learner. If someone will explain a concept to me and I can understand the concept and tell it back to them I will never forget it. I can read the same concept and it is never internalized, and pictures are worse. But if I ask a visual learner what book to buy or use, they will probably recommend a book with great illustrations and less words. That book will be not only difficult for me to read, but it will be very frustrating for me to study. I learned that this semester.

When you are researching which books to buy, thing about how you learn best. If you are asking an upperclassman which books to buy then you should know how they learn best and if you learn the same way. Otherwise their opinion is, for all intensive purposes, useless to you. I have learned this the hard way.

What works for others may not work for you and you have to know yourself well enough to know what you need to make the material "stick" for you.

Many students have very useful advice on what to buy and how to study. I am not saying don't listen to them at all, I am saying use it to your advantage and not to your detriment. If you find that a text book recommendation is not working for you, move on, find something else.

If you need to rewrite your notes for them to make sense then do, I would advice you to use your time understanding the material and reading it rather than writing a bunch of stuff. If notecards work for you then make them, they generally only work for me if I am looking at the notecard.

I love highlighting text. I love going back and reading what I have highlighted to see why I highlighted it. I understand it better that way, but that doesn't mean that it is the best way for you to study for medical school.

My gibberish is getting old, now and I hope that I have driven home the point. KNOW YOURSELF! Know what works for you. DO IT!!!

Best of luck to all the new students arriving at UMHS!

Until next time,

Amy Jones

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Study Break

So when it is block time, I get so tired of studying. But, I am on an island and I can't really run to taco bell or the ice cream shop so I have to get creative. Today's study breaks. . .
    
     Facebook (ahh. . how many times can you say that life is grand or sucks or you're in the USA and have everything at the tip of your fingers? Rub it in a little.) I think next time I'll pass.

    Attempted to make a dessert with bare minimal ingredients (except that it made me not want to try another dessert with bare minimal ingredients); a failure

    Reading med student blogs (score!)

So, I'll share the funniest quotes from the blogs I have read tonight while trying to quiet my mind so that I can sleep-- I have been sitting on my butt since 9 am.

"A patient I admitted last night, broke her hospital window and jumped five stories plummeting to her death." Ok I know that doesn't sound very funny, but the point is the thoughts that came with it. "Why are the hospital windows breakable? Why were there no rails? Why didn't the other patient in the room call out for someone?"

And this one,
            Oncology
Be warned there is adult language. It is probably morbidly funny and if you have a loved one that has died from cancer then you might not find it funny at all.

I hope you laugh a little.

Until next time,
Amy

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New Study Room

Hey check out the new room in the library. Please do not leave your stuff if you are not coming back for hours. We all want to use the space equally so if you are going to eat off campus then do the right thing and leave your stuff in a cubby and let others use your space.

Thanks to President Ross and all others who were involved in getting this put together.

http://iuonlibrary.blogspot.com/2011/07/library-addition-is-now-open.html


Until Next time,
Amy Jones
Future MD, MBA, B.Sc.

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Congratulations! Board Scores are IN.

     One of the first terms you will hear in class, Cell Biology probably, is "high-yield". What the heck does high-yield mean? It means that it is usually tested on the Boards. Another term that is tossed out about two hundred times a day on campus. The Boards are the USMLE Step 1, 2, 3. First priority for medical students is to score very well on the USMLE (United States Medical Licensing Examination) because it determines your residency placement. It is a comprehensive computerized standardized exam to be taken after your second year in medical school. Basically it tests your knowledge of the basic sciences, and apparently current research knowledge. The latter isn't a large part of the test and you can do very well without reading research and medical journals daily.

    The scores for some of those students that took the examination from UMHS recently are back! Those that have told scores have said they did well. A 240 (99) is the "golden" score and some of those that have taken it from our University achieved above it. They did super! So, Congratulations Doctors! Success. Now kick butt in rotations and on the Step 2 CS, CK.

     This is a great indication of how our University prepares us. So Congratulations to UMHS profs and adminstrative staff!

      T-335 days until I take Step 1

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They dress like that in med school???

I haven't posted in a while and I hope to post more often. Medical School is a fulltime job and I love to skype my children when I have a spare moment (read in the morning before classes and at night when I am having a study break). But yesterday I decided that I needed to post more often because hopefully I will only have about six more months here and I feel like I have not chronicled anything. Mostly because I do the same thing everyday but I can share tidbits here and there. Other times it is because I feel like I have so much to do that I don't have time to update my blog. I am also taking an online MBA class (7 week classes) which takes up a ton of my time during the first part of the semester.

Alas, I am here and ready to tell you all that I am thinking about today. First, I have a friend that is in medical school in the states and I often wonder how our experiences are different. Today I put my socks on and hung my throw over the back of library chair to begin studying for my block exams and I thought "do they wear socks and sweatshirts in US medical schools or does everyone wear professional clothes?".  I am not sure but here most everyone is in casual clothing. Our classrooms are fully air conditioned and quite cool usually so we all bring sweaters and sweatshirts. The closer it gets to blocks the more bummy everyone seems to dress. Except for the Med 4s. They have Intro to Clinical Medicine and they have to dress professionally (or scrubs) a few times a week. So you can definitely tell the difference between the Med 4s and the rest of us. I am now a med 3.

 This is from my first semester when I was in ARP! In the ARP classroom.

I think this was taken either the first of this semester or the last part of last semester.

This is me today! 

I have been on the island for a year now! Unbelievable! I wish I had more time here and I am already dreading and anxiously anticipating being back in the states. Notice that most of these pictures are taken in the library or in a classroom, (the most current one is in the lib although you can't tell).

I have had an incredible time here on the island. I have met a lot of great people and friends that I will definitely stay in touch with over the years and some that I probably will never see again unless we end up in the same hospital. There are some things that take some getting used to but all in all it is a very pleasant experience and I hope to do some rotations in the UK. Maybe in London.

If you have the opportunity to study abroad then take it. Make the most of your time in college and graduate school. This is the only time in your life you can experience another country and not have to work there to make ends meet!

If you are planning to attend University of Medicine and Health Sciences at St. Kitts then please send me your questions and I'll answer them right here for everyone to read. I would love for people to be able to use my blog later for help with their transition into medical school.

Until next time 'mon!
Amy Jones
Future Amy Jones, MD, MBA, B. Sc.

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Holidays in St. Kitts

There a lot of holidays in the US. We generally know exactly when they are because they are written into almost every calendar you ever buy. From the time that we are little children we learn that everyone stays home on holidays, and the banks close and the government offices close, and the post man doesn't come. There are some holidays that grocery stores and resturants close for like Christmas Day and sometimes Thanksgiving. Then there are some holidays for which there are limited operating hours, perhaps Easter and Independence Day. Generally the larger stores are open for all holidays except Christmas. Well, as you might would expect that is not the case with St. Kitts.

Today is a holiday as was yesterday. It is the independence holiday and everything closes. The grocery stores, the retailers, the resturants. . . I don't even think I saw that many goats grazing today!

It is the weirdest thing. There are some tourist traps that remain open like "The Strip" and "Rituals" (a tourist trap but I like it), and the Mariott (enough said). It isn't like you plan for this either because their isn't a sign on every door prior to the holiday stating that there is a holiday coming up. It is just an email from the University on Friday afternoon around 3pm that states that the island will (for all practical purposes) shut down on Monday and Tuesday. Well by that point it is too late to make arrangements for anything and if you have business to do it is already too late because even on normal days the banks and business offices shut down at four o'clock at the latest and generally 2 o'clock is quittin' time 'round here.

This is probably the most unusual and difficult practice to get used to. I plan to go to the bank and realize that it is 3pm. They're closed. I want to call the cable company and it is 3pm. They're closed. Everything closes by 3 or 4 pm which is about the same time I get out of classes. Granted by that point my brain is fried or I would remember prior to calling that they close at 3 or 4.

Therefore, I find myself saying "tomorrow, I will".

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Rainy Night on St. Kitts

It seems that it rarely rains on St. Kitts. When I am out and the skies turn grey I generally ask the locals if they think that it will rain. Usually I am told that the only thing we, kittians (kit-`tee-shuns), can guarantee is "no snow". When it rains on St. Kitts the ppl usually stand under the eaves or in the alleyways because generally they rain passes stops just as suddenly as it begins. Today, however, it seems that the rain is here for the evening. It has been grey and overcast all day and the rain has been coming waves as well as thunder and the occassional lightening bolt. It doesn't seem to stop the activities on the golf course or at the beaches. The tourist and others just continue their regularly scheduled program.

I should add that the rainy season, which coincides with the hurricane season -- August to October, is just about to begin and that in the rest of the year the rainy days are few. So the thunder, lightening and rain are a welcomed event when they occur.

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What to bring?

Everyone has the same questions before they get to the island. The most frequently asked and unclearly answered is "What should I bring". I can tell you what I brought and what I wish I had brought, but really it comes down to what you like and where you will be living.

If you will be living in the Royal St. Kitts then I recommend these items.

something that you cook with or on:

hot plate

griddle

toaster oven

fast boiler (I am not sure what the technical term is but this is like a little pot that you can plug in and it boils rapidly. I use mine to cook pasta, oatmeal, boil eggs, etc)

If you choose to bring a hot plate or griddle you will need:

pots and pans

spatulas

stirring spoons

Even if you think that you will mostly eat out and not eat in your room I reccommend these Kitchen type items:

plates (can be plastic disposable)

utensils (also can be disposable, but I prefer real utensils)

some kind of cups/glasses

coffee cup

plastic gladware

foil and plastic wrap

ice tray (even though there is an ice machine you might prefer to not have to go out to get ice. )

Items that you might not think to bring that you will probably want and definitely might need:

toilet paper

paper towels

good smelling candles/air freshner

cleaning supplies

laundry detergent sheets

laundry bag/hamper

toilet brush

Shaving/hair removal items

Food items that can be brought for nearly nothing but will you cost you a bunch on the island:

cereal

fast prep rice/pasta sides

chips

coffee

granola bars

snack foods in general

Other items that you might want to bring a lot of b/c they are way expensive:

shampoo/conditioner

body wash

hand soap

dish liquid

deodorant

sanitary napkins/tampons

sunscreen ( I bought mine at the dollar store for a buck a bottle)

tanning lotion

towels

bed linens (as most places don't supply those even the royal)

IRON ( I cannot tell you how many ppl didn't bring an iron and have needed one)

favorite perfume/lotions

face washes/ makeup remover

extra makeup (it seems very expensive here and I am not sure where you can buy it easily)

immodium/ibuprofen

midol

Scrubs

close toed shoes/athletic shoes

My suggestions for fitting this into two suitcases!

Pack up all that you can w/o going over the weight limit into your alotted number of bags and then bring your carryon that is as large as it can be and still be in the limits. Load up your backpack as full you can get it b/c it can be a carryon too and you likely won't have to weigh it.

Make sure that you opt for the supplies over clothing for the first semester. I had five bags total and only had to pay for two. None of them were over the limit! I cannot tell you how many ppl look great, but have no supplies and really wished they had brought less clothing and more food and supplies.

If you rent a house/apt most of the cooking stuff you can leave out, and on some occassions they will also provide you with towels.

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Island Style

What do you do on a Sunday when you are on an island without your family and freinds? Lay out on the beach for two hours, what three movies on HBO, hang out at the casino for free drinks for two or more hours, eat dinner with a friend. Praise God that even though you had no money the guy behind the counter got your friends order wrong so you could have dinner, after all.

Today, I layed in the sun by the ocean and studied for my Physio exam on Monday. I actually remember more from two hours on the beach then I would have if I had been in my room for four to six hours.

It seems like when I am in my room without my family I feel so alone. I try to do everything I can to not study. Like watching three movies back-to-back. (Just a heads up, I am no literary genius and I am sure that my grammar and spelling leave something to be desired.) So, back to my story. I layed on the beach f

or two hours. I have a nice red tint to most of my body! It makes me look a little more alive I think.

So life on the island is great for me. Today I saw the tamed monkeys that locals will train so that they can make US money off the tourists on the beach. They have fingernails, the monkeys and tourists too I guess, but it was the monkey's nails that caught my attention. So not only did I learn that the adenohypophis recieves TRH from the Hyphothalamus which stimulates the relase of TSH which then stimulates the thyroid to release T3 and T4, but I learned that the monkeys here have a thumb and a finger nail. They were cute little monkeys.

So I went out to the Casino, as long you play their games they serve free drinks. I played one dollar and drank a strawberry daquiri for free. Good Deal on St. Kitts. The Jerk Chicken wings were the bomb too!

My friends always ask me how I get everything for free or cheap. I am not sure really.

Hopefully soon I will have a camera and Ill post pictures of everything every day. Just in case someone is looking for information on University of Medicine and Sciences at St. Kitts or morea affectionately known as SKB.

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