Premeds, you’re gonna learn a lot. You are gonna learn a lot about chemistry, biology and even more about those two. But where premeds need to be learning about is: the human body. Learning about the human body should be fun for premeds, because hey, that is what they want to learn about eventually in med school! But still, sometimes, it can be hard to understand and hard to motivate yourself all the time. Therefore, as a premed, you need to change your mind set.
Understand the human body
‘But I learn that in school right?’ Yes you do, but I have a life time homework assignment for you: Want to understand everything about the human body. Due date: End of life. Try to understand every problem with the human body. Is something not working in your body as you want to? Try to understand why not. Is there something in your body you find cool, try to understand the mechanism.
But. I don’t want you to dive in the books every time a problem pops up, but just think about it for a while. Here is a little example of my mind set:
When I’m typing this, my hand and especially my fingers get cold. Ok it is winter here in Europe, so cold fingers are just part of the game right? No they aren’t. Because when I do other things, my hands don’t get cold as they do with typing, while I’m moving my fingers actively now, how is that possible? Now, I’m going to try to understand it (without books). My explanation:
‘When you are typing, your fingers are far away from your body and your arms are stretched. So the blood which comes from your (warm) body, gets colder along the way. This blood gets into your fingers, but it isn’t 37 degrees celcius (sorry, I’m a Europian) anymore, but much colder. So your fingers will feel colder.
Correct me if I am wrong, I want to learn the real explanation if this isn’t the one, but I don’t care about looking it up in the books now. I’ve been thinking for around 5 minutes now about the human body, reminded myself about the vessels which run through your arm and been thinking in explanations. If I want to learn even more, I’ll just ask another premed about what he thinks and we can discuss it.
This sounds so obvious, but it helps me. The next time I learn about the phalanges of the hand, I am triggered: ‘Hey, I can find my explanation here maybe.’ And I have been thinking in problem-solution for a while about the human body. Should work. Find your problem, post it here. We’ll think about it together. Premeds, change your mind set, look for problems and find an explanation every once in a while!
My friend Liam McIvor Martin from the VTAmethod launched his new premed tutoring program. Check it out by clicking the link!
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your link doesnt work
Thanks for mentioning, fixed it!
Stefan:
Good post, as usual, and thank you. Learning about the body is very important. However, don’t just restrict that understanding only to premeds, doctors and those in medical school like yourself.
We all have one life to live and we need to know about our bodies. It is also true for the general population. For example, I was completely ignorant about diet and nutrition and how that affects the body. Only recently, I started to read the literature about the “food pyramid” and other things.
No wonder I felt lazy and low on energy: I was stuffing my body with too much junk food. Now, I have cut back, and replenish my body with plenty of fruits and vegetables. And low salt diet plus less oil intake. I try to walk in the outdoors more too. And get some fresh air and sunshine in my lungs and on my skin. It is really necessary to take care of your body: it is a sacred temple which houses your soul, according to many people. This is a really inspiring post. One of your best.
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