"Welcome to the first day of the rest of your lives"

So its the start of clinical school. Togged out in our finest office garb to clothed the nakedness of our medical repertoire,we third year medical students infiltrated a number of teaching hospitals across Melbourne. All 266 of us.

Perhaps its a little early to blog about the transition from pre-clinicals to clinicals after just one day of being in the hospital environment; we did not even make it to the wards! That's been scheduled for next week. Yet the intensity of the third year curriculum and the immensity of the body of medical knowledge has begun to gnaw at me. The past 2 years ave been fairly structured; we attended lectures and tutorials and studied whatever was fed to us for the exams. This year, we're playing a different ballgame. With sparse lectures on our timetables (if any at all!) and tutorials becoming increasingly self-directed, the demarcations of what we need to know has become blurred. We're kicking the same ball on a new turf and by new rules that are being spelt out to us this week. Its intimidating yet simultaneously exhilarating.

Of all the lectures we have had today as part of the initiation process, one left an impression. The lecturer commenced his speech with "Welcome to the first day of the rest of your lives". Then i realized that this was the first day of the rest of my life.

Just watched: Sweeney Todd. Strongly recommended to anyone fan of blood, gore, hunks and babes who sing. (I personally found Johnny Depp's singing voice extremely sexy.)