Gunner Palace

The first definition of "gunner" on Urban Dictionary defines the term as "A person who is competitive, overly-ambitious and substantially exceeds minimum requirements. A gunner will compromise his/her peer relationships and/or reputation among peers in order to obtain recognition and praise from his/her superiors."

I don't exactly agree with this definition – it sounds more like "pre-med shark" to me – but I do like definition #3: "A medical student that tries way too hard by keeping up with daily medical news, read medical journals on the toilet, and brings all their notes to the gym while 'working out.'"

We have our first exam on Monday, which covers the first eight days' worth of lecture material. And we, as a class, are FREAKING OUT.  "Eight days? What are you freaking out about? Eight days is nothing."

This is eight days' worth of lecture material:


8 days, 23 lectures, 3 problem sets, and 7 different professors/lecturers are responsible for that bloody, aborted mess right there, all of which we need to commit to memory by 9am Monday.

Dahlgren Memorial Library, the medical library here at Georgetown, affectionately referred to as "DML" by most and "home sweet home" by others, is open 24/7. And believe you me, there are some here who make full use of that privilege.

But none of us are really gunners. The insane amount of studying we're doing is nowhere close to "above and beyond." At this point, I feel like we're all just trying to keep our heads above the water. Much like how undergrads at MIT and Caltech describe their experiences, taking medical classes is like trying to drink water from a fire hydrant. They throw an insane amount of information at you, and you just hope that you can retain a small bit of it without the water pressure blowing your face off first.

"Well if you have to much studying to do, why the hell are you blogging?" You shut up. I'm taking my union-mandated ten-minute break.

I wonder how much a functional brain and spinal cord goes for in the Mexican black market. My brain alone isn't cutting it.