USC School of Medicine - Asklepiad Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

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Between uncertainty and experience is the sophomore. The medical sophomore progressively adds depth and color to the structured and colorless basic medical facts he accumulated m his first year, but is innocent of responsibility and moves incognito in temperance. A sophomore knov ' s Chiari ' s syndrome if he is competitive and Horner ' s syndrome if he ' s av ake, but he doesn ' t know what to do for heartburn. A sophomore finds hepatic fetor and orders dual transaminases, OT and PT, bilirubins, icteric index, alkaline p-tases. Quick prothrombin times, A-G ratio and, of course, on admit and follow-up CBC and urinalysis, but never o thymol turbidity, or ceph floe. A physician orders transami- nases and an alkaline p-tase and makes the diagnosis, and the cost to the patient is fifty dollars less. If we can just make it through the boards, we ' ll make it. The sophomore is tired and bored. Don ' t worry about it , soys the resident. Everybody feels that way. You get over it. Wait till you ' re on intern. The sophomore closes his books about one o ' clock or so and slips into bed. Thank God, I ' m not a freshman. At six thirty he stares sleepily into the mirror. Do I really need a tie today? Many days seem without substance. The calendar is a schedule of fractionated theatrical images. 8:00, pharmacology: So what explanation can you give for the data I ' ve produced here on the board. Hardy? Well, it would seem that tochy- phalaxis Sievers (raising hand, smoothing hair): Sir, sir! between uncertainty The sophomore lives in an expanded world but a small environ- ment. To him it ' s a tight stuffy uncomfortable four by four universe. It ' s a discarded door snug on cinder blocks, a second hand desk, o kitchen table, an antique secretary. There ' s just room to tilt back the chair crazily, comfortably. There ' s just enough light or too much light. It ' s quiet and lonely. The television that your roommate or wife or neighbor has time for, comes looking to make o sophomore more lonely. have a lark, have a lark, have a lark today Up high on more cinder blocks or in the case ore the books. In there, in the anatomy, in the physiology, the microbiology, the use of drugs, especially in the pathology, the sophomore knows, is the secret of life. It ' s so dreary. As freshmen, we found out how the body works. As sophomores, we learned it doesn ' t work. 9:30, physical diagnosis, the history: Have you ever hod the bad blood? Sheeat, man. 12:00, at lunch: Benedict: so naturally when I heard this murmur, I got the intern to confer on his EKG, and with an S-T segment like that, naturally . Newmark: What ' s this bull? 1 :30, survey of disease: Sherwin: Wycoff. Wycoff: Yes, here. Sherwin: Now, Russel, supposing you were a young handsome pneumococcus, and suppose you wanted to give me a severe necrotiz- ing Glenn: Doctor, I hove a question. Wycoff: Bless you. 50

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. ' : 3:00, pathology: Sherwin: We ' ll run these films again in slow motion. Probably, the death throes of the virulent leukocyte ore among the most poig- nant . anonymous voice: This guy teaches two courses? and experience Medical sophomory goes beyond iotrotechnics and tedious medical theory. In the evening and on weekends, each student moves in his own way to divorce himself from dullness, to develop the person he is, or to pursue the person he fancies himself. He occupies himself so as to forget that the immense body of medical knowledge which is inscribed within his notebook will, in fact, escape his grasp forever. He plays tennis or golf or sails, for fun, but also to forget his failures or maybe to celebrate seemingly fleeting successes. In those few free times, when he wolks out the doors of County Hospital or McKibben, he finds himself in east Los Ange- les and that ' s where the trouble is. The sophomore is seen on the streets of the city in the late evening volunteering his services to help the poverty program or to support a neighborhood self help project. Outside the doors, also, is California, and the sophomore grows in the wealth of ambition and enterprise. Around him is the soft glow of success in the promising state where fortunes are literally made by men who, only a year before, saved a few cents buying chicken necks and wings for soup. The reality of the world outside and the unnatural camera obscura life in his medical books slowly cultures the maturity the sophomore seeks. All of the circumstances are given a different emphasis depending on the students background and orienta- tion, and, in this aggregate institutional society, each man becomes an individual. As the year closes and he finally reaches the point where he can ' t tolerate another line out of Robbin ' s or when the resolving power of his Meopto special exceeds the resolving power of his eyeballs, then he becomes thoughtful when he ' s alone. He dwells excessively on whether he has learned all he could in the post two years, and he pauses for a moment to anticipate the clinical work ahead with a comical enthusiastic dread. But in front of anyone else, the sophomore is a reluctantly vainglorious charac- ter who slumps heavily into his chair, slams his notes down onto his desk, and wearily affirms: If we con just moke it through the boards, we ' ll make it. 51