Goodbye, med school notes ... or not!

In preparation for my move across town, I decided that I really needed to get rid of the stacks of medical school notes and journals that crowd my closet and overflow throughout our apartment.

Starting with my notes, I figured it would be easy as I haven't looked at most of those binders for the two years since I have been in the classroom. The information in them is easy to look up in any medical textbook (or with a quick Google or wikipedia search). The first binder was Pathology, and as I pulled out the pages, my hand hesitated to toss them into the recycling bin. Pathology was one of my favorite classes, the one I first learned about most disease mechanisms. Surely, this was the very foundation of my medical knowledge, and when I get confused about the different types of leukemias, there's nowhere else I would rather look. So, I put Pathology back on the shelf.

One by one, I went through the binders, and I was only able to throw out a few subjects. Some I never liked or found much use for beyond basic concepts, such as biochemistry and neurosciences. Others covered specific disease management, which changes every week with the publication of hundreds of medical journals. Looking through those pages, I was surprised to see how much is already outdated.

The journals were next. I had earlier made it a goal to read a journal a day for the last two months, but I realized that wasn't enough. I had at least two years worth of two weekly journals that my husband tries to keep in a few neat piles behind various living room furniture. He pointedly asked a few weeks ago if they were coming with us, and I assured him that they absolutely would not. However, I didn't just want to toss them. Not only had I paid for these subscriptions (albeit at drastically reduced student prices) but I also actually want to read them. They're good journals with great management-changing articles and illustrations, but during medical school, I just couldn't keep up for various reasons. So, I came to terms that I would never read these journals cover to cover and started tearing out articles.

All the medical knowledge I want to take with me is in a pile of 3-inch ring binders and a 3-inch pile of articles. Everything else is overflowing my apartment building's recycling bin. As I become more confident in my knowledge over the years, maybe I will feel comfortable tossing the rest, but I feel better just knowing that I still have with me those eagerly scribbled, multi-colored explanations that served as the foundation of my medical learning.