Sadism and masochism in Med School

**before reading this, don't take SADISM and MASOCHISM as sexual/erotic terms. The words used are just being utilized as FIGURATIVE terms. Please lang po. ;)**

Medicine is like a sadist and some med students are like masochists. Medicine inflicts some of the most mind-torturing, brain-(expletive) damages in the mind of a student (in a positive kind of way). The student, on the other hand, just gives in to the pain just to make the passing mark and get promoted.

Sembreak has arrived and when vacations like these come in the life of the med student, one would seem to notice that there are times that the sadist things that medicine does to the mind becomes something worth missing. Yes, it is true that each and every student wants the vacation to come because everybody in med school wants to get out of the painful and stressful world of studying, but hey, admit it: there are times that each med student would (slightly) long for studying medicine again. This is where the masochist-like attitude of the med student sets in. Because of the top-of-the-scale knowledge each student gets to learn, the student, though tired and stressed out and now resting from those unpleasant moments, gets to realize that he/she has nothing else to do (besides some fun activities that may be in store) but to search for that sadist thing again. You'd get to hear from other students that during the vacation they are starting to buy new books, print out new transcriptions in advance, skim through some books early before classes start, and even some try their luck on checking out the samplexes that may have been given to them by the upper batch men. I personally admit that during the other day, I checked out almost all of the upcoming transes and OSCE checklists in advance and I even started to watch some Surgery video clips. I really can't explain very well, but sometimes even when students are stress-free as of this moment, some would just look through those seem-to-be stressful notes and skim through these like a pocketbook. The regular school days are stressful, but sometimes worth yearning because of the knowledge it brings.

It'll be a few more days before 2nd sem starts. For now I'm not considering checking out transes and samplexes. What I did was I just bought another G-Tec Pen and another ream of 8.5 x 11 paper for next week's classes. I still don't know if I'll be buying Schwartz (Surgery) and the Pedia book for next sem. I admit, there are times that I'd become a masochist for med school stress, but the knowledge that it'll impart once learned and understood is just too priceless to be taken for granted.