Orientation—July 13th, 2025

Malpractice Makes Perfect

We all know how academic orientations are supposed to go: All the new people gather in an auditorium. They chat, laugh nervously, and try to make a good impression without coming off as boring. Then they spend the next 40 working hours learning things that are either vitally important (and they will not remember) or something that could better be said in an email (which they will not receive). Looking back, was medical school orientation any different? Somewhat.

The main difference was that NYU did their best to make this week as enjoyable as possible. Our first session in medical school was not a lecture but a game. Teams of 8 people were given two boxes—one with a completed lego set, and another with the identical but unassembled pieces. 2 people had to verbally describe the finished set to a group of 4, who would then walk to another room to tell the last two teammates how to recreate the finished set. After 45 minutes of highly detailed descriptions and pantomime, my team emerged with two sets of matching legos. We also got to know each other, which was the real point of the activity.

We had a few other goofy but enjoyable sessions. We spent an afternoon at the Whitney museum analyzing modern art and how it relates to medical practice. We went on a scavenger hunt around the hospital to find all of the offices attached to the medical school. We held an “Olympic games” that lasted well into the evening. These games made me feel at home. My classmates are just as competitive and intense as I am, and they took every task, even the silly ones, as seriously as I did. None of my teams won anything, and I was (embarrassingly) upset at that. But I think I was in good company.

My favorite session, though, was a lecture given by Dr. Alan Schlechter, a child psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital. Dr. Schlechter conducts research on positive psychology, the science of wellness and happiness. He asked our class if any of us could define wellness. Doctors, after all, spend their careers promoting the wellness of others. We should know what we’re working towards, right? When none of us had a good answer, he presented one of the most popular models for wellness among scientists. It’s an acronym called PERMA, and it stands for Positive emotions (feeling joy, happiness, love), Engagement (time spent in engrossing activities), Relationships, Meaning (finding something important in your life), and Accomplishments (big and small). The higher a person scores in each category, the more wellness they have. His talk was engaging, useful, and made me think. I hope I have more lectures like that in my future.

The most standard aspects of this orientation were the social dynamics and the other sessions. Everyone, including me, was anxious to meet new people and make new friends. I already knew a couple of people from Second Look, but I did my best to separate from them and meet people I didn’t know.

My strategy for making friends was both straightforward and unorthodox. After a few pleasantries and the standard questions—“Where are you from?”, “What did you study in undergrad?”—I would make a slightly-off color joke. Nothing serious or mean, just unexpected. A few people gave me strange looks, but I figured that if some light comedy threw them off, we could never be close. When I was at a classmate’s house, she asked if anyone needed anything. We had just met, but I leaned over and asked if I could have one of her kidneys. “Both of mine are failing, and you have two good ones, and you did ask if I needed anything, so…” She reeled from laughter. She is one of my closest friends.

I should say that orientation was not all fun and games. Most sessions, we sat in silence as the head of student health or student affairs introduced themselves and what their department did. It was a lengthy process. There is also a lot of stress in meeting 101 new people. I spent a lot of time refreshing my group chats and texting people back to see if anyone was hanging out that night. The orientation FOMO is real.

The demands of being a doctor also started to form. On Thursday, a friend and I were cranking through emails on my couch. We had finished sessions at 3:30pm, but needed to change, eat, and answer 40 emails before our next event at 4:30pm. After 30 minutes of silence, we turned to each other and asked, “Is this what our lives are like now? Being slammed with back-to-back events and admin, all before classes even start?” Probably, we agreed. Oh well, it’s what we signed up for. We finished our work.

Overall, I am feeling great. Being in medical school is a dream come true, and everyone I have met is just as passionate, excited, and as nervous as me. Tomorrow is the first day of classes. Wish me luck!

Me trying on my white coat and scrubs. They’re a little bit. I hope to grow into them.