This makes no sense, part 1: Getting scrubs

I have a sneaking suspicion that this may become a running theme, so I'm preemptively calling this part 1.  Maybe I'm just cynical.  In any case, the system here for scrubs is somewhat ridiculous.

The scrub lady (as she is affectionately called) is only in the scrub room from about 9am to 3pm.  We often have to be in the hospital before 7am and aren't out until 4pm (and general surgery and Ob/Gyn students are there much earlier and stay at least that late).  You are allowed to check out one pair of scrubs at a time.  To obtain a second pair, you are supposed to turn in the first pair for laundering.  You are not supposed to wash the scrubs yourself.  You are not allowed to buy your own scrubs.  You are supposed to get a new pair of scrubs every day.  You are supposed to get a new pair of scrubs if you go outdoors.  You are to perform the ritualistic scrubs chant each time you actually manage to obtain a pair of the sacred things.  Okay, that last one was just to see who was still paying attention, but the rest of it is true.

As with many nonfunctional systems, what actually ends up happening is that students hoard scrubs like they are going out of fashion (no worries there!) and wash them at home.  I've accumulated three pairs this week, and I'm hoping to get one or two more.  At that point, I'm going to try to devise a system where I change out of that day's scrubs then turn in an earlier day's scrubs for a new pair, so that the scrubs do get laundered by the hospital.  Chances are though, I'm going to get busy and not have any free time between 9 and 3 to change out then back in to my scrubs, so they'll end up getting washed chez moi.  An imperfect solution to a faulty system.  You would think that compared to most of the medical expenses, hiring someone (or several someones) to hand out scrubs 24/7 and providing several pairs of $5 scrubs to each student would be a negligible cost for a huge increase in convenience. Until that happens, however, I hoard.

And in the beginning...

... of med school there was this blog.  Well, not really in the beginning.  The first two years of medical school were great, but writing about them would have consisted mainly of details of little-to-no interest for people not in medicine (and often for those in it, myself sometimes included), so I never bothered to write about it.  Now, less than a week into my first rotation of third year, I find myself bursting with things that I want to say.  It's unfortunate that third year also comes with WAY less free time than years one and two, so I'm not sure how often I'll be able to write or how much I'll be able to say when I do, but I'll try my best.

A short introduction:  I'm a third year medical student in a fairly large east coast city.  For the sake of patients' privacy and HIPAA and professionalism generally, I'll leave it at that; I'll refer to myself only as 'E'.  I'm married to J, an econ grad student, and we live in an apartment downtown with our two kittens and two chinchillas.  Anything else important will be mentioned PRN (that's "as needed" for less-nerdy folks) and I'll go from here.  If you know me (or if not!), feel free to comment but please don't identify me.  I'm not going to go around mentioning patient's names and diagnoses or SSNs or anything crazy like that, but the more anonymity, the better!  And now, onto more exciting topics...