The Thomas Hendrick School of Medicine was located on the northeast side of Galt University and was comprised of three nine-story buildings that students affectionately called, the Quill. Supposedly the name was derived from the term ‘equilateral’ that described the triangle configuration of the three buildings. Adjacent to the Quill was the Galt University Hospital, where some lucky Hendrick graduates continued their training as residents.

Summer wasn’t the best time to start medical school. I learned this very quickly when I looked at their class schedules and found few first-year courses. Most of the offered courses were geared towards those in their second and third years. Only those finishing their first year actually got a summer break. After that first summer, summer’s got shorter and shorter, as the medical students either had internships or had to study towards their certification exams. My initial plan was to sit in on lectures while in R1 and take notes. With only a few handfuls of classes to choose from, and the fact that many of them overlapped each other, I realized that it would take me just as long to learn this way as it would to just go to medical school, minus the undergraduate degree. The solution that I came up with was a simple one. I’d record the lectures, have them transcribed and then printed by Gerry. That way I could effectively download the lectures into my brain in minutes.

I prepared a text to Howie, asking him about what recording devices he would recommend. Before I could send it however, I had a flash of insight. I wasn’t the only student to have this problem. Lots of students had to miss class for a variety of reasons and most schools even provided the option to view the classes online. It was very likely that the classes were already being recorded and transcribed.

The internet is an incredible thing. It only took me a few minutes to find the Hendrick School transcription service and to start seeing what was available. Joining the service only cost a small fee and it didn’t even require you to be a student at the university. With membership, you get a certain number of lectures free per semester. If you wanted more, they had a per lecture fee or you could sign up for the Premium Service and have access to all the lectures you wanted, including the archives.

The archives were a veritable treasure trove for me. I could download full courses, in either video format or transcription, and all four years of medical school courses were available. To make things even more amazing, the transcripts didn’t just provide a written account of everything said during the lecture, they also had the teacher’s presentation and notes integrated into the text at the appropriate places. If a diagram was referred to several times throughout the class, then that diagram had been pasted into the transcript at each significant reference.

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I took the Premium Service right away and started downloading the transcriptions for every course. The courses were offered by multiple teachers and I even downloaded a few of these duplicates to see if the teachers emphasized different aspects of the material. Each course had it’s reading material listed and I copied all of these into a separate file. I was surprised at how many I’d already read. Those that were new to me were going to Gerry, along with the transcript files. I put an urgent request of all of the first-year materials.

Downloading forty-five courses took a few hours and while I waited for them, I kept searching and found that Galt wasn’t the only university with an on-line transcription service. Almost all of the top medical schools had their version of the service and I looked through the content of those that allowed it. For the most part, it was very similar, as all medical students had to learn the same basic courses required to pass the USMLE (United States Medical Licensing Examination). The main differences seemed to be in two areas. One was that some medical programs offered a research path that Hendricks didn’t offer. The other difference was more philosophical. Most schools, Hendricks included, taught medicine by subject, such as anatomy, physiology, cell biology and within each subject the organs were discussed. Some schools, however, taught by organ systems, in which the students would learn about an organ and all the associated subjects that applied to it. Both seemed to be viable ways of learning and I read arguments for and against both systems. For my way of learning, I didn’t think that it would make much of a difference, but I signed up for a transcription service for the one of the organ-based teaching programs and downloaded some of their courses, just to be sure.

Having decided that the pathway from me to Howie to Gerry was one step too long, I’d gotten Howie to get me a direct line to Gerry. He and I were partners after all. We’d spoken briefly on the phone once and since then all of our communications had been through texts or emails. Due to the large size of the file that I was sending to Gerry, I loaded it into a Dropbox account and texted him the details. Moments later I was looking at his return message. A thumbs up emoji and the works, “I’ll get right on it.”

With the theory portion of medical school taken care of, that left the application of that knowledge and the learning of skills to be handled. Medical students had labs to do and rounds at the hospital where they were taught how to interact with and treat patients. I didn’t see much problem in shadowing the students while they worked with patients, but how was I going to practice my own skills? I pictured myself breaking into the cadaver labs and working on corpses in the middle of the night. Hopefully, as I learned more and followed the students and residents around, I’d figure out a better way.