Before I came to med school, I purposefully didn’t buy a medical dictionary. Everyone told me to, and I thought, “Dude, Google exists. No.” And it’s true that I can look up any confusing word that Robbins throws at me – transudate, sarcoidosis, acetaletenopathatosis…. theoretically.
But, you see, I don’t study with my computer. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that nobody who really wants to study (and doesn’t have a willpower of steel) studies near their computer. And it turns out that Google being all the way across the room is – in addition to being a great reason for not checking facebook twenty times in five minutes – also a great reason to not bother looking up acetaletenopathatosis*.
Truth. I am that lazy.
My classmates who bought medical dictionaries, on the other hand, are happily showing me how they’ve underlined every word they’ve had to look up. In fact, every time they go to that page to look up another word they re-read the words they’ve already looked up on that page – that way they remember things, and have happened to acquire so much knowledge this way that they’re skipping 2nd and 3rd year and going straight to residency applications. (… I may have hyperbolized that somewhat. Their point stands. I gave up and bought a paper dictionary on Amazon yesterday.)
