Studying without Bounds

Glorious Greenville weather these past few weeks has left me breathless! Gold and scarlet leaves have been raining all around campus. Warm wind has been blustering through crisp air to kiss the cheeks of all hospital visitors, staff, and students caught outside. I’ve been jogging around the hospital complex roads or outdoors at the Life Center as much as my schedule can fit. One of these days, I will figure out how to study outside, and my life as a student will be set. For now, the art of outside studying remains elusive to me.

Thankfully, I have had better luck studying inside the Health Education Sciences Building! It’s an amazing building as nearly all of the classrooms, conference rooms and study carrels have glass walls. One of the coolest ideas I happened across lately involved the neat glass walls and my iPad. I walked by a study room and through the glass I saw something excellent happening on the wall. I stepped into that study room and chatted for a little while about the concepts being diagrammed. I used my iPad to take a picture of those notes on the wall. I was able to discuss this same topic much more fluidly with another study group later that week by referencing my photo. I also was able to quickly email this photographed diagram out for the benefit of several other students.

I have grown to better appreciate the openness of the entire school. I think the windows and group spaces are accurate reflections of most healthcare workplace environments. The hospital is a place where various healthcare practitioners work together as a team. Very few physicians are isolated off in a corner or in an office completely to themselves for their workday. Physicians have to be able to block out innumerable distractions wandering around and focus on their work. They have to know how to operate in a relatively exposed and impersonal physical environment for the sake of team integration and enhanced patient care.

We students at USC School of Medicine Greenville are learning how to work in a relatively open classroom environment for the sake of our learning team. If another student better understands something, I can walk down any of the school hallways and find that student fairly quickly. I am able to look into each of the classrooms and study rooms and see what my peers are up to. Often, I can quickly find someone who can answer a question or explain the nuances of a complicated subject. Now all I need is to find someone with a knack for studying outside, and I will be a dynamo without any kind of workplace bounds.

By Jennifer Reinovsky