THE FIRST 50
The first few months of medical school challenge the students’ work-life balance
A Time of Transition
Janel Gracia
Rafael Ornelas
“In medical school it’s a totally different kind of hard” — Janel Gracia BY BETHANIE LE
In this series, we follow members of the inaugural class of the UCR School of Medicine through the joys and challenges they face in the next four years.
26 | UCR Winter 2014
Senior Associate Dean Paul Lyons supervises a patient with Janel Gracia
being a doctor. It’s really fun to interact with the patients and to experience what I will be doing in the future,” said Gracia. Ornelas had the same experience volunteering at the student-run health clinic. “I always learn something new because these are real people, as opposed to doctoring in class where you have a standardized patient. Hearing people’s stories and illnesses and really working with them to make them feel better is really rewarding. It feels like I’m a doctor before I really am one,” said Ornelas.
Photos: Carrie Rosema and Carlos Puma
It has been eight months since members of the inaugural class of the UCR School of Medicine were given ceremonial white coats to commemorate their new lives as doctorsto-be. For Rafael Ornelas and Janel Gracia, life as a first-year medical student at a new school means one thing: transition. Even with the mindset that med school would be challenging, the new study routines, intense workloads, and eight-hour days in laboratories meant everyone had to adjust. “I knew hard work and being tired was going to be part of the medical school experience,” Ornelas said.
But, as Gracia said, “In medical school it’s a totally different kind of hard. You have to find time to study a large amount of material while balancing the other parts of medical school as well as your own life.” She added, “It’s nice knowing that I wasn’t alone because all my classmates were going through it with me.” Gracia is part of an intramural basketball team; Ornelas is a mentor at a program and volunteer at a student-run health clinic in downtown Riverside. In keeping with the School of Medicine’s promise to help the underserved in the Inland region, the students have many opportunities to get involved in the community. Longitudinal Ambulatory Care Experience (LACE) is one such program; the students are assigned to shadow a physician in the area. “It was my favorite part [of the first few months] because I learned so much about