Sympathy for medical students

Hello. Long time no post. Just got out of the habit I suppose. However I am now revising for exams (yet again) and thus am always eager to find ways to waste time.

My dad forwarded me some old emails that I had sent to him and my mum when I was on elective etc. Hidden amongst them was one I'd sent them when I started my 1st clinical attachment as a 3rd year medical student. Reading it made me resolve to be more sympathetic to the confused, gormless looking types I see wandering around these days:

'....we are killing time at the moment as the doctor we were supposed to have a ward round with this morning didn't know we existed, so buggered off and did something else. We have something at 11 in another part of the hospital which we don't know how to get to, then Urology this afternoon and then a tutorial in X Community Hospital later (we went to that yesterday only to be told we were supposed to be there today, then we couldn't get back into the hospital because we didn't know the code for the door, so wandered round for half an hour being faced by barbed wire fences at every turn before we finally made it back to the front entrance). X Community Hospital is approximately 5,024 years old and smells like it is older. Main Teaching Hospital isn't too bad though, although we don't know where anything is....

'So you see I haven't really done anything yet. We don't have a timetable for the term yet as our Consultant doesn't start work til next week, so I don't know what things will be like yet. I don't know what study module I'm doing yet either, but I do know we have lectures on Wednesdays - this week's goes under the exciting title of 'Pathology Symposium' (now we're clinical students we have 'symposia' instead of lectures, but they are basically still lectures)....

'Should be an interesting year. I have to go wander around aimlessly now, so I will leave it here.'

To any 'surprise' medical students I've been stroppy with for pitching up in my busy clinic, I apologise. I remember now.