Attention All Readers! Again!

You may already recognise the post below, that's because I'm no longer based here, but here. I changed web address, no biggie. Seriously, just click and carry on as normal.

You! Yes you there! The one in the hat. No, not you, the other guy. Yes, you.

"Who? Me?"

I have important news to impart to you: my blog has moved house! *cheers of joy* I have been very vain and decided that my current blog URL, and title for that matter, are not exactly fit for purpose for what I've invariably ended up basing most of my allocated blogging space on.

Pictured: my allocated blogging space.

I mean, srsly, themindofamedic.blogspot.co.uk? For a blog predominantly about horror movies and baking? Sure there are those two medical school survival guides (part three in pre-production, folks), but the URL is just darned misleading; as is the horrific blog title "I should be paying attention to this lecture". Yes I should be, but again not exactly relevant to what I do here.

Pictured: what I do here.

If you happen to have just stumbled across this blog, or have reached this page some time in the distant future and think "ah well, must be dead, let's move on..."; please, don't go! Click the link here, or even here, or the really big one below, to transport yourself to my brand new world of fun and frivolity: The Pop Culture Cynic. The official move will be in a few posts time to give a little overlap for those of you who find change difficult, so I'll re-post this just after Valentine's Day. See you on the other side.

Click here for awesomeness.

Attention All Readers!

You! Yes you there! The one in the hat. No, not you, the other guy. Yes, you.

"Who? Me?"

I have important news to impart to you: my blog has moved house! *cheers of joy* I have been very vain and decided that my current blog URL, and title for that matter, are not exactly fit for purpose for what I've invariably ended up basing most of my allocated blogging space on.

Pictured: my allocated blogging space.

I mean, srsly, themindofamedic.blogspot.co.uk? For a blog predominantly about horror movies and baking? Sure there are those two medical school survival guides (part three in pre-production, folks), but the URL is just darned misleading; as is the horrific blog title "I should be paying attention to this lecture". Yes I should be, but again not exactly relevant to what I do here.

Pictured: what I do here.

If you happen to have just stumbled across this blog, or have reached this page some time in the distant future and think "ah well, must be dead, let's move on..."; please, don't go! Click the link here, or even here, or the really big one below, to transport yourself to my brand new world of fun and frivolity: The Pop Culture Cynic. The official move will be in a few posts time to give a little overlap for those of you who find change difficult, so I'll re-post this just after Valentine's Day. See you on the other side.

Click here for awesomeness.

Valentine's Day Cards for the Average Geek

Portal references: A surefire way to attract geeks.

It's Valentine's Day in just over a week, ladies and gents. I hope you've all remembered to book that really fancy restaurant and get lots of flowers and cards and other high profit-margin items to give to your better half to prove your undying devotion to the capitalist giants that dictate our every waking thought and action.

The slogans on some of the bags for life are unnervingly appropriate.

If you've forgotten to do all of those things then I've got good news for you: there's always McDonald's. For the other small matter of finding the right way to tell them you care I've taken the time to compile some completely original (and not already over-used) geek-themed Valentine's Day card designs for you to print out and lovingly shove in your boy/girlfriend's face. They're watermark-free seeing as I've essentially just spliced licensed properties into cheesy jokes, however please be nice and don't straight up nick them to pretend that you're as funny and charming and well-endowed as me; all I ask is for recognition of my genius.

You'll find a download link and a classic Ben-quip [patent pending] to put inside the card underneath each image so go, spread your feelings (and my designs, yay) like so many love-juice based illnesses:

I Lost My Spam Virginity

Today is a very special day. For today I am no longer a boy; I am now a man, with all of a man's strengths and weaknesses. I, ladies and gentlemen, received spam.

They left no return address. 

What makes this spam so special is its rather cryptic message, which took some time to translate. Witness the most confusing paragraph in the history of the English language:

"I loved as much as you will receive carried out right here. The sketch is attractive, your authored subject matter stylish. Nonetheless, you command get bought and shakiness over that you wish be delivering the following. Unwell, unquestionably come further formerly again since exactly the same nearly very often inside case you shield this hike. Here is my web-site hyabak"

"Someone take Sloth away from the computer."

What does it mean? Surely there must be a second meaning to the message that has been hidden behind a carefully constructed wall of functionless adverbs and confused tenses that our puny human brains cannot possibly comprehend.

Wait. Tenses. That's it! This is a message from a time-travelling prostitute informing me that I could use eyedrops to prevent my eyes from getting sore in the wind while taking the members of my future sex-cult hiking.

Not following me? Ok, let's do this one step at a time:

"I loved as much as you will receive carried out right here."

Look at the sudden changes in tense; she loved something that I am yet to receive in the very place that I am at the moment. The fact that it's something I'm receiving (suggesting I paid for it), it can be received while sitting on the sofa in my underwear (where I am right now) and that this person enjoyed it too leads me to the assumption that future me has paid for the company of another human being. It's either that or Chinese food; but I don't share Chinese food, so it's got to be a prostitute. I know what you're thinking, GMC, but you can't deem me unsuitable for medical practise for something I've not done yet.

"Damn you, space-time continuum."

Plus, it's very common knowledge that people who partake in regular time travel start to lose the ability to vocalise the concept of time and the passage of it, so the jumpyness of the past, present and future tenses suggest that this particular person is a well versed time traveller. Thus time-travelling prostitute. Simple. The next sentence really hits this theory home:

"The sketch is attractive, your authored subject matter stylish."

She's started using basic writing-based metaphors to conceal the real intent of the sentence here. The sketch she's talking about would have been drawn with a pencil; the pencil actually being something completely different but equally pencil shaped.

Like a candy stick sharpened into a makeshift weapon.

As for the "authored subject matter"; well that's obviously what I'm doing with the pencil, and she thinks its preeeeety stylish. Aw yis. You can't knock the facts, ladies. But wait, what's this next bit?

"Nonetheless, you command get bought and shakiness over that you wish be delivering the following."

Soon, word of my prowess has reached far and wide. I command a following of devoted cult members who worship my great and powerful sketch. I am unsure of myself at first and someone tries to buy me out, obviously hoping to obtain the movie rights to my story, but I refuse. Finally I decide that the only thing for us to do is go on a great pilgrimage to our Mecca, which is actually just a big hill near my house.

And when we reach the top, we shall all help each other improve our authored subject matter.

But tragedy strikes!

"Unwell, unquestionably come further formerly again since exactly the same nearly very often inside case you shield this hike."

I am stricken ill each time we attempt to reach the summit. Again and again, we attempt to scale its mild inclines but are thwarted each time, with no choice but to give up and return to the base disheartened. What is this mysterious illness, you ask? Why it is dry eyes from the wind of course.

I said dry eyes, not aye ayes. Jeez. Get that fucking thing away from me.

Luckily our mysterious prostitute from the future who only goes by the name Anonymous finally reveals the aim of her mission. The answer to all our troubles: Hyabak multi-dose 0.15% sodium hyaluronate eyedrops. They progressively release water and increase contact with the ocular surface of the eye, leading to healthier, moist eyes all day round. Oh, thank you Hyabak and Spectrum Thea Pharmaceuticals.

But most of all, thank you Anonymous. Thank you for risking the highly probable paradoxical destruction of the universe and your own life, for being reasonably priced (even taking into consideration future inflation rates), but most of all for helping future me have more comfortable eyes so that I can walk in a brisk wind without squinting and partake in weird hill-top cult orgies.

Now fuck off and don't spam me again.

Meet The List

If there's one thing I should really get round to doing it's writing these posts more than two days in advance, because as soon as anything gets in the way of my writing, then all shit goes to hell or something similar.

However all dogs do definitely go to heaven.

The person that I'm going to use as a scapegoat for my not finishing off the long awaited Film Facts Part 2: The Factening, is Gabe Newell. He founded Valve. Valve runs Steam. Steam has sales. The Steam Christmas Sale had FTL: Faster Than Light on it for under a pound. And now I can't stop playing it.

Upgrade screens: The crystal meth of video games.

This along with my constant tweaking of the blog layout, as you can see by it's now greatly improved sexy sexiness (it's so sexy), and the creation of an unhealthy number of favicons that I intend to cycle through has led to a certain downtime in my usually industrious writing escapades. It's not that I'm saying I was distracted by pretty shiny things but yes, I was. Also by the agonising frustration of being lasered to death by fucking drones for the 60th time. Hours of epic battle followed by my poor spaceship being laser-raped by robots really sucks the time out of your day.

Drones: The malaria-ridden mosquitoes of video gaming.

The other little thing I've been working on is this. That's a cue to click the hyperlink, by the way. If you're allergic to bluey-purple text, just look at the shiny new page bar at the top of the blog and click on the enigmatically titled "The List". Go on; I'll wait.

If you're still having trouble, please ask a parent or teacher to help you.

I've compiled a little list of 50 movies I aim to watch in this fine year of 2014. Not review, mind. These are films that I've either been meaning to watch, had recommended to me by my very select group of cinema confidants (read in a French accent for correct pronunciation), or I happened to stumble across while reading the IMDb Trivia page for Sex and the City or whatever I was doing last night while high on power bar upgrades and cheesy nibbles. Excuse me a moment.

*snort*

Ah, better. So yes, just letting you know about the list. Each movie comes with it's name, year of release, rating and my interpretation of what it'll be about entirely by looking at its poster and nothing else. Check back regularly to see how many I've managed to watch and also for other little bits on what I've thought of them post-viewing. Now I have lots of things to be doing, very busy, must dash, let yourselves out.

Casting Calls and Creamed Cabbage

Remember those times when you went out and did things and experienced stuff and made memories and such? I think scholars call it having a life. Well, it turns out I have one of them too, and seeing as the scheduled review of The World's End has been pushed back to next week so as not to coincide with The Girl Who Loves Horror's own review of the same movie, this gives me the perfect opportunity to strap you down and force you to listen to my inane crap until you're nothing more than a ball of blubbering mush.

Mr. Kubrick never did give me those home movies back...

It was my brother, Daniel's, 21st birthday this weekend so we all went through to Glasgow for a bit of a celebration. He got a camera, I was jealous. My mum, being the epic bargain hunter/hoarder/crazy person that she is, managed to pay for the hotel and restaurant entirely with Tesco clubcard points.

Meanwhile, my HMV reward points collect nothing but dust and regret.

The restaurant was bootyful and yes, you are about the sit through me telling you about my meal. Deal with it's delicious tedium. Chicken satay to start, then duck with creamed cabbage, dauphinoise potatoes and cherry sauce, and finally chocolate tart for pud. All of the oms and approximately fourteen noms. If you're interested in where this place is in Glasgow, it's called La Bonne Auberge and you'll find it on West Nile Street.

Across the road from The Acceptable Courgette.

Sunday was a little less tasty and a little more exhausting. Those of you keeping your ear to the grape vine (beware of caterpillars) will have heard about the open casting call for the new Star Wars movie that was on in Glasgow this past weekend, and seeing as we were through there anyway, Fiona and I thought we might as well give it a bash. Sadly that meant getting up at 6am to beat the queue. 

"Fiona, meet 6am on a Sunday. 6am, meet the human cornish pasty."

The whole thing was, obviously, a waste of time in the end, but it's always nice to be able to tell people that I auditioned for Star Wars. Give it ten years and I can ham it up to "I was in a battle to the death with the last three auditionees for the new Star Wars movie but I decided at the last minute, with a Bat'leth pressed against my fallen foe's throat and a Krull glaive lodged between my 5th and 6th thoracic vertebrae, that I would be the better human; I would fight against the Hollywood machine. I would live, goddamnit!"

"And that was when daddy snapped Batman's spine atop Amon Súl while thrashing out a sick bass solo. The End."

Then came lots of very tired shopping and some chai at a lovely tea lounge called Cup, where one of the waiters congratulated me on my (read: Fiona's) Adventure Time hat. Oh, how good it is to find kindred spirits.

The hard bit it getting them in the bottle...

And that was my weekend. Normal services shall resume as of next week, so until then, why don't you tell me what you got up to this week? Oh yeah, that's why, I don't want to know. Stay away from the comments, you filthy little Hobbitses.

"Move along..."

Me, Myself, and My Amazingly Interesting Life

Oi, you. Sit down. No, not there, that's my seat. Over there. Yes, there.

Scooch over.

Aside from a couple of posts about my new flat (a riveting series of posts that shall be concluded very soon) I've talked very little about the general goings on of my life, something we should all be endlessly grateful for because the last thing the internet needs is another person whining about their supermarket receipts and telling us how cute their pet vulture is.

She's great for cleaning up the children's organs I keep leaving on the lawn.

However it was inevitable that a day would come when I could no longer withstand the inherent human urge to force my crippling tedium on other people and/or I hadn't got round to watching any new films worthy of review yet, so you'd better get comfortable and read the words I'm going to speak at you good like.

First off, it was my turn to experience that special day of a person's life every year where you have the literal birth-right to be told you're wonderful and get showered with praise and adoration for not winning a Darwin award. In other words, it was my birthday on Saturday (rapturous applause).

"Woo. Go Ben."

I'm now a big 'ole 19, which means I've already wasted a third of Mozambique's average life expectancy watching TV and complaining about things, including TV. It's been a good run so far. To celebrate, Fiona (yes, that one again. I'll find a new woman soon to freshen things up a bit) and I went to see Henri-Georges Clouzot's fantastic Les Diaboliques at the local independent cinema type place. In true noir style, we dressed up and looked like utter fannys walking down the street at 11am on a Sunday in our finery.

Me caught off guard in a rare candid shot.

Also, I got a mango, so yay.

I would have taken a picture of the actual mango given to me, but it didn't last the night.

Secondly, before I levelled up (still no sign of learning Hyper Beam) Halloween happened. That's the spooky one with all the bats. I opted to go as the infamous Jekyll and Hyde (not that Jekyll and Hyde); the costume actually took a surprising amount of effort to get looking good. I've seen how some people do costume posts, with all the naming exactly what brand you used and such, so I've tried to do the same here. The costume itself looked a bit like this:

Making myself paper thin and headless was the tough bit.

So from top to bottom that's a Next tailored waistcoat (like this, but not), New Look braces (kindly borrowed from Fiona), some shirt from a charity shop, a 99p cravat from eBay, a pair of lovely, and now hopelessly ruined, brown trousers also from a charity shop and one each of some crappy brown Primark trainers and my darling brown leather Collezione wing-tip brogues.

To do the whole "tattered" thing going on on the right there, I used the tried-and-tested recipe of teabags (Tetley), a stanley knife (Tesco) and a lighter (Clipper). Boil up a nice strong pot of tea, pour one cup, drink it, pour the rest into a large bowl or tub and dip half of the shirt, cravat and trousers into it. Leave to dry then hang up each piece of clothing individually (or ask someone you moderately dislike to hold them up) and hack at the appropriate side with a stanley knife in a similar fashion to Norman Bates' mother when the TV signal isn't great.

Anything is better than another fucking episode of Come Dine With Me.

Once suitably slashed, take the clothes outside and set fire to them with a lighter in what we experts call a "controlled burn". This consists of lighting various portions of the clothing, allowing them to burn for a short time and extinguishing them before the fire spreads too rapidly. This is repeated until an authentic burned look has been achieved or you leave it for a little too long a couple of times and panic.

Once all of that's done you've got yourself a pretty shnazzy costume. Now for the makeup. I bought some pretty goddamn sexy stuff called Collodium which is used to make authentic looking scars and a set of blackout contact lenses to take care of the more striking aspects of my appearance. Those paired with some conservative make-up application (I don't know, nor do I care about the brands of these things), a generous helping of Brylcreem and a half-shaved chin produced a rather convincing face that had the limitless potential to be mistaken for a poorly done Two-Face costume all night.

"I'd like to play a game..."
"THAT'S NOT EVEN FUCKING TWO-FACE YOU HEATHEN."

The finished costume looks like this:

Just shooting the shit with Spidey.

And that was Halloween and my birthday. You now have an extremely intimate insight into my personal life, do with that information as you wish. If you would like to use it for blackmail, my people will be in touch with your people.

A Proposition

Dear Sir/Madam/Glarflak the Unamenable,

I have been blogging for a good few months now and despite a steady flow of no readers, I continue to do so indefinitely. Your continued, or new, appreciation of my inane brain farts is greatly appreciated and I think it's about time that I ask you what it is that you want from me.

Your boots, your clothes and your firstborn child.

Sure, I could continue watching random shit and licking the keyboard for a bit before posting it, but I feel like you and I, thee and me, we need to build our relationship. Really get to know each other. You never know, one thing might lead to another and all of a sudden... Hee, look at me, getting ahead of myself.

"You can get ahead of me any time... I- I really don't even know how that's even a... and why am I in a car?"

So, in order to strike up a little to a fro between myself, the literary genius, and you, the uneducated masses, I would like your suggestions as to what I should write about. You've got a nice collection of articles to poke through, if you think I should talk about something, review a film, play a game or try out that new type of sex torture with a goat and a stick of chorizo, post in the comments below; you're input is most definitely wanted.

That is all I have to say, really. And the answer is yes, this is also doubling as a convenient excuse not to write anything. You're welcome.

Insincerely,

Ben

Medical School: A Survival Guide - Part 2

Hello, dear reader, and welcome to the second volume in my handy medical school survival guide. What delight is to come next in our exodus into the deep chasm of textbooks and panic sweat that is medicine, wherein no light or hope shall ever escape?

Replace hope with a solid bowel movement and you're talking about Jimmy Chung's.

Well we've already made it as far as the actual medical school so the next thing you're likely to encounter is the thing I touched very briefly on last time:

Chapter Two - The Lectures

Yup. Those. These are the very things what the title of this blog suggests that I should be paying attention to more often. Which I isn't. Like.

I is fighting the system with my crippling illiteracy, yo.

So you've got up at 7am, trekked to the medical school through howling winds and lashing rain and you're now sitting in the lecture theatre, lightly steaming with your laptop open, ready to be learned like a bitch. You manage to connect to the painfully bad WiFi, download the lecture material and- oh. Today's lecture seems to have been replaced with a series of slides written in something akin to Aramaic detailing cryptic clues as to the location of the real presentation. Shit, the lecturer is here...and he's opened up the same powerpoint. Now he's talking about the various pathways for immune response to infection while showing a diagram with so many lines it looks like a pretty photograph of global flight paths.

Am I missing out on something important here?

At least some of the slides keep it succinct.

Be prepared to annotate what's already given with what the lecturer is telling you, especially when you're looking at a diagram with lots and lots of acronyms on them. That way you at least have a context for the stuff you're looking at when you finally get round to writing it up about six months later. I would encourage you to ask questions, but the unwritten rules of lecture theatre etiquette dictate that doing so is social suicide, so just hope you get it or get used to being confused. Leave the questions to the post-graduate students, they don't have any friends anyway.

Look at them. Smart. Studious. Friendly. World-wise. Makes you sick, doesn't it.

A lot of people don't come to lectures, they say all the info is right there in the powerpoint. No. Just no. Even if the information is there, everything is usually condensed down into little bullet-points, devoid of context or unnecessary definite and indefinite articles. I've missed lectures before and sat wrapped in my duvet with the remainder of last night's bottle of gin pressed against my fevered brow, staring at the same four lines of text for three hours with no idea what these strange shapes are trying to tell me. It's not fun and it's not productive.

Any self respecting alcoholic knows you drink more to get rid of the pain.

So the lecturer is just as important as the stuff you're looking at? Yeah, pretty much. But what are they like?

Good question, reader. A quick Google for types of lecturer comes up with over 10 million results and a countless number of these are various websites giving you painfully unfunny accounts of the "5 types of lecturer at unay" or some similar title. These are bollocks. You have one lecturer and one lecturer alone. The one that doesn't want to be there.

Behind those cold dead eyes a trapped soul yearns for a fire alarm.

Now sure, you get the "funny" lecturer, the "boring" lecturer, or the "weird" lecturer who shows you one too many pictures of penises (it happens more than you think), but despite how they deliver themselves they all share the common trait of wanting to be anywhere other than the lecture theatre. You have to remember that in medicine, these men/women/goats in a lab coat are actual doctors or medical professionals who have a contractual obligation to teach your sorry ass how to pretend you know what you're doing while you make people die slower. They could be doing doctor shit but instead they have to take time out of their day to stand in front of you and have violent, traumatic flashbacks to when they were in medial school. They want to be there less that you, and its not unheard of for them to speed through slides like a rat with an electrode in the pleasure centre of it's brain or take a pager bleep as an opportunity to cut the hour short.

"Oh, dang. Would you look at that, my pager went off again."
"Sir, that's just an empty Tic Tac box with a whistle on it."

That said, their part is vital in making the impenetrable powerpoints a little more malleable and they usually soldier on, bless 'em. But what about you? What are you doing during all of this, as the guy at the front with a funny accent grumbles about liver metabolism and shows you random pictures of penises?

I see.

The one and only rule of lectures: make sure you have a comfy notepad.

Circle of Dante's Hell Most Similar To

Anger (The Fifth Circle) - 

Much like the depths of the River Styx, lectures draw you into "a black sulkiness which can find no joy in God or man or the universe". As for being accosted by a Catholic loyalist, that will depend entirely on who is taking the lecture.

Medical School: A Survival Guide - Part 1

You, yes you! Are you interested in a career in medicine? Are you interested in knowing more about medicine? Or being a medical student? Are you simply a regular reader of this blog? Are you lost and slightly confused by this sudden and unwarranted barrage of questions? Do you require medical assistance?

If so then sit down, apply pressure to your gaping wound and read on, the magical healing properties of my amazing literary prowess shall tend to you as I give you a whirlwind tour of the ups, the downs, the further downs, and the rock bottoms of choosing to do a medical degree, all divided into handy, deadline-filling chapters for your ease.

Medical school is hard. Like really hard. I think they use tungsten or something, definitely don't try biting it. There's long hours, tough material, strict rules and a very unusual collection of colleagues to deal with, so if you think you want to do it, it's best going in knowing the basics. I am, obviously, an expert seeing as I have survived a whole year, so listen to my every word and take it as gospel. There will be a test.

"Would you all pass your answer sheets back up to the front, please."

Without further ado, let us begin our endless journey into the fiery chasm of medical school. I'll be using my university as a template but I assume in my infinite knowledge that these things apply at least to every single other medical school in the world.

Chapter One - The Place

I go to Dundee University. For those of you who are not from Dundee or are lucky enough to have never passed through or heard of it, here is a map of the university campus that I definitely did not lift straight from Google Maps:

Also handily displaying every part of Dundee you don't want to go to in grey.

A nice, big uni campus. This is literally the beating heart of Dundee, the whole city has essentially become completely student-oriented. If you need something, it'll undoubtedly be somewhere near here. You'll probably live here, or at least very nearby. Along with everyone you've probably met up to this point.

Here is the same map including Ninewells Hospital, where the medical school is based:

"Fuck." 

That's a good 40 minute walk from the hospital to the campus. The sad truth is that most cities were not designed to accommodate for the poor sods who, in general, have no car, a crushing hangover and need to make this nightmare of a pilgrimage every day. Sure, there's the bus (or even a bike). But that's money (and energy), and spare change is to a student like Unobtanium is to a steroid-fuelled space marine. Extremely valuable, hard to come by, and protected by very violent smurfs.

You can feel the murder in his eyes...

Some medical schools might be luckier with a lot of classes taking place on campus, or even a nearer hospital, but in general if you choose to study medicine at any given university, you might as well pretend you've gone to a completely different one to any of the people you might know studying a different course. You are alone. And in Ninewells, no-one can hear you scream.

As for the hospital itself, you've got a whole world of pain waiting for you. Y'see, hospitals are very organic beings. They've usually been around for a long time in some form or another, and they've sort of just evolved to fit their needs, with extra floors, wings, departments, wards, clinics and torture chambers added and removed as and when it has been deemed necessary. That's great for the overall functioning of the hospital, but a wholesome source of angst for a student who had probably arrived having only just got the hang of the layout of their old high school.

"I'm too young for this!"

This is extenuated when you get on wards or clinical placements around the hospital where you don't have a herd of equally as confused-looking students to follow. You've usually got to try and find this place all by yourself, with nothing but a Doctor's name and a ward number to help you. 

You set out on your expedition, wary yet hopeful, and find a sign for your ward. Success! This will not be as hard as expected. You walk down a long corridor and up a set of steps, pass through some double doors and- Shit. There's a door with a keypad. You don't have access to such advanced technology! You shuffle about for a bit until some guy in a lab coat lets you through. You wander around inside this wing for a bit until you realise there isn't an exit, stumbling through a corridor of offices before bursting back out of the door you came in again. But wait, this isn't the same hallway, you must have taken a different turn. You need to get one more floor up but there are no stairs. You frantically walk-sprint down another corridor, ending up on a ward which doesn't seem to have a number, doctors and nurses staring at you as you clutch the front of your newly ironed shirt now drenched in fear-sweat. You trip and land on a patient's bed, an old woman yells. A nurse asks if you're OK. You scream a series of incoherent words before passing out and falling against a clinical waste bin.

True story.

Actually, the true story had more minotaurs in it.

Hospitals are labyrinths, but with less awesome music and David Bowie, so you're bound to get lost. Even if you're in the right place and need to find a bed, a chair or some of the ever-present hand sanitizer, it is almost certain that they will vanish. The important thing is to not panic and find a nice-looking doctor to ask for directions. That said, consultants are usually too busy to notice you and nurses are annoyed by you before you even approach them. Your best bet is junior doctors, they usually still retain a faint glimmer of a memory of what it's like to start studying medicine so they should be sympathetic. They're usually the ones in the harness, carrying a small hillock of files, being whipped by the other staff and conscious patients.

This is the one and only time it is a good idea to approach a person in a gimp costume.

We've not even touched on the usually binary heating situation in these places (one minute you're using your nipples to carve a path through the ice, the next you're carrying your notes around in a camel-back), what an anatomy lab looks like (don't lean on the body bags and you'll be fine) or why a single microbiology practical will be set in a lab approximately as difficult to get to as Hitler's dinosaur factory on the moon, but these pale in comparison to the last, and most important place you will find yourself in:

The lecture theatres.

They put in another red chair for each student who takes their life here.

Lectures will be getting their very own part in this mini-series, but I thought it important to mention them here. Lectures are your bread and butter, they are your alpha and omega, your Riff Raff and Magenta. You will spill blood, sweat and tears in these rooms. You will probably get more sleep here than at home. Lecture theatres will be your home. You will by all accounts die here.

"I think perhaps you'd better come inside..."

All I can do is make you aware of the inevitable. You may not like these places and their very strict unspoken etiquette, but you'll certainly grow to know them, even need them. Maybe, just maybe, you will someday love them.

Circle Of Dante's Hell Most Similar To

Limbo (The First Circle) - 

Finding your way around medical school, you will be surrounded by those much smarter than you; scholars, doctors, philosophers, possibly even a dude with a snake's tail who judges you. You will pass through seven gates to approach your destination, but there is still a long, long way to go.