Days of Wine and Roses

Excerpted from the 1963 P&S Yearbook

The history of a class is a tenuous and fragile thing into which are interwoven 120 individual stories converging to form those palpable moods or events which may be designated, in retrospect, “landmarks.” Here are some of those landmarks.

The first year was hectic and trying. We were bombarded with facts; bludgeoned by facts; titillated, amused, angered, wrought emotionless by facts. The second year may be remembered as the year the class turned from its books to other pursuits: marriage and politics. Acrimonious political debate threatened to burst class unity asunder; but we held together in the face of the common enemy—pathology, microbiology, pharmacology. By March a harried, haggard Class of ’63 was ready to enter the clinical phase of medical education. The signs of our transformation into physicians were subtle. Chino pants were replaced by conventional slacks and even Krick donned a tie (until the Ben Casey shirt arrived on the scene). 

Suddenly third year was upon us. Clinical clerks are a strange breed, more clerk than clinician. For most, the third year was rewarding albeit an intense period of hard work and learning. Dr. Bradley’s rounds were a baptism by fire. The chief of medicine seemed to have eyes in the back of his head as he would wheel around and fire a question at a sleepy student in the third row. We took a whirlwind tour of the specialties and browsed through a wide variety of electives. 

THE FOURTH YEAR: Everything was coming up roses. The quest for internships dominated the year. By March the wheels of the IBM had ground out the answers and we were able to relax for the ensuing months (with the minor problem of National Boards still hovering overhead).

Memories flood the mind as landmarks pass in review. The future is hazy but we face it with confidence in the strength of our training. We have been enriched by facts, concepts, new reflexes. These are the memories.

— Robert Burd’63, Editor
Class of 1963 Yearbook
http://archive.org/details/psyearbookofcoll1963colu