Dr. Raymon!!

I walked into the lecture hall like any other day, sat down in the front row with my friends and took out my iPad about to take notes. Today was a special day, the start of our five-day Kaplan Live review course for Intro to Clinical Medicine 6. As I raised my head, I was pleasantly surprised to see a very familiar face in front of us… it was Dr. Lionel Raymon, the celebrity pharm guy from our Kaplan USMLE Step 1 prep videos!! I, like many other med students around the country, have seen Dr. Raymon’s videos online before when we were taking pharm and he is amazing, making difficult concepts seemingly easy with his memorable French accent, and adding charm, wit, and humor to his lectures. He has lectured nationally and internationally at different schools.  And now Dr. Raymon’s here in front of us, standing in our lecture hall at AUC, teaching us. The whole time I felt like getting his autograph or something. It was so awesome having him teach us this course.

First of all, let me say that the amount of knowledge this man possesses is impressive. It seems like he can talk just about anything in medicine, and I mean anything, anytime. Dr. Raymon’s approach is quite different from other instructors we’ve had. Instead of having a strict list of topics to follow while teaching, he takes an extremely organic approach, flowing from concept to concept as they interrelate to each other. Seems like this guy can start talking and keep talking (like a conversation) until soon enough, seven hours pass by and we didn’t even know it.  This is the first time I have ever learned material with this approach, and I find it a very natural way of learning, and a great way to integrate everything we know that really matters to each other, exactly the stuff that will be tested on the board exams. We tied so many seemingly disconnected parts in medicine together. Although everything we talked about in lecture today seems familiar, this integrative and connective approach gave me another level of understanding of the material that can’t be gained from merely memorizing facts.

The Kaplan Live lectures are everyday this week, lasting from 11:30 am to 7:00 pm, with a five minute break between each hour and a 30-minute lunch break at 3:30, which the school brings to us (for free). Today the school brought us Subway for lunch.

When my friends and I left the lecture hall, the sun had already set. I was not used to getting done with lectures when the day is almost over. Today was the shortest seven hours I’ve ever experienced in a lecture and I look forward to tomorrow.

Some of Dr. Raymon’s famous quotes:

“Chances are cardiovascular diseases or cancer will take us away. Now, having said those fun things, don’t forget to take a trip to France before you die.”

“Your drug will HAVE TO cross the blood-brain-barrier, unless you take a syringe and plug the drug directly in your brain. Normally we can’t do that – it bends the needle.”

“We are not drug companies, although some people might think they are, if they take too many drugs.”

“Normally you don’t take grapefruit juice at bedtime. It’s something you do first thing in the morning. It’s very bitter, so like this you get over with this as fast as possible. Sorry for Tropicana…”

“A log scale would never start at 0. Well, actually if you want to kill a mathematician, the best bet is to tell them “log of 0″. Normally they drop dead.”

“A good therapeutic index would be in thousands to the extent that if you would want to commit suicide with such a drug you will have to swallow the box and choke on it.”