Prague Selective

Go to Prague! As a January student, I went after my first term and knew nothing. Enjoyed the hell out of it. If you start in January and wait until the end of 4th term (2nd year) to go, you will be squeezing the dates a little close together. I recommend as a freshman. If you are an August student, you get one crack at it: after 2nd term. This is probably the perfect time to go. You should try to sign up the second you land on the island as spaces fill up quickly.

**The Official Prague Selective website is run by Martin Stransky**

Get your friends together and rent a cheap apartment or stay in a 4-bed hostel suite. You chose your own level of grit. If you are a vegetarian, eat a face. If you are a recovering alcoholic, relapse. Prague is beer and meat and beautiful people and you should not miss any of it. Before you head over, go online and buy the DK Publishing Top 10 Eyewitness Guide to Prague. I lived by this book and it did not disappoint. Useful Czech phrases in the back. Also, do not ever call it “Czechoslovakia.” The Czech Republic and Slovakia are quite separate now.

The set up of your selective is simple: Once a week you meet as a class with Dr. Stransky (the person throwing this party) above Club N11. Besides being a big deal in Prague, he said one of my favorite things: “In life, it’s good to be best, but it’s better to be first.” He owns the club N11 and will host a part there early into the selective. As I remember, the first day you meet Dr. Stransky and learn about your rotations in the program. Wear professional clothes. For guys, this means shirt and tie. Do not be the guy with tennis shoes, an untucked shirt, and a poorly knotted tie. Ladies, wear comfortable shoes and a nice dress or skirt. Once you have your assignment, you meet in front of the N11 club with a bunch of other students, and someone working for Dr. Stransky takes your group onto the metro system for your destination. Remember it, because you will have to do it yourself every day after. Your destination will change every week, so you will repeat this process every Monday morning. Some people start rotations at 8:00am, some at 9:30. Everyone checks out by 5:00.

Each rotation at each hospital is different. For example, my Neuro rotation consisted of locking us in a room and letting a tape play (half the time), talking with Czech medical students so that they could practice their English (1/4th the time) and seeing a bunch of interesting cases for the rest of it. If you understand 1 and 1/2 syndrome and the workings of nystagmus, you are golden. My Cardio rotation consisted of putting on a heavy-ass vest and standing in the room while the doctors snaked line up everyone’s femoral artery into the heart. We watched all of it on angiogram. It was great, except for the vest and the revolving door nature of it all. My Orthopedic surgery rotation was my favorite. The doctors and nurses do not care what you do, so long as you do not hurt anybody. You change into their scrubs and gowns (their locker room) and just pick a surgery. Axilla surgery in room 1, hip replacement in room 2, and so on. I went to see a hip replacement and got blood all over me, which was AWESOME! Loved that rotation. At the end of the week, you meet up above N11 with Dr. Stransky, see a patient, and talk about the week. Wash Rinse Repeat.

You are in Europe, the center of it, so you will want to travel. I know people that made it out of Prague to go to Germany, Italy, what have you. It is hard though. You have to be at the hospitals on Monday and Friday. Once you factor in the time of transit to and from another country, you are really cutting things close to say nothing of a slow train or a broken one. To get the credit for the class, you have to have perfect attendance. That said, some of the doctors will sign your sheet for the week regardless of your attendance and I do not know of anyone that did the selective and did not get credit. So who knows? Travel at your own peril I guess.

The weather in Prague swings. Bringing nothing but summer clothes with something nice for the hospital is not going to cut it. Bring a sweater, a jacket, something. Also, it rains in Prague. Do not be that wet guy without a raincoat. Speaking of clothing, you should probably buy the greatest pair of shoes on the planet before getting on that plane. Everyone wonders why the people in Europe are so skinny. Not me. They walk everywhere, never stopping, always walking. So if you buy a pair of shoes that pinches your toe or drags on your heal ever so slightly, that’ll be a gapping hole bleeding through your socks by the end of the third day. And since you are walking everywhere all the time, it will NEVER have a chance to heal. So just avoid that whole mess and buy yourself something nice.

The nightlife is great. Try to avoid the comfort of your two favorite clubs every night and see as much as you can. Joe’s Cafe was a great one, and no trip to Prague can possibly be complete without a few trips to the Duplex. Enjoy the dancers and the air horn.

All in all, I hope you really enjoy Prague. Their subway system is larger than anything I have ever seen, and you will have a great time getting lost even though there are only three subway lines. Every set of directions you will ever give will be in terms of Tesco. It will take you a week to discover Andel. You will buy a bottle of water, take one sip and spit it out, and forever after ask for “Voda, neperlive.” (Voh-dah, nay-per-leh-veh) Make sure you are friends with someone who takes many pictures; you would be surprised how quickly you forget how great it was.

I wrote home when I was there, and I’ve included those posts. If you have any questions, please post them and I’ll add where it’s empty.

In Prague

Prague, Part Dva