Here is every piece of paper given to or generated by my wife over the course of five years in pursuit of her medical degree. Our apartment is packed as tightly as an ocean-going sloop and with a baby on the way every bit of room counts. Thus, the decision to compress the written texts down into something a bit more digital.
It took six loads in a Home Depot 5 gallon bucket to get it all down to the bin.
Strikingly, it only filled a standard recycle bin about half-full.
The act of scanning, OCRing, tagging, PDF-ing and organizing all of the information presented here took the better part of two months' worth of evenings and weekends and generated 3.21 GB worth of searchable medical knowledge. So it's not like the information is gone. In fact, in many ways it's a hell of a lot more accessible; she can now spelunk into that database by keyword and find every example where her lectures touched on any given subject.
Nonetheless, kind of a striking display.
I have all of my family's photo albums. It took about three weeks to get two books of slides through the scanner; my mother used PVC slide holders which, of course, leached elasticizer all over the slides, each of which needed intensive treatment with PEC-12 and the Mother Of All Dusters. They're all up on Flickr now, easily searchable by everyone in my family. I sent an email to my mother. She never even clicked on the link. But when I gave her back the slide album she hadn't looked through in 30 years she could barely contain her joy.
The power of physical objects in a nutshell.
Again, I can empathize. It has been very interesting seeing my wife's progression through medical school and now into residency. One of the things that is interesting is how different the modalities of teaching have been as technology has progressed. When I first met her, she was doing a DDS/PhD program at the University of Michigan. This was in 2004 and most of the materials she used in her studies were analog. Though she was already two years into these programs, she would come home most days distraught because she did not feel passionately about dentistry or her PhD program. Ever since she was a young girl she had always wanted to be a medical doctor. For some reason along the way, people gave her the impression that this was an unrealistic goal. I persuaded her otherwise and she withdrew from her DDS/PhD program and applied to medical school. By her third year of medical school almost all of the lectures she attended were virtual and she would watch them at 1.5 X speed. Having a handout that you took home was virtually a thing of the past. While doing her residency in radiology she would look at complex images on computer screens from home and was able to simulate diagnosis. Just this year, she has decided that radiology is not a good fit for her because she misses patient interaction. We are currently on the residency trail again interviewing a different programs throughout the country. Although throughout her journey technology has progressed and the amount of paper acquired has diminished, I still think we could probably get that recycling bin filled to the top. It's been a very, very long road and it promises to be at least another four years from now until it's complete. That said, it has been an honor to be part of this process. Helping someone to chase their goals and dreams is a privilege and it can heavily influence your ability to chase your own. Recently, we been doing a lot of mock interviews. It's fun, and it makes you feel like you really are both in this together. I am sure that the two of you have experience similar things. Wish her well for me and good luck in this next month, It will be a big one for you both!