Harvard Medical Students: Breaking a Leg for the 102nd Time

News flash for pre-meds: There’s no need to give up those voice lessons and tap shoes in exchange for a stethoscope just yet. This year marked the 102nd Harvard Medical School Annual Second-Year Show, in which nearly half the class of second-year students in the medical and dental schools write, direct, design, and star in an original musical that features impersonations of their professors. According to student/performer Adam R. Donnell, it is “expected” of students to be in the show.

In this year’s show, “I Got Curriculum,” the news that the Harvard Medical School has dropped in rank below “some school in Baltimore” (i.e. Johns Hopkins) sends the faculty into a tizzy of reformation. Lyrics of popular songs are transformed into medical jargon, like in “Anatomist’s Got Back”: “When a girl walks in with an ischium-size waist / And a gluteus in your face / You get sprung, wanna pull off your glove.”

In an anatomy class spoof on “Dancing with the Stars,” students explain how exactly to be a uterus through dancing. The show may be a “slight exaggeration” from real medical school, however. “I don’t recall any dancing,” says Sam B. Dubal, a first-year student in the audience, of his classes. “But we did have many great dissections.”

While most of the show was done in good fun, med student Regan W.J. Bergmark’s mousy portrayal of anatomy professor Trudy Van Houten, while considered truthful “to the T” by the show’s co-director Paulvalery Roulette, may have crossed the line, instigating grumbles from the audience.

According to co-producer Yoni E. Shoag, there have been instances in the past where students have put the musical before their studies. While Shoag claims he was very sensitive to this issue, there is a chance that HMS may still be putting its musicals before its curriculum: neither the show’s producers nor HMS Dean Jeffrey S. Flier could identify the cancer slide shown on the back of the program as part of an ad by the Pathology department.

“It looks pretty nasty though,” Flier says.

—Mia P. Walker