Explanation

This is why I never went to medical school. It's a part of a post from the A Med School Memoir blog:

Reviewing pathology yesterday, I had one of those moments where I panicked and thought there was no way I could retain all the information. The thing about Path that makes it difficult for me is all the little details that must be remembered. If you want to pass the class, it’s enough to remember that Burkitt’s Lymphoma is a form of lymphoma that commonly invades the jaw or the ileo-cecal area. If you want to do well in the class, you have to also remember that it’s associated with c-myc translocation which puts it next to the IGH gene. The most common translocation is t(8;14)(q24;q32). You’d be well advised to also remember the lesser translocations if you can. (I can’t.) Finally, you also have to remember that the endemic and sporadic forms are associated with the Epstein-Barr virus, whereas the immunodeficiency form is associated with HIV. If it were just one disease process that you had to worry about, it wouldn’t be that tough. But there are hundreds of diseases to be familiar with. For some reason, I am actually really good at understanding how diseases work from a systemic perspective, and I usually have no trouble remembering what a disease does. Where I have trouble is remembering the tons of genetic minutiae to be memorized, the never-ending supply of trivia that goes with each disease.

Holy hell, my head hurts....