@laughingfrog Sorry, I think there's some misunderstanding going on from both sides, but anyways:
1. I agree with what what said above, absolutely focus on school first for your first semester. Once you get the hang of it, then the decision is yours to approach faculty and like stated above, many are receptive to allowing you to perform some research while you're in school. The majority of M1s are not researching as of now (though some still are). An 18 month, condensed curriculum is not designed to allow much research, if at all, during our pre-clinical curriculum. I do know that some M1s will participate in some research over our (short) summer break b/w years 1 and 2, and may continue to do some light research throughout the 3rd semester at their new campuses. We have time dedicated later on in our curriculum specifically for research if that's what you want to use the time for. Again, this is all up to you.
2. We do not have any direct contact with derm/ortho in B/CS, though there are orthopedic surgery and dermatology interest groups here if you're interested. I'm sure you could talk with the A&M temple campus derm and ortho programs if you're looking for something specific.
3. We do have a few clinical experiences during 1st year. We took some history/physicals on patient's in the hospital and saw some standardized patients at different points during 1st year. If you wanted more exposure, you can also volunteer at the health clinic to practice taking history, physicals, write SOAPs, present, etc with patients there.
4. The white coat experiences mentioned above allow us to see different health care fields, from nursing, pharm, PT, OT, audilogy, lab, etc (some are these are short, mandatory experiences). You are absolutely able to shadow other physicians on your time if that's what you want to do!
Let me know if you have any other questions. I believe nysor was just alluding to the fact that medical school doesn't allow a ton of free time, thus your limited time becomes pretty valuable and you may want to rest haha. But of course do what interests you!