I used to be the life of the party - lived the urban yuppie life, hit the outdoors all the time, and just lived life. Coming into school, I made a decision to keep living life. This was easy for the first couple of months. After all, they do treat us pretty nice here at my school. Then when the first batch of exams came, I thought - holy frack I'm out of here. I stuck through it in hopes of it getting easier.
3 months into my second semester now, I couldn't help but wonder why I don't have that urge to "do stuff" in life anymore. I was troughing and rarely wanted to make plans to hit a party or workout at the gym. Anyone who knows me knows this isn't me. It's like I've had the living bejesus sucked out of me. I was telling a friend about my "troughing" and finally she hit me on the head and said, "wait, you still haven't figured out the obvious reason of why you're troughing?". It took a moment and then it all hit me.
Even when I'm away from my books, medicine is on my mind. There's the ever looming thought of everything I have to do. There's the huge amounts of gunk I don't know that I should know. There are the fake people at school I have to deal with. There is the shitty doctor who I have to shadow every week to deal with. And the thing I hate most, is when I get sarcastic comments from ppl outside of medicine about "oh wow - you're going to be a doctor. whooopdy doo. good for you. make mommy proud". Maybe if they tried working 100 hour weeks only to realize you still might fail at what you're doing then they'd at least give me a break. Oh btw, mom never asked me to be doctor.
Did I love the idea of getting into medicine? Absolutely. Do I love medical school? Absolutely not. Do I miss life? More than anything. I'm going to be hopeful though and keep on trekking.
I had one of those moments a couple weeks ago... I was like "man, what am I doing this again?". I'm at the gym, I'm thinking I should be studying. I'm studying, I'm thinking the things I could be doing. It made me realize I was wasting the moment. I just had to suck it up and do it. I knew there was a reason why I decided to go to med school in the first place (although sometimes I can't quite define precisely the reason), so I don't know, I take a deep breath and try to imagine me saving someone's life in a far far away country someday. That usually does it.
ReplyDeleteAm I stalking your blog too much? :S Please, don't freak out, it's almost 11pm and I've been studying since 7am. And I caught myself looking into volunteering programs to do during summer. Please, what's wrong with me.
ReplyDeleteAre you kidding me?! I had no idea people even read my ramblings. It's great to know that it's normal to feel human and wonder why the f* we decided to do this. A lotta ppl in med will never bring it up, but we all have moments where listening to copious amounts of corny "uplifting, I am a strong person and I can dooooo this!" music is the only way to cope. And then sometimes online is the only place we find ppl that openly admit the obstacles along the way, eh? (Yes, I realize I just said "eh" - CANADA! F* YEAH!)
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