**(Incomplete class photo taken by a professor during a lab session. My friends, my family, my loves <3... Look four in from the left and three rows back, black sweater--> That's me!)**At the close of this year, my first year of medical school, we were required to write a reflection on how our thoughts toward the Oath of Professionalism we were required to write at the onset of medical school had changed, our high and low-lights of the year, and our goals for the upcoming year. I felt that it was worth documenting here, so if you care, take a peek!
...Becoming a Physician: Year One...
Someone once described life to me in reference to the theory of relativity. When you’re young life seems to pass so slowly, you’re always so eager to grow up, but that feeling is relative. At those younger ages a few months is such a huge fraction of your life. When you are older, as I am now, a few months are less of a fraction of your experience and what once seemed to pass so slowly now seems to fly by.
As my first year of medical school comes to a close, I’m not sure I can blame this crazy whirlwind of experience on this take on relativity or if it is the sheer nature of medical school, the high-stress, or the amount of knowledge we are required to gain in such a short time that made this year pass by so quickly. Whatever it was, it was effective. I feel like I blinked and this year is over. If it wasn’t for the mass amount of new medical jargon and smear of anxiety laden memories of approaching Monday exams, I might not believe I’d actually made it through year one.
However hard it may be to believe, I have made it. I’ve made it through a year of ups and downs and one in which I think I’ve learned more in a single year than I did in the entirety of my five spent in undergrad. As I reflect back on the beginning of the year and the Oath of Professionalism we were required to write, I noted several things that I touched on. The privilege of having patients entrust their lives and livelihood in you, a dedication to holding myself to the highest moral and ethical standards, to respectfulness, to recognizing my limits, and to maintaining altruism were all mentioned. Of these things, it is the idea of altruism that stands out to me most distinctly. For me, the other things I mentioned are easy to remember, easier to maintain. Maintaining altruism, however, and avoiding the cynicism sometimes inherent to the medical profession has not been as easy.
Medical school is hard. If you’re not careful, it has a way of consuming your life and by doing so, it’s easy to become unhappy and to lose that sense of altruism that keeps you fresh. It is that altruism that helps you remember what you are working so hard for and that motivates you to maintain perspective on why you entered medicine. For the most part I’ve done well balancing life and school, but that’s not to say that there haven’t been moments when this altruism was lost or when I found myself questioning why I was here. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like a masochist, putting myself through all this stress with no end in sight. Sometimes it’s hard to avoid feeling cynical about the profession I aspire to enter when it can become the object of blame for current stress, but I recognize the importance of maintaining a positive outlook. My oath made me remember myself at the beginning of the year, naïve as I may have been, I don’t want to lose that innocence and outlook and I’ll continue to try to maintain the sense of altruism I set out with.
As I mentioned before, medical school has a way of consuming your life if you let it. While as a whole I consider this a good year, it was also a growing one, and a trying one. I struggled early on to find a balance between studying and the basic functions of daily life. Exercise, nutrition, and sleep went to the wayside. I floundered trying to establish a life outside of school and ended up feeling mildly unhappy, exhausted, and lonely by the end of phase one. That time is definitely a low light. I’ve made strides toward establishing a better balance. In all actuality I think I get out more and have more of a social life than some of my social peers, but managing the anvil of guilt that hangs overhead when you’re out and feel like you should be studying is still a work in progress.
Tough as it may have been, this year was also great. What stands out to me the most as a year one highlight is less of a single experience and more of a general idea, that being the comradery between myself and my classmates. We truly have become a family. These faces you see every day, you come to appreciate as your brothers and sisters in arms. Though I might not know all of my classmates on the personal level that I’d like to develop with them, I share a bond with them, a knowledge that we are united under the same stresses and that we want each other to succeed. In a year that sometimes had the effect of making me feel lonely and somewhat cut off from the rest of the world, they were there. They were my highlight.
As year one comes to a close, I want to take some time to establish some goals for next year. Though I feel I’ve worked hard, I want to commit to trying harder and to doing my best. I would hope to make more effective use of my time, especially that spent in class. I want to maintain the altruism I set out with that I feel in some ways I am already losing. I hope to find a way to establish a life outside of school that I can go to when I need a release and separation. I hope that I can maintain a better balance between school, social, and my personal emotional, physical, and spiritual health. I hope to keep fostering the relationships I’m building with my classmates. I hope to maintain perspective on this relatively short bit of stress in terms of and in relation to the career doing something worthwhile and fulfilling that this work will eventually bring me to.
This has been a crazy year, but it is hard to believe it is already coming to a close. I’m taking with me a sense of pride, for surviving, for succeeding what has been both a difficult but an amazing last 8 months. I’ll remember to reflect back on my oath and this paper next year as I feel both were valuable exercises. I look forward to the continued growth I’ll be sure to experience as I progress through medical school and do my best to enjoy the ride.
...Becoming a Physician: Year One...
Someone once described life to me in reference to the theory of relativity. When you’re young life seems to pass so slowly, you’re always so eager to grow up, but that feeling is relative. At those younger ages a few months is such a huge fraction of your life. When you are older, as I am now, a few months are less of a fraction of your experience and what once seemed to pass so slowly now seems to fly by.
As my first year of medical school comes to a close, I’m not sure I can blame this crazy whirlwind of experience on this take on relativity or if it is the sheer nature of medical school, the high-stress, or the amount of knowledge we are required to gain in such a short time that made this year pass by so quickly. Whatever it was, it was effective. I feel like I blinked and this year is over. If it wasn’t for the mass amount of new medical jargon and smear of anxiety laden memories of approaching Monday exams, I might not believe I’d actually made it through year one.
However hard it may be to believe, I have made it. I’ve made it through a year of ups and downs and one in which I think I’ve learned more in a single year than I did in the entirety of my five spent in undergrad. As I reflect back on the beginning of the year and the Oath of Professionalism we were required to write, I noted several things that I touched on. The privilege of having patients entrust their lives and livelihood in you, a dedication to holding myself to the highest moral and ethical standards, to respectfulness, to recognizing my limits, and to maintaining altruism were all mentioned. Of these things, it is the idea of altruism that stands out to me most distinctly. For me, the other things I mentioned are easy to remember, easier to maintain. Maintaining altruism, however, and avoiding the cynicism sometimes inherent to the medical profession has not been as easy.
Medical school is hard. If you’re not careful, it has a way of consuming your life and by doing so, it’s easy to become unhappy and to lose that sense of altruism that keeps you fresh. It is that altruism that helps you remember what you are working so hard for and that motivates you to maintain perspective on why you entered medicine. For the most part I’ve done well balancing life and school, but that’s not to say that there haven’t been moments when this altruism was lost or when I found myself questioning why I was here. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like a masochist, putting myself through all this stress with no end in sight. Sometimes it’s hard to avoid feeling cynical about the profession I aspire to enter when it can become the object of blame for current stress, but I recognize the importance of maintaining a positive outlook. My oath made me remember myself at the beginning of the year, naïve as I may have been, I don’t want to lose that innocence and outlook and I’ll continue to try to maintain the sense of altruism I set out with.
As I mentioned before, medical school has a way of consuming your life if you let it. While as a whole I consider this a good year, it was also a growing one, and a trying one. I struggled early on to find a balance between studying and the basic functions of daily life. Exercise, nutrition, and sleep went to the wayside. I floundered trying to establish a life outside of school and ended up feeling mildly unhappy, exhausted, and lonely by the end of phase one. That time is definitely a low light. I’ve made strides toward establishing a better balance. In all actuality I think I get out more and have more of a social life than some of my social peers, but managing the anvil of guilt that hangs overhead when you’re out and feel like you should be studying is still a work in progress.
Tough as it may have been, this year was also great. What stands out to me the most as a year one highlight is less of a single experience and more of a general idea, that being the comradery between myself and my classmates. We truly have become a family. These faces you see every day, you come to appreciate as your brothers and sisters in arms. Though I might not know all of my classmates on the personal level that I’d like to develop with them, I share a bond with them, a knowledge that we are united under the same stresses and that we want each other to succeed. In a year that sometimes had the effect of making me feel lonely and somewhat cut off from the rest of the world, they were there. They were my highlight.
As year one comes to a close, I want to take some time to establish some goals for next year. Though I feel I’ve worked hard, I want to commit to trying harder and to doing my best. I would hope to make more effective use of my time, especially that spent in class. I want to maintain the altruism I set out with that I feel in some ways I am already losing. I hope to find a way to establish a life outside of school that I can go to when I need a release and separation. I hope that I can maintain a better balance between school, social, and my personal emotional, physical, and spiritual health. I hope to keep fostering the relationships I’m building with my classmates. I hope to maintain perspective on this relatively short bit of stress in terms of and in relation to the career doing something worthwhile and fulfilling that this work will eventually bring me to.
This has been a crazy year, but it is hard to believe it is already coming to a close. I’m taking with me a sense of pride, for surviving, for succeeding what has been both a difficult but an amazing last 8 months. I’ll remember to reflect back on my oath and this paper next year as I feel both were valuable exercises. I look forward to the continued growth I’ll be sure to experience as I progress through medical school and do my best to enjoy the ride.
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