January 8, 2007

• Love? Hate? Stuff it up your yin yang.

  I’ve mixed feelings about this year. But none of that
  bittersweet stuff. No, this is an absolute dichotomy. Love, meet hate.

  To catch you up, this is my 5th preclinical quarter (out of
  6 total). I’m a second-year. You do two years in the classroom, and then two
  years in the hospital. In year two, they really turn up the intensity. I
  basically spend my days in class, and my evenings studying.

  You can imagine-or maybe you can’t-there’s a lot of stuff
  that can go wrong in our bodies. Most of the time it goes right. But then you
  wouldn’t be seeing a doctor, would you?

  So I go to barnes and noble, take out my lectures, review books,
  and laptop, and memorize. Pages and pages of facts. Some of which makes
  logical sense, based on the basic knowledge of how the body is supposed to
  work, but other times, it’s just rote, bland memorization.(i’m looking at YOU pharmacology!)

  The human brain is not meant to take in this much
  information, repeatedly, in such a short span. I promise. And, because we
  clearly have nothing more important to do or learn, we get to memorize random
  facts about conditions, most of which we will never, ever, ever see. This
  would be where that whole hate thing comes in.

  So contrast all that fear and loathing with the other side-I
  finally feel like I’m becoming a doctor! Ahh, love! All this work, all this
  perserverance, and stuff is starting to finally make sense! I get it! What a
  feeling. We see patients once a week at our preceptorships, and, get ready for this: they actually
  have the symptoms we’re taught about! And they’re actually on the drugs they
  tell us we have to learn! It’s this light at the end of the tunnel. It’s this
  belated acknowledgement that yes, what we’re learning does apply to actual
  people; it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, or only in our heads or on our tests.

   Another, more subtle benefit of the “test you every
  weeks until there’s nothing left” mentality, which I think will probably never
  leave medicine, and perhaps for good reason: I no longer seem to stress over
  tests, or many other stressors in my life.

   I’m much more content to just feel confident, do my very
  best, be true to myself about my work ethic, and just think calmly.

  A great proverb (I’ve heard
  Chinese, but who knows) goes something like this: How would the world be
  different if you paid doctors when you were well, and they paid you when you
  were sick? Talk about preventitive focus. Take that one and and munch on it.

  Exactly 5 months from today I will be taking the USMLE step 1. Time to get my study on

  -J

  • 9:10 pm
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