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| My big plant, this time last year (it doesn't look like this now, unfortunately) |
I am two months away from finishing my third year of medical school: two months of internal medicine before I take Step 2 CK, take a one month pit stop in anesthesia, and then four months of orthopedic surgery. Home and three away rotations I am (yet) applying to. Research has been stagnant. My mentor believes in me more than I believe in myself. I scarcely feel ready to apply for residency, but here I am, at the edge of it.
I agonize enough over this process on my own, so I won't belabor it here. Essentially, I haven't changed my mind about orthopedic surgery. I haven't changed my mind about orthopedic trauma, specifically. I am more afflicted now with impostor syndrome than ever before. I have never been more uncertain of my abilities and my talents and every other qualification I may or may not have than right now. At the same time, I have toured most of medicine as a student and determined that nothing is close to orthopedics, and that it must be my future.
I finished my neurology clerkship, which was one of the good ones. Unfortunately, I saw three people die in one day in the Neuro ICU/SICU. All were inevitable. Two were peaceful, with family around them. The third was a futile, but all hands on deck resuscitation attempt of a gentleman who was hemorrhaging all his blood and bags upon bags of more blood from his dural venous sinuses (could not be repaired). I felt kind of useless because of my inexperience and because of the futility, but I made myself helpful by running supplies around, measuring and dumping blood from his hemovac, cleaning up, and finding chairs and tissue.
I've withdrawn a lot from my first friends in medical school and leaned in to others, namely my roommate and our mutual friends, and other students applying in orthopedic surgery. I take care of my plants. I clean my room. I make food for myself, ignore my other roommate, and sleep when I can. Two of my patients on internal medicine are dying, one in a matter of days and the other in weeks. Time just moves on.
I've withdrawn a lot from my first friends in medical school and leaned in to others, namely my roommate and our mutual friends, and other students applying in orthopedic surgery. I take care of my plants. I clean my room. I make food for myself, ignore my other roommate, and sleep when I can. Two of my patients on internal medicine are dying, one in a matter of days and the other in weeks. Time just moves on.
Best of luck with everything! I've always marveled at hearing about all the work involved in medical school and getting set up for residency, the application processes, the exams, and everything else. (And ack, that's before even thinking about some of the emotional challenges from working with patients.)
ReplyDeleteAs law school went on, I leaned on my small group of close friends from school. As a fairly shy introvert, I tend to stick closely to people who are on the same page as me when it comes to our values and what we prioritize and how we see the world, and I think that makes us a much better support system for each other, since some of our complaints are about... cultural issues in the profession, let's just say, and not all other lawyers or law students would understand.
For your second paragraph, I need to figure out how I can do that for myself as I move on to residency. I have those conversations with my earlier med school friends and roommates. As I drift more towards my orthopedic surgery friends (I am the only woman of 8 ortho applicants in my year) I find myself among people who may listen but not understand (and some who may not listen at all).
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