It's been about a month since you've heard from me (sorry about that) but I've been a busy little medical student over here! We just had a very heavy, and very interesting, Heme and Lymph and MSK block and mini. Now we are in our GI block and then we have Reproductive and then third semester will be over!
I don't know about the rest of my class but I am starting to feel the burn of basically being in school for a year straight (including MERP). I think no matter how much you try to avoid it it will hit you at one point and from then on it's a pure endurance battle. Waking up in the morning is a little harder, easy concepts seem so much more difficult, going home seems painfully far away and stress levels keep rising.
It gets tough and nothing really ever prepares you for it. One of my good friends posted an article saying to go into medicine because you want to go into medicine, not because you have stellar grades or your parents want you to or you want to make money. None of that will get you through medical school. The only thing that will get you through will be your desire to become a doctor. This got me to thinking - what were my thoughts before I got into medical school. How did I interpret becoming a doctor and more importantly medical school?
So I started rummaging through my inbox with the hopes of finding my MD Essay.
Here's a little bit of that essay. I know it's helping me out right now to read it again and to realize all you need to do is fight.
"My road to fourth year has required significant focus and I have been faced with many different challenges along the way. The identity crisis in my very first semester, realizing that what I had envisioned myself studying was not actually what I wanted to do alarmed me tremendously. I found I struggled with identifying who I was. During my whole high school career it seemed obvious that I would study Mechanical Engineering. When I came to the realization that I had no passion for it, it made me extremely nervous and uncomfortable. What would I do without the identity I had developed over the past four years? I had to find something else to be passionate about and that I would enjoy studying that was not Robotics or Mechanical Engineering. With a lot of support from my friends and family I realized that all along I enjoyed the movement of objects, not necessarily robotic objects, but human movement.
After dealing with my identity crisis in
first year and transferring into Kinesiology I was finally getting my feet on
the ground and I began to feel like myself again. I loved my classes, and found
that I was excited to learn again. Unfortunately, I received devastating news
of the passing of a very close family member right before my finals in December
2012 - the first half of my second year. Even though I tried to put up a strong
front, this death affected me. Not soon after, in September 2013, my
grandfather passed away from cancer. I was very close to my grandfather and
although he had been battling cancer for a number of years I was still shocked
and heartbroken. In that same month my father had heart surgery, which also
took a toll on my schooling. And regrettably my father required a second heart
surgery in November 2013. I did all that I could to focus on my schoolwork. Ultimately
maybe I should have let myself heal from all of those traumatic experiences,
but my education is very important to me and I knew if I could get through all
this I would emerge a stronger and better person.
Through the tough times I strived to keep a
smile on my face and a positive outlook on life. Looking back at my life, I
realized that if I didn’t go through the tough times I wouldn’t be who I am
today. The tough times made me realize how beautiful life is and how one smile
can make a massive impact on someone’s day.
If I could pinpoint a specific time that
made my passion for medicine grow it would have to be during the year 2013 when
I had multiple stressors in my life. That was when I came to the conclusion
that there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to pursue a career in medicine.
If I could alleviate someone’s pain, or brighten someone’s day and be lucky
enough to call that my job I would never have to work a day in my life."
- Jen
My mom and grandma visited me today :)
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