I'm Still Going!

Hi friends!

I know it's been a while since my last post - I've been so busy with my classes and clinical simulations that I've kind of neglected my little blog! Alas I'm here to write a post.

I've been struggling a little bit with keeping the motivation high and remembering why I'm going through medical school. As I've been sitting here in my own self doubt and negativity I've been scrolling through twitter, Facebook and instagram and I noticed this seems to be an ongoing thing for a decent amount of medical students right now. I don't know if it's the time of the year... something in the air... but from Ross to the US to Canada I've been seeing students struggling with motivation.

Then on my morning social media scroll I read a tweet from an account I follow and it said " Making it into and out of medical school alive are two separate things... medical school is hard, even though you get used to how hard it is". That got me to thinking and doing a little bit of reflecting - and I know I've mentioned in a previous blog post that we all need to be our own best friend before anything else.

If you look at the type of person in medical school I think I can say we all have one thing (definitely) in common. We are our own harshest critic. We all think we should push harder, study longer, read more, learn more, score higher ect ect. Whereas to people outside of medical school, (I'm talking to you my friends from back home) everyone thinks we're some type of robot who never takes time off and studies 24/7. When you take a step back and look at it - they aren't wrong. We wake up, put in 12-14 hour study days go to sleep and do it again. At first yeah it was an adjustment, then you become used to the long days, the leg cramps, the coffee shakes, the eye twitches, the aggressive yawns.

But still it's hard work!!! And even though we are used to it and call this "normal" it doesn't mean it isn't easy. It takes a toll on you mentally and physically. No matter what part of this medical journey you're on you need to think about yourself and take care of yourself. It's so easy getting caught up in studying for exam after exam then boards. There is so much to know and not enough time to learn it all. It's stressful - I'll fully admit I haven't figured out a balance for myself. I normally don't realize I'm working myself to the ground until thoughts and facts are running through my mind like crazy.

I don't have a fool proof answer to fix the medical school burn out and the self doubt, but what I do know is that you're not on this journey by accident. And you're not the first person to struggle through medical school and you definitely won't be the last. This is a difficult field to be in - but the only way you'll be able to stay in the field is if you take care of yourself first.

I have a mini coming up on Thursday so this is a stressful week coming up for me, but I'm going to try to keep the motivation and positive attitude high... I hope you do too :)

- Jen