Stealing from School

As many of you know, I have started medical school in Chicago. This has put both the year of-no-buy and my blog on hiatus over the past weeks (although there is an arguement to be made that the blog is on permanent semi-hiatus) as I get settled into the new world of medical science, cadavers, and classmates. As I am back to no-buying and blogging, I will defer writing about moving for no money, and making new friends for little money, and instead post a school assignment. We have to keep reflection portfolios about our development as physicians at school. Here is my first installment, with more to follow as the portfolio grows:

I have answered the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” with the response, “a doctor” since people have asked me that question.  At age five, this may have been because the possible answers were limited to doctor, lawyer, professional athlete, astronaut, and confusingly, President of the United States.  (I always wondered why there were enough slots in most professions for people to enter those fields, whereas there can only be one president every four year.  Your individual odds are terrible).  As I grew older, and my convictions that medicine is the best field for me deepened, I, paradoxically, felt freer to explore other interests and passions.  While I contemplated majoring in biology in college, my advisor told me to do something that I would never be able to study again, so I opted for French History and Literature.  Not the most career applicable major, but I loved the very personalized course of study that I followed and support that I received from faculty and advisors.  I learned how to think critically and write (and write and write and write) in my major, which are two skills that served me well on the MCAT, at least on the verbal section.  

Within the first six weeks of medical school, my suspicions about there being science medical students and non-science medical students has borne out.  I have come to think of myself as a humanities leaning science person, and thus despite the deluge of information pouring over our heads, I make time for the New York Review of Books and a John Updike novel.  I would not be me if I was not reading something currently and I am determined to make literary reading a part of my life during both medical education and practice.  The other divide that I sense in medical school is the difference between people who are fresh from college and those who, like myself, are several years removed from their undergraduate days.  The younger ones are young, tend to be quicker on the knowledge uptake, and also faster on the party circuit.  My group of friends are all over the age of 25, and we are all adjusting to being students again, especially students of medical learning.


Now, on to perhaps the most important question of this first reflection: Am I glad that I am here, finally beginning my medical career?  The answer, despite the fact that the clinic seems impossibly far away from my current life, is an unequivocal yes.  Once the application/interview/decision cycle was completed, I harbored a tiny sliver of fear that I had possibly been wrong after all of these years.  What if I did not like medical school, or after interacting with my classmates, professors, and medical staff understood that I made a bad choice?  I don’t know what I would have done then because mercifully I still feel shivers of anticipation at the thought of being a practicing physician.  I admire several of our course heads for the clear, level-headed introductory courses that they are providing for us, and have been impressed by the doctors on staff of UIH that I have come across.  A friend of mine from college who is an M3 wrote in an email several weeks ago that “at some point during the first two years everyone [meaning every student in a med school class] falls in love with medicine itself.”  I am lucky to count myself among those who fell hard and quickly.