“When will you have the time? The exact HOUR we graduate?
You think that our lives will magically become free and happy the day we
graduate from school?”
We both paused completed stopped talking and looked at each
other. We both knew I had said something that stuck us both deeply.
“Fuck man…”
We continued talking, but the thought has stuck with me a
few days later after I had said it. I think 2nd year med students
have this mentality that after our board exams, suddenly everything gets better
and we’ll be happier people. Then, we graduate, enter our specialty, and
rainbows and unicorns surround us every day as we live our life. But is that
really what is going to happen?
Our lives are dominated by numbers, grades, page numbers,
practice questions, review books, meetings, rotations, boards, high yield,
hallmarks, drug of choice, most commons, class, mechanism of action, administrative
bullshit, histology slides, presenting symptoms, age groups, causes of
death….cold, hard facts. Eventually that's what everything feels like...a cold, hard fact.
When is the moment, when I stop thinking about a test score
and impressing my superiors, and start worrying about my own happiness? Or am I
hoping academic success will make me happy?
Don’t get me wrong, there is a certain satisfaction in
getting high scores for something that you studied for or choosing the right
answer that only 34% of other students chose on a practice question; but those
feelings as so fleeting, because there is always another question you fuck up,
a test you barely pass even though you studied for it.
It just doesn’t compare to the feeling of making someone
else happy and knowing that you were able to brighten someone else’s day.
Maybe that will be the payoff in 3rd and 4th
year. I’ve never really been into helping myself. If it’s something that will
benefit me, I tend to delay and procrastinate it for as long as I can. Board
scores are all about me. It’s so that *I* can get into a better residency and
*I* can feel better about all this time I’m sinking into studying.
However, as soon as someone else is depending on me to do
something, I’ll do it immediately and as fast as I can. I guess I’m just wired
that way, but it does make me walk the fine line of being used and being
helpful.
I don’t know where I was going with this. I guess I needed a
break from studying First Aid in the same library at this fucking school in
this shitty city in this state that I’m really really really sick of.
But I’ve spent too long on this. Time to get back to
studying; happiness (either real or hopeful) can wait a while longer.
