Study break

So there we were, me and a friend in a car. We were currently chit chatting about some girl who came to visit him from a few hours away, and I egged him on saying that she expects him to return the favor to show he is interested. He said the most classic excuse for anything in medical school: “Not now man. I just don’t have the time for a relationship with school and boards” And in the heat of the conversation, I said:

“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 2^nd 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 3^rd and 4^th 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.