The past few months of my life have been riddled with enormous change, hurdle after hurdle, failure and accomplishments, so much fulfillment but emptiness too. I honestly don't know how I would put it all in summation. Sharing your life is such a scary prospect, you never know who is on the other side of the screen, reading the post and forming an opinion about you. Yet, I think it is to a certain extent a step I need to take to keep my blog alive.
When I started my blog I wanted a space where I could freely talk about the things I can't really say to people in real life. However, lately I've been feeling like I can't really do that because too many people I know in real life actually read my blog. So it's like I'm censoring myself to cater to that audience, and that's really paralyzed me in terms of my writing. I feel like I can't write anything real because then people will have certain opinions of me. The 17 year old that started this blog would be really disappointed to find out that I've grown to care so much about people's opinions that I can't be my most authentic self.
In reflections of who I was when I started this journey and who I am now, I've realized that I have grown so much and learned so much and I really would like to be able to share this with my audience. If people read what I write here and use that as a way to judge me or whatever, that would be more of a reflection on them rather than me. At the end of the day, I would like to be authentic in everything that I do, and that includes this blog. Which means that from now on, I will be writing things that are a bit more personal. For multiple reasons, but mostly because I process things best through my writing and sometimes when I write something (in my journal or whatever) I realize that that's something that I would like to share with people. If you are on my blog to read my short stories, you'll still get that content, maybe. However, this will mostly be a space for me to talk about my life, as mundane as it is lol.
I get that social media is supposed to be this space where we come to live our best lives, put our best feet forward, and act like we're all perfect or whatever. But my blog will not be about that. I'm a young adult, turning twenty-one in a few days, and let me just tell you my life is chaotic. Not in the cool, fun ways we see on coming of age movies but more like in a slow, semi-organized chaos that is mostly happening in my own mind. Time moves very differently for me than for most people, and a lot of the time I find myself struggling to catch up with everything and everyone around me.
My journey in medical school has not been smooth sailing. It has been one barely avoided train-smash after the other, barely recovering from each and just hopping on to the next train. Each time asking myself why I can't seem to catch up, why I'm not on the same level as everyone else, why, why, why?
The amount of times I have asked myself: "Am I just dumb, like am I stupid? Like did I somehow stop being smart in my 4 years at this institution? Did Covid do something to my brain? Why am I so slow?" And let me tell you guys, this is a conversation I have with myself about 5 times a week. It's HARD out here and I think one thing that makes everything even more difficult is that I look around and everybody else seems to be thriving. Everyone else is thriving, and it's like "damn, is it really just me? Am I the problem? Do I not belong here? Should I try a different career?" etc.
Of course, there are those who'll ask why I'm still studying medicine despite all the suffering and to those people I will say this: I will bend myself over backwards, break my own heart a million and one times, fall and get back up again; just for this degree because I can not see myself doing anything else. There's no other passion, no other great love of my life, no other calling; other than medicine. For those of us who pursue this degree, there is nothing else we'd rather do. It's kind of the sad reality of it, I don't think anything else could be as rewarding.
I honestly think my first 3 years of med school are unique in that, the entire time, I was just trying to survive. The content, the amount of studying and sleepless nights, the not eating, the caffeine, all just amounts to three years I barely remember. I can honestly tell yall that those 3 years are a blur to me because the entire time I was on survival mode. It's only this year where I'm finally in a space of savoring the journey and trying to hold a deeper appreciation of the process of becoming a medical doctor, which is all I have ever wanted.
Don't get me wrong, I know I'm not stupid. I mean, I wouldn't have gotten into med school if I was. However, it's kind of suffocating when you've worked your entire life for something, and when you finally get it, you struggle with it. I struggled so hard the first three years, and what made matters worse is that I would look at everyone around me and they all just seemed to get it immediately. People figured out what study methods work for them, they figured out their work-life balances, etc. However, I'm four years in and I change my study method for almost every block, I'm a raging workaholic and I'm still battling with the whole cooking thing (not that I can't cook, it just takes up so much time that I'd rather not do it)).
So the question I have started to contemplate is: Am I the only one struggling through medical school? Like yall seem to have your lives figured out, you meal plan, you have study plans, yall go to groove and clubs every weekend, yall exercise etc etc. I wish this was me. I am really the most inconsistent person ever. I will meal plan for weeks, and then study week comes and it knocks me off balance. I will workout for weeks, exam week comes and knocks me off balance. I will stick to a certain study plan, and then I miss one or two things then suddenly I am disorganized with my head all over the place.
My academic journey has been so much of an uphill battle that I eventually had to make my peace with the fact that it always would be. I can't continue to beat myself up for things that I can't control and I mean, we're not all going to grasp things in similar ways. Some of us just have to work a little bit harder and that's okay. When you want something as much as I want to study medicine you keep at it. However, I'm not going to lie I do wish the journey was just a little bit easier.
One thing I truly appreciate about clinical medicine is the way that it brings the degree to life. Like, the first 3 years it's just you and your books, and that's is so depressing. However, when you hit fourth year and you're in clinics and hospitals it's amazing because you get to see why everything you're studying really matters. For the first time in med school, I appreciate the inner workings of the body, the basics, because all of it make it easier to understand how the disease process works, how drugs work etc. It's basically like you finally get a holistic image of what medicine really is about. This makes everything so much more fun, cool and interesting. It's the greatest motivation for learning.
I wish I could remember the first 3 years of med school, it would certainly make my life a whole lot easier. But when you're this far gone it's just too late to look back and have regrets. You just now have to work two times harder: revising the basics while also trying to grasp the new concepts, attending medical seminars and reading medical articles so that you're up to date with the latest practices. It's a lot, but I do enjoy it. Medicine is really exciting, I don't think there's anything else that's this interesting out there. So I kind of just suffer and struggle and battle, and constantly ask myself "Am I stupid", but there are moments when I give myself grace and I accept that this is simply my journey. So what if I am not as quick at figuring things out as everybody else? It's my journey, and it's going to look different and feel different than what everyone else is experiencing; and that's honestly okay.
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So: I'm back. Or am I? I feel like, I play this fun little game with my blog where I post something every few months and every time I do I say: "I'm back" but then I post that little one thing and then disappear for like 6 months. I'm an inconsistent human being, and when it comes to this blog, although I enjoy writing, I barely ever have time to do it. So like, I try to be better, but I won't make any promises.
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I’m not studying medicine but I find myself relating a lot to how you feel about your capabilities in the career/degree you've chosen. I don’t know how I made it this far because the self doubts have been there since the first year . People grasp things faster and move faster than me and I feel stuck sometimes , asking questions like am I really where I belong , that’s a question I ask myself a lot. Maybe one day we’ll have an epiphany and everything will fall in place , I count on my faith that everything will be okay and I’ll find myself where I am supposed to be , so you too have faith , maybe this…