I never meant to be away from the blog this long. In fact, the plan was to write something for the first week of January. However, that didn't happen. I was at home and I was still enjoying my holiday. I came back to school, and I didn't really have anything to write about you see. I mean to be honest, I still don't have much to write about. I just wanted to say happy new year, and happy February- the month of love!(for those who celebrate of course.
The past month or so of being back at school has been mixed feelings. I have had a lot of work to do, you know one thing I've learned about med school is that there's no "easing into things", it's always straight into the deep end. As we speak, I'm writing my first end of theme tests in only a month, I have pracs every week and assignments to submit. This is all happening while the rest of the country is only starting school now. It's a bit isolating I'm not going to lie.
Being in medical school (at UKZN) is a bit of an odd university experience. It honestly feels like high school never ended, it just continued. We have our own tiny little campus, isolated from everyone else. We live in a very tiny ecosystem, the only people I ever see are medical students, doctors, our lecturers and occasionally the postgraduate students who are doing medical studies or something. When you see the same people everyday, attend classes in the same place everyday, with the same people, and you see more or less the same lecturers, you don't really get the same university experience as everyone else.
I mean, I used to think that in uni I would have the experience of running across campus in order to get to my next class because lecturer rooms were quite far from one another, I thought I would have friends doing different degree, I was expecting a "normal" varsity experience. In medical school, we literally have classes in one lecture venue the entire day (if not on zoom), we have the weekly visit to the DH and the Skills Lab, and then rinse and repeat, all this on the same campus.
Now, listen, I don't mind this at all. I've grown to love our campus, it's got its perks, I mean I can't imagine seeing a new person every second and yet having no connection to them. At med school, we all (mostly) know each other, or we know of each other. There are perks to this, but also, there are cons. The benefits of everyone being connected is that we all a big community. We like each other, we don't like each other, we date each other, we love each other, we hurt each other; all in this very tiny ecosystem. Regardless of all this, we are a community. No matter how hard academics get, you always have someone who has been or is going through something similar.
Still, I maintain that this is all like being in high school all over again. Since we all know each other, we all also know each other's business. It's annoying, to have everyone know your business, or to have people think they know you just because they have heard 'a, b, c' about you. It's funny because you ask yourself "don't people have better things to do than to hover around what I have going on?" but in the same breath, you're falling over yourself to run and tell your friend somebody's else's business.
Med school is a journey, you make some of the most amazing friends, and some formidable enemies too, either way we all go through this really hard, narrow journey together. We exist in this tiny bubble, isolated from everyone else and ignorant to the happenings of our fellow UKZN students. We only have each other. I think sometimes, we prefer it that way. I can't imagine having to deal with the workload that I deal with and being isolated from the only people who could relate. It's comforting to walk on campus and see everyone with the same dark eyes as mine., the same heavy shoulders, the same ever-tired look; it feels good, it feels safe.
Sometimes I may loath our tiny little ecosystem, but a lot of the times I enjoy it. I covet it, it's home man, and these are my people.
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