1st Semester Recap

Why hello there!

The last time I was able to write on this blog, or even think about writing about this blog, I was about 2 weeks away from starting medical school. Since that last post, a lot of things have happened in my life with regards to medical school. In fact, these past 4 months have probably been the quickest, most stressful, and busiest months of my life so far. Highlights, in no specific order, include:

1. Officially donned my white coat for the first time and said the Hippocratic Oath
2. Met my first patient (my cadaver) and successfully completed anatomy lab without vomiting or passing out
3. Took my first National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) Shelf exam and did decently well
4. Worked with my first standardized patient (SP) and learned almost all aspects of the physical exam (Neuro is to come next semester)
5. Became an Ambassador for my school and talked to interviewees and high school students about our school and med school life in general
6. Joined a women's Bible study and became a member of the leadership team for the Christian Medical and Dental Association (CMDA)
7. Got selected to go on a Spring Break global health trip to Santa Ana, Honduras
8. Met a great group of friends who are supportive and totally not gunners
9. Took 8 exams in 2 weeks and received a Pass or better on all of them
10. Finished my first semester of medical school with High Passes and Honors in all of my classes

Even though there have been bumps along the way, especially during my first block week of exams and finals, I don't think I've been much happier than I am now. I feel like I belong at school and as #8 reflects, found friends who will build each other up rather than tear each other down to get to the top. My top 2 criterion for a medical school were a supportive class and great opportunities to get clinical experience. My school exceeds both of those criterion by miles and I am so glad to be here. Thus, I have truly learned that school rank doesn't matter. What matters for me in my medical education is that I am happy and surrounded by people that will do anything to help me succeed, because how I'm feeling has a greater impact on my performance than my school's ranking.

I learned a lot this semester. . . probably more than I ever did in a year at undergrad, and I know I have a lot of learning to do. The biggest lesson for me, however, was that I am competent. I earned my spot in my class and I don't think the admissions committee made a mistake. I thank God everyday that He has put me on this path and is with me every step of the way.

I have a long road in front of me and a lot of things still left to figure out, but for now, I'm proud and happy to say that I am 1/8th an M.D! 

Life Update - Being an Adult is Hard

Hello again,

I always seem to come back to this blog in times of reflection and semi-boredom. . . no offense. It's not that I will only write posts if there's nothing better to do, I'm just unable to make myself seem coherent when I have some extra time on my hands.

Moving on, the biggest lesson I've learned this summer is: being an adult is hard. I don't really consider myself an adult (or just don't want to accept it) yet as I still have 4 more years of schooling left, but this summer I have had to deal with the inevitable search for an apartment and all the associated adulty things like finding an electricity provider, buying renter's insurance, finding an internet provider, and creating a budget.

My biggest realization in dealing with all of this is: being an adult means making a lot of phone calls. I really dislike making phone calls. I'm a millennial; I am used to sending emails and text messages. I'm also an introvert; I prefer staying indoors and limiting my interaction with other human beings, especially human beings that sound like they resent every phone call they get from a (potential) customer.

Regardless, I'm really proud of how I've handled everything. Even though it's been really stressful, I'm very happy with how I've handled things and relieved/glad that things are working out. (I'm signing the lease and moving into my apartment in a week!) If anything, this only makes me a little more confident that I'll be able to handle medical school like a champion which leads me to the second update I want to provide. (Good segue*, me!)

Medical school will officially start for me in t-minus 18 days. (Insert screaming emoji) I've bought scrubs embroidered with my school's logo, ordered my white coat, bought a new (required) laptop, registered for MS1 retreat, and looked into stethoscopes. In 12 days I'll get my ID badge and all the fancy computer/website authorizations needed to do medical school. In 2 weeks, I'll attend orientation and participate in the white coat ceremony! A lot of things are happening/soon to happen and it is so daunting, scary, nerve-wracking, and exciting.

I hope to keep you all updated on how things go. This blog is already a mixed bag of topics/themes, but hey I have a mixed bag of interests/experiences, so I hope to continue the focus on my journey to becoming a doctor. Actually, as I type this, I think I will try to make a video or write a post about medical school interviews and my experience.

Until next time guys. (Hopefully next time will be soon, but no guarantees.)


*Don't you think segue is spelled funny? It's like it's trying to compensate for something by being weird to spell.

My Promises for 2015

2015 holds a lot of great new adventures for me. I will graduate from college. I will start medical school. I will start living as a "real" adult. Since I will have what I consider a fresh start after graduation in May, I wanted to publicly commit to some goals for 2015 as I did at the start of 2014. (Link to that post here) However, rather than calling them goals or resolutions, I want to call them promises because that's just what they are: promises to myself. Now that I have achieved my long-time goal of getting into medical school and officially starting down the path of achieving my goal of becoming a doctor, I have some less tangible "goals" in mind. These are things that cannot be checked off after receiving a letter in the mail, but promises to myself that I hope I will have kept when I reflect on my 2015 on December 31, 2015.

In 2015 I promise to:

1. Make myself happy by putting myself first. This sounds bad, but I have spent the majority of my life doing things because I want to make the people around me happy. I fully embrace, value, and understand that much of my happiness comes from making the people around me happy (this is why I think I would be a good doctor who won't become jaded by the prospects of money and fame). However, it's time that I start feeling happy by making myself and only myself happy (as long as it's not at the expense of another person's happiness or well-being of course).
2. Be open and start building great friendships. Since transferring, I have gotten resigned to starting up conversations with people and truly taking the time to get to know them. I'm also not great at letting people get to know me. If I want to rectify all my regrets from college, I need to keep this promise when I start medical school.
3. Stay confident and believe that I belong at the medical school I am attending. I struggle with confidence in my intellectual ability. I think that's the result of a grueling pre-med course load and belief that I cheated the system to attend my current university. However, as my past two semesters of grades and recent medical school acceptances have shown me, I am capable and I should be going down this path.
4. Stop overthinking and take some chances. There have been a few times where I was not confident or brave enough to leap off a cliff (metaphorically speaking). This of course is caused by my lack of confidence in my own capabilities and qualifications. However, if I want to take advantage of every opportunity I need to just confidently say yes and go for it.
5. Remember everything it has taken to get to where I am now and everyone who has helped me in any way along the way. Ultimately, this promise stems from the fact that I would be very disappointed in myself if I start to become egotistical and stop putting others before myself when I need to. The line of work I am setting off to enter is somewhat set up to force people to forget the ultimate goal of the medical profession: helping others. Thus, I want to make sure that I never ever forget that goal.
6. Continue to make my parents proud. My biggest fear is disappointing my parents. I came close to realizing that fear at the end of my senior year of college. However with my recent medical school acceptances, my desire to hear the words "we are so proud of you" come from my parents mouths was fulfilled. Now, I want to keep it.

2014 may not have been the best, but it definitely proved to be the start of a great 2015. Hopefully, when I read back over this post in a year, I will be happy with the promises I have kept and did have a great 2015.

Reflection on My 2014

This is really strange coming back to this blog. I had started it with the intention of building an online presence for myself that was active and placed me in the creator category rather than the passive viewer category I had been in for so long. I still sometimes think about continuing that idea and making that thought a reality but haven't quite found the courage or time to actually do so. . . maybe that will change in 2015.

As I sit on my bed under the covers in my pajamas with my wet hair in a towel typing this up with Top Chef on in another browser window while people outside celebrate NYE with fireworks, I can't help but think about everything that has happened this year.

Here are the biggest positive things that have happened this year:

1. Most notably, I was accepted to medical school. And not just one medical school, but two! That last sentence feels very strange for me to type because I am not one to brag about my own achievements, but I think considering how my college application process went I deserve to toot my own horn a little. Plus, knowing that two medical schools want me reminds me that this was not a fluke.
2. I made all As and A-s for a second semester in a row. This is a weird accomplishment to type because I had always made straight As growing up. I broke that streak, however, in high school and have since struggle to return to it. I'm glad that I finally was able to do so.
3. I was named MVP of my ResLife staff for the 2013-2014 school year. I realize that part of the work that went into this title was done in 2013, but like I mentioned earlier, I tend to think about years in terms of school years. Regardless, it was nice to be recognized by my fellow staff members after feeling so uncomfortable and undeserving on the RA position when I started out.
4. I have continued to build and strengthen relationships with people at my university. While this may seem like a small accomplishment in comparison to the other things on this list, this one is very important to me. Since transferring to my current university, I have felt alone and without many friends. I left some great friendships behind at my previous university, failed to keep in contact with them, and failed to keep in contact with my friends from high school. Especially considering some of the negative aspects of my 2014, this point makes me proud because it exemplifies how I continued to try and make best of my situation even though it hasn't and probably won't turn out the way I want.
5. I have started to become more comfortable with being alone and relying on myself. I guess you could say that I have always had to be self-reliant for my entertainment as an only child. However, I would spend a large part of the day either in school with my friends or in daycare with my friends. Therefore, while I have had to become comfortable with only having myself or my parents to entertain me when at home, I still had a lot of social time during the weekdays when away from home. This changed since moving and transferring. Now, I really only have myself to rely on for entertainment and that was a BIG adjustment for me. I'm used to having friends and lots of people to really talk to. Now, I don't have that as much, but now I'm starting to become okay with it.
6. I finally started to feel like an adult and didn't panic or fail. As I flew home for Winter Break, I realized that I had gotten on a plane and traveled at least once every month that I was back at school because of medical school interviews. My very first trip was the first time I had ever booked a flight, made a hotel reservation, and successfully made it to my destination and back entirely on my own. I was so nervous and worried about everything turning out the way I had planned so that when it did I was so proud of myself. Now I am more confident in my ability to be a functioning adult.

Here are the biggest negative things:

1. My parents and I have moved away from the place I called home for almost 14 years of my life. Moving isn't foreign to me; this most recent move was the fourth move for me. However, our previous location was definitely where we had spent the longest and I don't have many memories from the 3 prior locations. So this move was sad for me because it rendered me very alone. Immediately after transferring, I was very unhappy because I was having a really hard time meeting people and making friends. The one thing keeping me going was knowing that during long breaks, I would be able to see my friends from high school. This move took that away from me. So while I feel slightly better about how things are going at my current university, it still isn't the same.
2. I have never felt more alone, friendless, and unhappy than I did this year. This is fully related to negative thing #1 and a little contradictory to positive thing #5 but is very true. I initially spent the greater part of this year feeling this way. I had felt crummy after my first year at my current university, thought that was slowly changing after my second year at my current university, only to be brought back to a state of loneliness and unhappiness after ringing in 2014 without my friends. This only amplified during my summer break when I was stuck in a city I had only lived in for 3 weeks prior and had no idea where to go, what to do, how to get places, or any reason to do any of those things.

I really like thinking back on my year. I have never really been one to embrace the whole New Year, New You thing but I do appreciate self-reflection. While I initially thought 2014 was the worst year of my life so far, those two lists above prove me wrong. Maybe that feeling stems from the fact that we tend to dwell on the negatives in our life rather than the positives, but also has to do with the fact that those 2 items on my negative list overshadowed a vast majority of my 2014. Like I alluded to in negative item #2, I really only feel like my 2014 began to look-up in the last 3 months of the year.

Here's to 2015 and all that this year will bring!