I had a dramatic entrance with the previous post. At the time I think I really needed it, so no regrets there. It did help me to blow some steam off.
In all seriousness, being, at most, an average or even more realistically below average student in medical school is such a sin amongst the medical folk. Everyone looks at you like a beggar, they can't help but smile awkwardly when they interact with you, but don't dare to ask how things are going, because chances are the answer is - horrible. Who wants to hear about that? The bigger picture of that scene is some twisted hierarchy. This hierarchy is seeped so deep in the ground of medical academia, that at some point, you question whether the questioning this hierarchy is actually wrong. Because if I were a boring administrator (a.k.a. the money bag) or a professor, why would I not prefer the student that is obviously talented and knows it all, to a student who can sometimes give me a decent answer. Aren't they going to obviously succeed and be very good at their jobs than the latter? So absolutely, it makes sense.
It is such a stigma to be average, to fail, to get sick, to not being able to show up, to be a late bloomer in this industry, that you can't ever talk about it. You need it. More than the A+ students need to talk about how hard the school is. At least they can make a complaint sound a bit like a brag (A+ students I am not saying this as a derogatory thing, please don't throw me down the hierarchy even more). If you, as an average student, who tries as much as they can, who had situations in life they couldn't ignore and needed those issues to be a priority at a time, can not say "med school is sooo haard, because of X and because of Y". People are going to look at you and say "well, you are not trying hard enough". Everything falls back down on you. It is your fault no matter what, because how did Miss Einstein over there do it, but you come up here and say you couldn't.
What do I do, when instead of understanding and support, I get pity or disgust whenever I mention my failure? I bottle it up.
What happens when you bottle it up for a reaaalllyyyy long time? You explode.
"Well, it is your fault, because Miss Einstein over there is doing just fine. Look, she even has a hobby. You need a hobby. "
Shutting up is the best, most logical, and let's be honest, safe position to hold. If there is anyone to celebrate you, it should be you. If there is anyone to play a therapist for you, it should be you (unless you got the money for that, which is - congrats). No one knows better than you what went wrong (if not, you really need to invest some money into therapy). People just repeating your own failure back to you, is adding fuel to the fire. That's all they think they can do, so - shut up.
That is why, I made this blog thingy. May be (for sure) there is another [below] average student out there who can't say anything, and may be (really unlikely) they can come across this post and if not to the fullest, they might relate to it in some way.
I have been having a little time to write about medicine, but 2 months ago I did write in my journal (that I write in only when I desperately need to get something off my chest). I read a phrase that made me think "that was told kinda beautifully". So... people going through break ups, you might resonate with it. I just thought I would share:
I feel as if my day-to-day life is erased when I do not talk to him. It seems that my days are carrying on nonexistent.
This is translated, might seem a bit rough. But two months later, I read this... and I am glad that I understand the sorrow of the author, and happy to not feel it.
No parents are perfect. No child is left without experiencing a heartbreak from their parents. However, I can't believe how lucky I am to have a mother and a father that I have. If I were born again, I would be born as their kid. I look in the mirror, I see them both and I can't be prouder to share the features that will always remind me of them.
After I told my dad I passed the exam, he rushed home from work with the flowers in his hand. My mom hugged me and I felt all the tension just evaporate in that hug as I cried in her arms. Today I had a dinner with them, nothing special - not the food nor the place. Just at home, us three talking about random whatevers. I missed that so much. I was looking at them and nearly cried right there.
They share so much love and respect for each, I realized I am not exaggerating when I said as a kid, if a guy doesn't treat me nearly as good as my dad, it is not worth it. Experience proved it right. Dads are so important in showing that love is not conditional, it is not a give or take. It is just something you feel and something you act on. My parents have shown me that. But they have also shown me how lucky they are. I have dated, I have loved and I just can't get there.
It is the day I am supposed to be extremely happy. But a boy made me cry and now I have to force that happiness forward. But hey, my dad got me roses, my mom is going to cook something incredible tomorrow and I am going to have a dinner with them.
Took USMLE Step 1 few days ago. I feel terrified. Even if I hated the process, even if I knew in my heart I'd fail, I am still terrified of what answer I might get in 2 weeks. I worked hard. I put in time and effort, even if my methods are slow and wrong, I still did it and I just do not want to see the fail.
Had this discussion with my partner yesterday - about how slow I am and he really thought I was just undermining my abilities and over-exaggerating to some extent. Then I had to dig into why it actually shows that I am slow, and he got surprised which I found surprising. Considering we are the two people who observe each other more than anyone, I thought it was pretty clear with the hours I would put into my work. Considering I couldn't acquire a thing in the first 2 years of med school, I have to compensate for it now. I have to go into details of everything I learn, I can't just go for high yield material and be done. That is a guarantee of forgetting and I can't afford to keep forgetting and relearning what I study.
Even with the results of our self-assessments, I needed 4 months to get to a passing point from starting dedicated preparation for USMLE. He (even though he is preparing for Step 3, still claimed that he remembered nothing) needed 2 weeks to get a passing point. I do not joke, or try to look humble when I say I don't know anything, and the things I do know - do not have a concrete foundation. So it obviously kind of annoyed me that my partner of 2 years really thought this whole time was just me being a Type A person.
Turns out he is not the only person who is like that. My own parents who have been watching me since day one of uni, decided on their own that I am an A+ students. Sometimes, just because someone is sitting in their room and spending hours and hours to study, doesn't mean they are studying 500 different topics. I needed whole day to spend on 1 subject when I had 4 the next day. That left that impression that I was good, even though I had expressed very clearly that I was not good.
I am kind of sick of being surrounded by people. I express something and it goes unnoticed and if I burst and explode that means I am emotional and need to chill out.
I am genuinely having a hard time, every day I approach losing my sanity to the point that scares me. Why is it so hard to believe that?
In exactly 2 weeks, I will be taking USMLE step 1. I am 80% sure that I will fail. It is my fault. I have been saying for two years that I would take the exam. I am not a superstitious person, but whenever I reveal my plans out loud, they nearly always never come true. But if I plan and act in silence, it almost always works out. Everyone knows I am sitting the exam, starting from my peers, including my neighbours at my grandparents. I am scared shitless - is the best way to put it. I have been studying, but not enough and not fast enough. Being chronically ill is not helping with the early fatigue, so 10 hour studying sessions are near impossible for me. Especially I have been getting worse in the past month. Take that and me being slow, the dedicated time of 4 months just doesn't seem enough at this point. But I should still sit the exam.
I can't seem to open the NBMEs to go through the questions. My brain just turns off immediately. No music, no ambiences, no distraction seems to help me to take my mind off the inevitable failure.
If you have ever heard a stereotype regarding the competition in medical school, know that it is not a stereotype, it is if not 100% - at least 85% true (in my head that % dismisses the stereotype frame). In the beginning I was in denial of the competition. Up until the year of 18 I tried to learn and gain knowledge to the point where I would be satisfied, in school that satisfaction would usually guarantee me an A. I stepped in med school with the same spirit: I liked learning (not necessarily studying), I knew the feeling of solubility of my knowledge, and I never cared for others performance or others' knowledge. Not comparing yourself at school is important and it makes sense, considering everyone is different, everyone has a different goal, everyone's got their own shtick. Not the same with university, whatever major you choose. You have to be a genius to be content with what you do without comparing yourself to others. In med school this comparison is not only done by you, but everyone. Literally. The other students, parents, professors, administrators, doctors, nurses... you can see it everywhere, so it is only natural when you yourself start comparing.
As it always happened, I became part of a group that thought they would be friends in the afterlife as well. I swore in my first year of med school I would never compare myself to this bunch, but eventually it happened and it didn't even take that long. The feeling of not being enough, not feeling the solubility during learning overtook and panic settled the first time I prepared material in university - literally the first time. That panic lasted for years, nothing went as planned and I still compare myself to my friends that is no longer the same group as it used to be. I compare myself to my partner now as well. Seeing the gap between him and I, how ahead he is, how proud I am of him even though there are so many parts and bits he hates to do along the medical journey. However, jealousy/envy seems to stick with me whichever way I look. I am happy my friends are doing good and moving forward, I hope my boyfriend achieves the immense success, but - for the love of God - I can't stop feeling extremely covetous.
I was told "may be you are where you are supposed to be", implying to somehow become content with my situation. I might try my best to do well, does not mean I will ever be content with missing the bus everybody seems to ride.
I do realise, I am deserving of what I have. Please understand, I may be complaining, but in no way I am saying I should be on that bus with them. Can't say where I am supposed to be either - I do not know. I know the place I am at right now feels in no way right. But, will I ever feel my place? Will I ever get to the point where I can say - yeah, this is it? I don't think so. I don't think that many people actually get to that point.
Being alone sucks. I am an introvert and I do enjoy the solitude, but I would be delusional to ignore that I too am a social animal. Every step of the way, with every relationship, the fear of losing that person due to being at a different points in life can't seem to abandon me. Can't blame the fear, it has been right to suspect for the most part.
Anyhow... I should go study in hopes of chasing that bus and somehow getting close to it.
I am extremely lucky in the sense of having a close relative of mine be a doctor, who I look up to, am proud of and hope to turn out to be a fraction of what she is. Don't worry guys, she is a doctor in a small town, having the lowest pay a doctor could have and is 72 years old - she did not help me to nepotism my way in medicine. As a small girl, every time I would visit my grandmother in our little town, she would take me to the hospital and let me stick around for a bit - no, as sweet as it would be, this is not the reason I chose medicine (believe me it was a very last minute decision). But back then, I could not see how massively important she was to the town AND to the whole region. She has seen more patients than any other doctor in the top hospital with six figure salary. She has treated and has went out of her way for the patients than any other doctor I have ever seen. She continues to do that to this day and I am so lucky to have her as an example.
As much as I hate medicine, I do love the nobility and righteousness of it. I loved being in the hospital, working in the hospital even if sometimes - to be honest, every other day - there would be patients driving me mad and the healthcare system making me question what medicine actually is. But seeing absolute stranger, be in the extreme distress, getting better and you having to do something with it - is rewarding, there is nothing better a person could do. Do not call me out about the drive for feeling rewarded. People are as much selfish, as they are social. Being able to contribute to both is a win-win.
But, today that is not enough. Going to med school, preparing for the future patients is just not the motivation that can get you through certain situations. I could be the most determined in the room, the most willing to the help a patient out, however there could be another student in the same room, who can either kiss ass real good, be a teacher's pet real good, have a really nice sounding family name or just having the talents of gods with 0 interest in their surroundings - and you will be the last on the Santa's Nice list. The explanation of that would be: "well, she's a nice kid, but... it is not enough".
Nothing is objective with any sort of relationships. I have come across may be, at max, 2 professors and doctors combined who were objective and didn't show favoritism. I wonder, however in the world I managed to do good in those classes, huh. This topic has made me bitter, because... well, I hate to admit this - I took up some of those traits I mentioned with the other students in the room. Once you kiss ass, once you try to be a teacher's pet, the world as you knew, just shifts. Hell, if I could I would adapt the surname of the top notch doctor in the city, but no can do I suppose.
Additionally, you have to be a scientist. Now, I love science. I like reading about it. I adore Hank Green. I enjoy me some good JAMA article. But, I am no scientist. I could be a good doctor (I think), but you couldn't squeeze out a normal thesis out of me, even if you tried with the finest mangle machine. The hours I could be at the hospital, turns out have to be spent on a study, that will have no contribution to the scientific world, will waste time of multiple people and waste resources, both material and mental.
By the way, DO NOT forget the clubs. Want to spend some time with people you never bothered to get to know? No? Weeelll... change the 'tude, or else your CV will have no value.
AND the volunteering (this might sound okay in well developed countries but no one really cares for this in post-soviet countries)...
AND the mentor-mentee stuff....
AND the NGO that will disappear in a few years, if not months...
All this has erased the one true motivation I had. I have to remind myself of my grandmother. Constantly. I do not expect to be number 1 on the call sheet. I do not expect to be the headline of every journal. I do not expect 6 figure salary in sum of my career. I just want to do good. I just wanna be a doc.
P.S. nothing wrong with people who genuinely engage in these things, especially the science nerds out there. But a lot of the extra activities are just enforced on most students and if you show the resistance to this things, you will be put on a spot and be put under the pressure. Largely, no one takes these things seriously, when they are not done seriously.
Knowing more than anything else, knowing less than everyone else
The decision to get in medicine is the biggest choice any young teen/adult can make. The grandiosity of the industry doesn't hit you, you are somewhat positive things are going to work out, because you know if you work hard, it can work out. Plus if you have some brains in that head of yours, it is obviously not going to be so terrible.
It has been 6 years since I made that decision. Younger me was positive (either by her own blind belief, or by determined, hopeful and blind belief of her parents) she would have figured out the PhD thesis by now, and immediately after graduation she would become the youngest PhD in medicine her country has ever seen. The year I am supposed to graduate, has approached, but instead of getting up on that stage in a gown and a cape students have to pay on their own, she will be observing from the side of the audience, and clapping for her friends.
Medicine has been by far the most bitter pill I still have yet to swallow. It is stuck somewhere in the middle of my esophagus and it has been ulcerating and bleeding for the past 5 years. At this point the pain has become numb and I continue to live with it, because that is all I have known for this past 5 years. I tried to vomit the pill out once, and when I couldn't do that out of my own cowardice and from persuasion of certain people, I tried to cut off the whole esophagus. Didn't work. I still have the pill. It is still trying to go down. An extremely slow process and all I do, is wait and at times find some ways do help it go down.
Now at the ripe age of 23, when my friends are focusing on their specialties, my peers outside of medicine are all working, my 4 perfect cousins (at this age) making the family proud - I am still stuck in my 4th year (MS2 for American folks out there). I can't necessarily go back, I tried and it ended extremely painfully, I can't necessarily catch up to the closest people I have and go forward - so I am stuck, I may be making ant steps forward, while everyone else is sprinting like a cheetah past me. Friends are on the brink of becoming acquaintance, relationships are going to be called ex-relationships and the people I love the most are going to be soon very disappointed (as they don't fully know how truly behind I am).
Worst thing about this isolated, lonely island is that I can't think of any other place I could be at right now. This is where I am, where I should be. I hate medicine. It has made my life painful and me - resentful, but what else am I supposed to do? I once painted, now I can't draw a cat for my niece. I once played piano - now I can't go through a piano sheet without getting a stroke from looking at notes, I used to be a literature nerd and read - well I still can read, but picking up any book not relevant to medicine is making me feel guilty (without any pleasure).
So I stay on the island. Because even if it brings me pain, there is nothing at this point I know more about than medicine, even if everyone else knows about it more.
