Clerkship Pearl #107
On the flipside of "this too shall pass", remember to enjoy what you've got while you've got it and take advantage of the opportunities that come your way. Clerkship is your opportunity to be dumb with very little consequence--what better time to, as Ms Frizzle repeatedly told me on my post-call days, "Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy! [And learn something! Seriously, anything.]"
Clerkship is also a time when you can work out the kinks of surviving a 1 in 4 call schedule and squeak in all the adulting real-life things you gotta do (ex/EXERCISING AND SLEEPING, dental appointments, taking your car in for maintenance, prepping all your meals in advance, clean your bathroom, etc.), and a really important time to get an inkling about what "work-life balance" actually is in practice. Mistakes don't just apply to all the times you miscalculated that preemie's TFI or asked for a fleet enema PO because a nurse told you it was a thing (it's not. It really, really is not.)--it's also time to screw up scheduling stuff and panic about it but have things work out in the end because realistically the TEAM DOES NOT NEED YOU TO FUNCTION (even though you can be very helpful! Don't underestimate how much you can actually help even if you're not 100% essential!)
You will never again have this opportunity to ask the same question more than once on the same rotation, or to be able to say, "Please don't expect too much of my knowledge or skills, I'm a clerk and I'm here to learn!" Your sleep and eating and wellbeing will never again be as protected as it is during clerkship.
Clerkship is also when you figure out who will be there for you when you really need them--who will listen to your whining and your ranting and wrap you up in blankets and make you tea when you need it. You will figure out who is willing to go out of their way to give you a ride to the hospital for 6AM (or sometimes 5:45AM/earlier, sorry to my poor boyfriend who woke up with me at 4:30AM some mornings... <3). Along the same vein, you also figure out who you will buy wine for on your post-call days because you know they need some cheering up.
I know this is now a little less touchy-feely-FIFE-y of me to mention, but clerkship is really also when you figure out what you want to do with your life. For me, I knew peds was my thing because on my post-call days I wanted to visit my friends and their baby. On my vacation I spent >50% of a 3.5h flight chatting with the 6-year-old girl sitting in front of me on the plane (surprisingly, her mother didn't find me super creepy or anything. My sister suspects that if I were a larger male there would've been a complaint). You will do things you love and things you hate and everything in between, and it will tell you a lot about who you are and what kind of physician you are meant to become.
That said, I wish all the best to all my colleagues on their future endeavors (good luck on those LMCCs!!), and to all the clerks and preclerks that have so many amazing opportunities ahead of them!
I'm gonna go slink back off to study now.