Last year when health sci study was getting me down, I’d walk to the hospital and buy a coffee from
Last year when health sci study was getting me down, I’d walk to the hospital and buy a coffee from the place in the foyer. Then I’d sit on a bench and look across at the medical school, drinking my flat white and smiling. I just had to keep working hard and I would get to study there. Now the hospital foyer cafe is my local. The building that says ‘Medical School’ above the front door is across the road from my lecture theatre. I did it.An occupational hazard of being a med student is running into people you knew in health sci.“Hey! What are you doing this year?”“Med”“OMG congratulations! How is it? Are you loving it?”Of course you gush about medicine, talk about how busy you are, but happy. So happy. You’re living your dream.The truth? It turns out living your dream mostly feels the same as just living. Sometimes the name of every muscle of the upper limb sounds the same. Sometimes you drop your student ID card in a body bag. Sometimes your tragus piercing gets in the way of your stethoscope earpiece. Most of the time you have no idea what you’re doing.The first email we got from our students’ association told us to write an answer to ‘what is your why?’ and keep it somewhere for when med got tough. Why did we accept our place in the MB ChB programme? Why do we want to be doctors?I still don’t know my why. I woke up one day and I knew. Medicine was a calling (if we’re being generous), or a major life decision made on a whim (if we’re not). Before I started health sci I’d never heard the term “endoplasmic reticulum”, didn’t know what an enzyme was other than that they seemed to be in skincare products, and had a vague-at-best understanding of what kidneys do. I’ve learnt a lot, but the science is still overwhelming and some days I feel like the stupidest person alive. Whose idea was it to let some random girl with a BA into medicine? What possible business do I have becoming a doctor? It’s easy to get caught in self-doubt here. But then I’ll be in a lecture learning about the clever engineering that lets us establish the right flow rates and gradients to move fluids where they need to go, or the cocktail of proteins and chemicals that make our blood clot only when we want it to, or the incredibly complex muscles that make our hands so damn useful.And I’ll think, yeah. I get to learn how bodies work. I can probably handle doing that for another 40 years. And sometimes after that I go to the hospital and buy a coffee from the place in the foyer. Then I sit on a bench and look across at the medical school, drinking my soy flat white and smiling. -- source link
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