EDIT: for more about my medical school life, thoughts, and experiences, visit:
Baylor Doctor
Starting medical school has been one of the biggest achievements of my life. This might sound strange, because usually you probably think of an achievement as a feeling or an award that occurs upon completion of something. Yet, during orientation just over 2.5 months ago, speaker after speaker continually congratulated us on being there. Indeed, this did initially seem strange to me. Yes, I realized that medical school isn't easy to get into, and yes, I was tremendously relieved to get accepted, but it seemed weird to celebrate to that extent when our only achievement was that we had just begun.
I think part of my difficulty was that some of the congratulations originated from institutional pride. Some speakers indirectly said, "We chose you, so congratulations! Because we are awesome, us choosing you is means for you to celebrate because you may one day become awesome, too. Congratulations!" This is flattering in an uncomfortable way. However, other congratulations originated from sheer excitement. It appeared that some people were genuinely excited for us to begin our medical careers, that they felt we were embarking on something great, and that by so doing we had already achieved something significant.
This is a feeling that I have come to understand a bit better than I used to. The beginning of medical school has certainly brought a series of emotions that need to be processed, and some of them are very good. While they are still fresh on my mind, I wanted to record the positives. In sum, I have already come to love medical school more than any other educational training I have received, and I wanted to record why. I feel excited just to learn how to become a doctor, and I continuously view it as an achievement that I'm here.
I have loved being surrounded by intelligent and motivated people. My peers have all worked hard to get here, and they're not about to stop. They are bright and intelligent, and most of them have good people skills. So far, I've only met a few students out of the 192 in my class who I would never want to be my or my family member's doctor because I fear incompetency. One of the reasons I loved my time at BYU was that I enjoyed being surrounded by happy, good people. This is a similar feeling, except in an academic instead of spiritual way.
I have loved learning about anatomy. They encouraged us to keep a journal of our feelings as we started dissecting our cadaver. I didn't do this, mainly because I didn't feel like I had any emotions to write down. It was actually surprising how normal it felt to start cutting open a dead person for the first time. On the other hand, I have had some unexpected emotions since then. (I am about to describe a few somewhat graphic dissection memories; if you are squeamish, skip to the next paragraph). Cutting through our cadaver's Achilles tendon, cutting through ribs with shears to enter the thorax, taking out the heart and lungs, cutting through vertebrate to reach the spinal chord, and taking out one of our cadaver's testicles have been some riveting experiences. I've learned more about the inside of his body than anyone else ever has or ever will.
I have loved the sheer challenge of an insurmountable amount of material to learn. There is no limit to the amount of material I can study or the things I can learn that will one day help me be a better doctor. My brain is working at capacity, and it feels good. It reminds me, in a sense, of my life as a missionary, where I felt there was no limit to the amount of people I could talk to and try to help. No matter what I did, I could always do more.
I have loved that I actually want to be involved. In college, I would walk around during the club fair and put my name on a bunch of lists for a bunch of clubs that I ended up never going to. That's actually happened a lot here, too, but the difference is that there's some interest groups that I actually do go to and am interested in. Plus there's way more free food at various meetings than there ever was in undergrad. I love that, too. But I'm actually getting sick of pizza, which is hard to believe. It must be a sign I'm getting old. Only old people get sick of junk food. Kids can stuff themselves full of twinkies and pizza and want more in a few hours.
I have loved learning about physiology. This block, we are learning about the renal, cardiac, and respirator systems. Turns out there's a ton to learn about all that, and we're going to come back in a year to learn about the pathology of all these systems. Now, getting the basics down, has been very enjoyable. Two nights ago, I had dreams about all the different ion transporters in the kidney, and it wasn't a bad dream. I remember having dreams about school material during undergrad, specifically organic chemistry, but those were either nightmares or simply obnoxious.
That's it for now, but I take this all for a sign that I'm heading in the right direction. It's a good thing that I'm enjoying the beginning of what I'll be doing for the rest of my life.
