Note: I wrote this post in the first 2 weeks of medical school, and my outlook has much changed since. I actually (and surprisingly) enjoy it very much now -- now that I've figured out how to balance my time more wisely, and study more efficiently. I wasn't going to post this - because I didn't want to give the impression that I still felt this way. After speaking about it over dinner with a dear friend - a dear friend who reads my blog - last night however, I've become convinced that I could post it without leaving that impression. So here it goes:
I'm worse than a New Year's resolution. Really though.
A couple posts ago (or, should I say, a couple 1,000 pages of medical texts ago), I wrote about how my primary goal would be to stay happy in medical school. As long as I was passing, I was fine. No need to gun through this. No need to lose hours of sleep in order to crawl my way up in the class rankings.
Well, breaking news: turns out, in medical school, people lose hours of sleep just trying to keep up. Screw skipping naps to blow the curve..... skip the nap to skim by. I shit you not.
I've lost a lot of sleep. I've cried 2 and a half (or maybe more?) times. I've questioned myself. So yeah, that New Year's resolution about staying happy? Like any good American, broke it 6 days in.
Somewhere between the 40 pound backpack, pouring vinegar and baking soda into my washing machine (along side fabric softener and normal detergent) to rid the formaldehyde stink from my scrubs, the forgetting of how to draw the brachial plexus, trying to find an empty spot in my datebook so I could go get toilet paper, and the double shots of espresso; I cried. And I cried really fucking hard.
The worst part about the tears? I couldn't figure out what was causing them. Sure, you know, it's depressing when you suddenly don't have time to go get toilet paper from the store. And it's a weird feeling to spend your time studying about how precious and fragile our backs are, all the while your own damn backpack weighs well over the healthy limit. It's rough --- but I've been in similar (though less extreme) predicaments before, and I've dealt with it relatively better than this. So, as per usual, I called my dad -- my own personal Atticus Finch.
At first, I was hesitant to let him know that anything was wrong. I don't know if I've said this before, but I'm a grown ass woman. As our conversation dwindled down, however, the act became a little harder to follow through with than anticipated. He tried to say good night to me, and my eyes started filling up with pools of real tears and a giant egg grew in my throat. The type of egg that hatches into sobs the minute you try to speak. So I tried to whisper something like, "I miss you." And then yeah, my act was caput.
I spilled everything to him. The backpack, the toilet paper, the feelings of intellectual inadequacy, the lack of sleep, the everything.
He asked what upset me the most, and I told him that above everything else, I felt alone. Alone in that I felt like everyone else in my class was so much smarter than me. Everyone but me had time. Everyone else was on top of their game, and I felt like I was two weeks behind for the first practice.... I told him that maybe -- just maybe, if I knew that someone else felt the way I did -- like maybe that they were struggling too, I'd feel better. I wouldn't feel so alone.
He sat quietly on the other line for a while, and then spoke up....
"Mal de muchos, consuelo de tontos (pendejos)"
My mom will kill me for saying this, but I don't speak spanish too well. I've got my curse words down, but everything else is a little ....unrefined. So naturally, all I picked up from what he said was 'pendejo.'
"Dad..." (doing the laugh sob laugh thing), "did you really just call me a pendejo?"
Turns out he didn't. Or kind of didn't. His advice came from a spanish proverb --- but his meaning varies a bit from what Google has to say about it.
It means that the misery of many is a fool's best consolation.
This is where the "kind of didn't call me a pendejo" comes in. Yes, I'm the fool in the proverb, but no, he didn't mean that I was a fool. He meant that - in some circumstances in life (particularly the ones in which you're doing all you can in order to not need consolation), the only thing you can do is to look to others. All I could do to feel better was to talk to my classmates - who were busting their asses as much as I am - and learn that they too, were miserable.
I didn't take his advice lightly.
SO... on Monday morning whenever a classmate asked how I was doing, I answered truthfully. Something like, "shitty. I studied all weekend, and I still feel like I'm 2 weeks behind."
The response I received was just how my father said it would be.... consoling. It turned out that my classmates (or most of them at least) felt the same way. I wasn't alone.
I was one fool studying medicine with a bunch of other fools. Fools whose backpacks were too heavy, who were forgetting the brachial plexus, who were desperately experimenting with how to get eau de formaldehyde out of their scrubs.... Fools who had trouble finding time to buy toilet paper too.
