Medical School Strikes Again...

It's that time of year again.  School time!  Medical school time to be exact.  At IU, we get the summer between our first and second years off and then never. get. another. summer. ever. again.  I spent my summer interning up at Witham Hospital in Lebanon, Indiana.  Great staff there, by the way.  I learned a ton and found out that even if I don't know exactly what specialty I want to go into, I like surgery and cutting things.  Good to know.  After my internship, I had an entire month free to do what I pleased.  That included:  sleeping. reading. eating. cleaning.  spending my hubby's hard-earned money.  Basically, that time off was lovely but I became bored suuuuppppeerrr fast.  I may have even cracked open a textbook.

You know when you go back to school in undergrad when you're super excited to move away from home and see all your friends?  If you're a nerd like me, you may even be excited to learn new things.  This year, I was literally dreading going back to medical school. 

See, my first year in med school was rough.  Crazy rough.  I was dealing with my hubby being away from me for 6 months, part of which time he was in basic and I got to talk to him once every 2-3 weeks for 5 minutes.  There were family issues.  There were health issues.  There was a whole slew of things on top of medical school.  Some people say first year isn't bad.  I say, first year is hell.  I have never studied so much in my entire life.  The amount of material med school throws at you is astounding.  It became a vicious circle of guilt:  I felt guilty when I wasn't studying.  I also felt guilty when I was studying and not spending time with my friends/family/husband/dogs.  I felt guilty all the time!  I also thought the entire class studied more and was smarter than me.  Med school students are way smart, yo.  I went from being one of the smartest kids in my classes to just being another number.  It was hard for me, clearly.  Did I learn a lot?  Abso-freaking-lutely.  Do I ever want to repeat that year?  No.  Did it make me a better person and someday, a better doctor? Yes.

This is a typical medical school study evening at the old apartment.  This is just me.

So, because of all this, I was DREADING starting second year and going back to the guilty, stressed, crazy lady I was during first year.  It started anyway.  I'm a week in, and I'm bound and determined to have better study habits and a better lifestyle than I did last year.  This means being super dedicated, even more so than last year, to studying and keeping up with the classes.  Am I already a little discouraged?  Possibly.  Neuroanatomy is already beating me up.  The first week wasn't too bad, though.  I'm hopeful that I can keep up what I'm doing now and start to study for Step 1 boards little by little.  I have some incredible friends that I've met at medical school who keep me sane and talk me down when I get crazy.  Thanks, guys.

Some of the awesome people who I've been so lucky to meet via med school. 

I look at Pierce frequently and ask, "Am I going to make it?"  He always gives me a resounding yes.  This year, I'm going to work on not asking that question and just believing that I can do this.  I can't wait to be a doctor.  Now, to go work on neuroanatomy...

Until next time,

jessica.eae