Being a medical student can be little scary.
One reason is, of course, that in little over a year's time and assuming that all things go to plan, I will be a doctor. I will be able to prescribe drugs and I will have responsibility to patients. It may not be life and death stuff but it's not far from it.
Of course, in a year and four days, I'll also get paid which will be something of a novelty after a six year course, the equivalent length of a secondary school education.
Another reason that med school is scary is that it makes one very insular, very clique-y. It's something that students in other faculties actually notice about us. They tend not to like us because, well, we have nothing to do with them. We are are the frightening ones who disappear into the Anatomy dissection room to cut up dead people. For the first few years of med school, the only question I was asked by outsiders (and, by God, anyone not in medicine quickly becomes an outsider) was "are you cutting up dead people yet?" Now, people tend to ask "are you in the hospitals yet?" to which the answer is obviously "yes, I live there." For some reason, however, people seem to think we get paid now. I wish. How much easier would that make my life? Outsiders think that we are snobs or superior. I admit, occasionally, to mocking arts students but how much would I have loved studying English?
I'm not in medicine for the money. If I wanted money, I'd have done a business course, a computer course or I'd have married Prince Harry by now. I think I'm in medicine for the challenge and for the job satisfaction; perhaps even so I can feel vaguely good about my chosen profession even when I don't feel especially good about myself. Of course, I couldn't see myself being anything other than a doctor. I have backed myself into a corner but I don't regret it. What other professional course gives one so much freedom? There is medicine, and all its subspecialities, surgery, and all its subspecialities and pathology and general practice and teaching and the list goes on. No matter what one's talents are, no matter how socially inept, there is always a job in some area of medicine.
I still find it a little odd that I have so many obsessions with so many things that aren't medicine, given the scope within the subject. Writing, there has always been writing, even before I ever discovered the crazy online world of fanfiction &c. For as long as I've had access to a computer (fifteen years or longer?), I've tried to write plays and stories and God knows what else. Admittedly, there's more direction to my writing than there used to be and I'm glad that medicine hasn't crushed my interest in it but sometimes I wonder if I'm so enthusiastic about writing just to spite the notion that medicine should be a 24/7 vocation.
Music, of course, I adore. I will go to concerts and I will buy as many albums as I can. I spend too much money on going to the cinema because, without films, I'd probably shrivel up and die in front of Home and Away and Eastenders every night. I'm notorious in my family, and amongst certain circles of friends, for being a movie junkie. There is sport, both as a spectator and a participant. There is reading, fucking hell, there is reading. I bought three books today, just because. I get interested in things and it takes me a long time to lose that interest.
I think the thing that scares me most about medicine is getting the balance right. I'm a long way from figuring it out.
One reason is, of course, that in little over a year's time and assuming that all things go to plan, I will be a doctor. I will be able to prescribe drugs and I will have responsibility to patients. It may not be life and death stuff but it's not far from it.
Of course, in a year and four days, I'll also get paid which will be something of a novelty after a six year course, the equivalent length of a secondary school education.
Another reason that med school is scary is that it makes one very insular, very clique-y. It's something that students in other faculties actually notice about us. They tend not to like us because, well, we have nothing to do with them. We are are the frightening ones who disappear into the Anatomy dissection room to cut up dead people. For the first few years of med school, the only question I was asked by outsiders (and, by God, anyone not in medicine quickly becomes an outsider) was "are you cutting up dead people yet?" Now, people tend to ask "are you in the hospitals yet?" to which the answer is obviously "yes, I live there." For some reason, however, people seem to think we get paid now. I wish. How much easier would that make my life? Outsiders think that we are snobs or superior. I admit, occasionally, to mocking arts students but how much would I have loved studying English?
I'm not in medicine for the money. If I wanted money, I'd have done a business course, a computer course or I'd have married Prince Harry by now. I think I'm in medicine for the challenge and for the job satisfaction; perhaps even so I can feel vaguely good about my chosen profession even when I don't feel especially good about myself. Of course, I couldn't see myself being anything other than a doctor. I have backed myself into a corner but I don't regret it. What other professional course gives one so much freedom? There is medicine, and all its subspecialities, surgery, and all its subspecialities and pathology and general practice and teaching and the list goes on. No matter what one's talents are, no matter how socially inept, there is always a job in some area of medicine.
I still find it a little odd that I have so many obsessions with so many things that aren't medicine, given the scope within the subject. Writing, there has always been writing, even before I ever discovered the crazy online world of fanfiction &c. For as long as I've had access to a computer (fifteen years or longer?), I've tried to write plays and stories and God knows what else. Admittedly, there's more direction to my writing than there used to be and I'm glad that medicine hasn't crushed my interest in it but sometimes I wonder if I'm so enthusiastic about writing just to spite the notion that medicine should be a 24/7 vocation.
Music, of course, I adore. I will go to concerts and I will buy as many albums as I can. I spend too much money on going to the cinema because, without films, I'd probably shrivel up and die in front of Home and Away and Eastenders every night. I'm notorious in my family, and amongst certain circles of friends, for being a movie junkie. There is sport, both as a spectator and a participant. There is reading, fucking hell, there is reading. I bought three books today, just because. I get interested in things and it takes me a long time to lose that interest.
I think the thing that scares me most about medicine is getting the balance right. I'm a long way from figuring it out.
posted by Lindsey at 4:54 PM
3 Comments:
I admit it.
When I first spoke to you, I thought you were a bit of a flake. Or a bit of a media junkie. There was just so much stuff you loved and so much you knew that I didn't know about.
Now that I know you better, it no longer amazes me.
It fucking SCARES me. :)
Honestly, I have no idea how you do it - can your day have more than twenty four hours? - being all these things, writer, reader, fangirl, chorist, med student and den mama, and being really good at them. I can only watch in wonder and say, dude, I KNOW that chick!
To Roswitha
That is freaking hysterical, it really is. I don't think that I'm generally viewed as a flake although occasionally I'm possibly seen as being, alternately, a bit hyper or a bit laid-back.
Unfortunately, my day only has twenty four hours. Which doesn't explain my strange sleeping pattern.
To La Bona.
Your link didn't actually work, there. Suffice to say that I live in a country in which abortion is illegal and, for the most part, I support that except in those rare cases in which the mother's life is in danger and, as a general rule, in the case of rape. I don't think abortion should ever be seen as a convenience.
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