A Strange Time

It’s a weird time right now. We’re all trying to balance studying for school and studying for the boards, while figuring out what we might be interested in doing for the rest of our lives, and trying to be a human and have a life at the same time. Funny thing is: everyone says that med school is the easiest time of all our training.

You would think that school studying and boards studying is the same. In some ways yes, and in many other ways no. For me, school studying is learning all the intricacies that specialists in their field want us to know, and boards studying is pattern recognition. School studying is staring at packets of notes and PowerPoint slides, and boards studying is doing questions from a Q bank that make you feel like you haven’t learned anything in the past 1.5 years.

One of my colleagues and I joke when we see each other in the dark isolated recesses of the BioMed basement that we’re like monkeys: trained to memorize and spit out information. We’re all a little neurotic the way we study. Some like their packets stapled, some need them unstapled. Some highlight every word in the notes packet as they read, and then highlight them again in a different color when they read it again—rinse and repeat. Some (me for example) write and draw diagrams on the whiteboard and erase them—rinse and repeat. Still others put things on Post-it notes and put them all over their bathrooms and kitchens (imagine walking into that house). Unless you’re in it, or have done it, this all seems CRAZY. The relief/justification/satisfaction comes when we see patients, and we recall that sticky note with the differential next to the toothpaste to the left of the shaving cream, or that drug that’s highlighted in 5 different colors to the point that it’s almost illegible, and we’re able to help a real, living person.

This weekend, I took a break. It was all getting a little too nutso, and let’s be real, it was way more fun snowboarding on Saturday, watching the Saints win the Superbowl with friends (the commercials were terrible this year), and watching a couple movies on Netflix. It’d be great to be as smart as House, know the diagnosis right off the bat and just mess with your team because you can. It’d also be amazing to be one of those doctors (What are they anyways? It seems like they must be quadruple boarded in interventional radiology, surgery, internal medicine and infectious disease, while doing lab stuff on the side). Maybe it was endless studying that made House into the ridiculously brilliant jerk he is on TV. If that’s the case, I think I’d rather not know as much, and be a friendlier doctor. Don’t people say 70% of medicine is being able to talk to and relate to your patient?

For now, I have some ideas what I want to do, or rather, what I think I don’t want to do, but little experience to base it on. The experience is coming though, and I’m pumped. For now, it’s continuing to be a monkey, memorize and spit out facts, and recognize patterns. The satisfaction’s just on the horizon. A few more months, and we’ll be working long hours in the hospital—probably wishing we were back studying, in control of our own schedules.

-Ed Cheung