I did it. I finished my first week of medical school. And yes, it is everything they say it is… Actually, I’m not really sure who “they” are or what is said about the first week of medical school but I can tell you it is a roller coaster for sure; a thrilling ride filled with ups and downs, some exciting twists and turns, all the while your brain is being rattled uncontrollably and you get off feeling dangerously close to puking… then you high-five your friends and get in line again.
This week was information overload in every way imaginable. Between sitting in class from dawn to dusk, attempting to learn the names of all my new classmates, and still trying my darndest to figure out my way around Portland, my poor little brain is in overdrive. When I get home, exhausted, each evening it is not hard for me to understand why medical school is often described as the most stressful, grinding time of a doctor’s life… and I only just finished my first week. It is also not hard to understand, and appreciate, all the emphasis that has been put on maintaining balance in our lives and the importance of taking time to take care of ourselves. (After all, how can I expect to attend to the health and healing of others if I’m a frazzled, hot mess.)There were even several times during orientation that we paused so we could “re-center” ourselves by practicing some Qi Gong. (Google it.) As a non-native hippie, I may have giggled a little bit when I realized what was happening and I think the sight of over 100 people shaking out our stress, quite literally, and then “grounding our energy,” probably would have provoked some involuntary smiles from anyone who doesn’t wear tye-dye on a regular basis. Don’t get me wrong, I am not making fun here. You better believe I was eating it all up. You know what they say… When in Rome…
Luckily, Portland is the yoga capital of the world. (I’m not sure if this is a documented fact but I’m pretty confident in making this statement.)There are literally yoga studios on every corner, and usually one or two on the block in between. Now, I have not always been a yoga fan. In fact, for a long, long time I could not for the life of me understand why people did yoga for exercise. I was of the mindset that when I went to the gym to exercise I wanted to get pumped up, get my heart rate going, and possibly even sweat a little bit. What I did not want to do was hold stationary poses for some predetermined length of time while listening to a babbling brook soundtrack. That all changed after I started working in a public school system. After a long day working with students who hated school, hated learning, and weren’t shy about making sure I was well aware of these facts using less-than-polite vocabulary, I totally understood how laying on your back for 20 minutes in a silent, dark room meditating might be appealing. So I took up yoga.
At this point, I should explain that I am one of those people that has to get in bed a good 45 minutes before I want to be asleep to allow myself time to relax and stop mentally making lists of all the things I need to do. (Coincidentally, I am also one of those people who need to set their alarm 30 minutes earlier than necessary to allow for the inevitable multiple snoozes.) I am not amazing at the meditation aspect of yoga or centering, or grounding, or turning my energy inward, or whatever the heck you’re supposed to do, but I have learned that yoga is a fantastic way to “shut down” my hyperactive brain after a long day and have made a habit out of doing a quick yoga practice before bed. Don’t worry though, for those of you who are wondering how the fluid, hippie nature of yoga and my self-proclaimed, task oriented, type-A personality can coexist it is really quite simple. Practicing yoga before bed enables me to re-center (in my own way as I’m still not quite sure what this means) and take time for myself, relaxes me in order to fall asleep faster, and sneaks in some low impact exercise after a long day of listening to lectures on the innervations of muscles. Check, check, check… to do list complete in one activity. Oh how I love efficiency.
My classes this week were somewhat daunting; as well they should be, after all, I’m going to be in the business of healing and saving lives… I should probably know what I’m talking about. As each professor came in an introduced his or her class the enormity of the amount of information I will be required to know washed over me. My anatomy professor commented that we will most likely learn between 20,000 and 40,000 new terms in medical school. That is the equivalent of becoming fluent in a foreign language. He then began his lecture which consisted of him rattling off anatomical term after anatomical term without any cohesive thread tying anything together, or at least none that I could ascertain… maybe to drive home the foreign language comment? Mission accomplished. After my last class of the day on Monday, I heard some classmates around me talking about getting together to study later that evening. All I could think was how nuts these people must be. It’s Day 1 for crying out loud! We’ll have plenty of time when studying is essential, might as well take advantage of the first few days and take some down time before everything gets into full swing. By Thursday afternoon (Day 4), I found myself in a library carrel, a little bit intimidated by all the information for which I was already responsible. With my first test scheduled for next Tuesday I think it’s safe to say the “full swing” of things is upon me.
It is increasingly clear to me that over the next four years, I will learn (and forget) more information than most people learn in their entire lives. Goethe once said, “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” I am beginning an incredible adventure and although I am under no illusion that I will ever be able to describe any part of the next four years as “easy,” I am so much more than excited to rise to the occasion and commit to the end goal. We were counseled this week to write down our purpose, why we started on this journey, and to post it in a prominent place in our homes. That way when the going gets tough and we question what on earth ever made us think this was a good idea (or when we get a statement in the mail telling us how much we now owe in student loans) we can remind ourselves why we love what we’re doing and how passionate we truly are about the path we’ve chosen. That is one thing I’ve loved about all of my classmates, when we are all together the passion in the room is palpable and synergistic, you can’t help but be stoked about naturopathic medicine… and spending long hours trying to commit to memory the biochemical ins and outs of the bicarbonate/CO2 buffering system in the blood.
Bring it on week 2.
No comments:
Post a Comment