Remember the feeling on your first day of school? Each year, the month of August was filled with anticipation, shopping, excitement, and anxiety. As children we hoped to find friends in our new classes, in college we dreaded heavy workloads, and in med school we just put our heads down and hoped for the best.
Today I feel a similar anxiety, and a new emotion, fear. In the past month I have crossed the country from coast-to-coast, found an apartment, graduated from medical school, and packed up my entire life in the back of 2002 Pathfinder (save for a set of golf-clubs and a crock-pot that just didn't quite fit) to open a new chapter in a new city with new people... New. New. New.
And amidst all the excitement of "new" is the growing fear of "new." After four years of undergraduate and four years of medical school, I, along with three other interns at Cedars-Sinai and thousands of new doctors across the country, am about to embark on the journey we have worked so hard for and yet I am filled with dread.
This next first day is just one of many to come. And each one, from here on out, asks the questions, am I good enough? am I ready? At some point you have to learn to trust the system-- with real lives at stake, medical schools would not graduate us and hospitals would not hire us, if it compromised a life. Yet, despite this knowledge, there is an inner fear that grips our hearts and twists our stomachs. Despite what our parents and friends may think, and the diploma on the wall may suggest, we understand that our education is really just beginning; a fact that fuels our fears and anxieties.
Each day, I wake up and pinch myself. As the official start date draws nearer, the anxiety grows, the fear gets a little stronger, and it gets more and more real. The pinch hurts. This is not a dream. Or is it just my dream?
Today I feel a similar anxiety, and a new emotion, fear. In the past month I have crossed the country from coast-to-coast, found an apartment, graduated from medical school, and packed up my entire life in the back of 2002 Pathfinder (save for a set of golf-clubs and a crock-pot that just didn't quite fit) to open a new chapter in a new city with new people... New. New. New.
And amidst all the excitement of "new" is the growing fear of "new." After four years of undergraduate and four years of medical school, I, along with three other interns at Cedars-Sinai and thousands of new doctors across the country, am about to embark on the journey we have worked so hard for and yet I am filled with dread.
This next first day is just one of many to come. And each one, from here on out, asks the questions, am I good enough? am I ready? At some point you have to learn to trust the system-- with real lives at stake, medical schools would not graduate us and hospitals would not hire us, if it compromised a life. Yet, despite this knowledge, there is an inner fear that grips our hearts and twists our stomachs. Despite what our parents and friends may think, and the diploma on the wall may suggest, we understand that our education is really just beginning; a fact that fuels our fears and anxieties.
Each day, I wake up and pinch myself. As the official start date draws nearer, the anxiety grows, the fear gets a little stronger, and it gets more and more real. The pinch hurts. This is not a dream. Or is it just my dream?
RSS Feed