![\"Courtesy](\"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/time-pie-chart1.jpg\")
<\/a>I was told that the material would be overwhelmingly vast, that I would spend most of my spare time with my nose in the books, memorizing, and that I should not even think about third year yet, because that was a whole \u2018nother story. I was not deterred\u2014I had found medicine (or rather, medicine had found me) and I could not imagine myself pursuing any other field. \u00a0I was a little afraid because I knew I was not much of a memorizer.\u00a0 But, I would try my best.\u00a0 This all happened after my sophomore year of college, when I finally decided to \u201cgo pre-med.\u201d (My path to choosing medicine will have to wait for a future blog post\u2026 stay tuned!).<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t imagine being busier than I already was. I was already heavily involved with three extracurricular activities, was starting to go into a lab to do research, and had a full course load. Yes, medical school was probably going to be busy\u2014everyone said it would be\u2014but somehow, I couldn\u2019t wrap my mind around a life busier than what I was experiencing in undergrad. \u00a0If I had been a more pro-active of a pre-med, I might have planned for the time-suck that I heard medical school was going to be. Maybe I would have started studying anatomy on my own, flipping through an atlas over the summer and starting to put down to memory muscles and nerves. Maybe I would have freshened up on my biochemistry or genetics.<\/p>\n
Either way, I don\u2019t think it would have prepared me at all for the balancing act that attending medical school has been. (In any case, I\u2019m glad I didn\u2019t fritter away my summer with a Grant\u2019s Dissector.) It\u2019s true that I\u2019ve never been expected to memorize so much material in such a short period of time ever before. And that my attending lecture, small groups, and mandatory clinic sessions have resulted in much more class time (and hence, less free time) than in undergrad. Yet, these challenges are singular, and I have come to accept them as essential parts of the path I have chosen to take. The real challenge arches over other aspects of my life. \u00a0It is the challenge of prioritization<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Most, if not all, doctors would agree that in order to keep sane, they\u2019ve had to prioritize activities other than studying during their medical career. Often, it\u2019s working out, cooking, sleeping, watching TV, or spending time with friends and family. It\u2019s ultimately all about balance.<\/p>\n
Being a medical student is like this: a teetering balancing act that may lean or sway more towards one activity or another on a day-to-day basis, but ultimately, in the big scope of things, stays firmly upright. This dynamic, rocking state of being is what balance<\/i> truly is.\u00a0 I\u2019m still awful at memorizing, and binder-loads of lecture material still catch me off guard. Yet, the biggest challenge of medical school has been learning how to best use the limited time I have in the most fulfilling way for me.\u00a0 It\u2019s about learning to promote balance in my life.<\/p>\n
In C. Dale Young\u2019s poem, \u201cGross Anatomy: The First Day,\u201d he begins the poem with an anatomy dissection instructor telling his students to:<\/p>\n
\u201cBegin with bone and muscle to discern exactly what you need to memorize. Each region has so many things to learn.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
He ends the poem with a snapshot of a sentiment too often felt by medical students:<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026You have many things to learn:
\nprocedures, facts, new words at every turn.\u201d
\nHis introductory words elicit sighs.
\nBegin with bone and muscle to discern?
\nThere is no time\u2014too many things to learn.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\nIf I were to give advice to my na\u00efve, pre-med self, I would sit her down and look her in the eye. I would tell her with confidence that she will be able to handle the course load of medical school just fine, that she will one day wield a stethoscope and call herself student-doctor without a second thought. But I would add, after motioning her to listen carefully<\/i>, that she should make sure to pay particular attention to what is important to her. I would urge her to not let those things wither and to make finding balance a priority during medical school.\u00a0 Then I would share some sage advice I have gotten from fourth years past, \u201cThe extra hour you spend studying may not help you become that much of a better doctor in the long-run, but the extra hour you spend with your friends\/your significant other\/your family\/your hobbies can make all the difference for your current and future happiness. Either way, you are going to get that MD. How<\/i> you get there is yours to choose.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Not too long ago, I was rushing from one informational meeting to the next, trying to gather the scoop on medicine, medical school, and what exactly it meant to be a pre-med (I found it strange that these three rungs on the medical ladder were not necessarily complementary with each other… Did acing a nit-picky […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":189,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[13,9,11],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191,"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/191"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}