Island Med Student

I’ve now completed my fourth week of medical school and I have my first exam next week. I already feel like a different person. To say that I’ve felt challenged at times would be a huge understatement. To put it enzymatically, my brain has reached a saturation point. (Sorry for the biochem humor.) I’ve also had to deal with a nasty cold, which I’m finally recovering from, and an incident where I accidentally fell into a concrete ditch. (I know, it’s sad and funny at the same time.)

I’ve discovered that for me, the most challenging aspect of starting medical school is figuring out how to study. During my undergrad years, I made good grades and never had too many problems learning the material. So far, I’ve learned that the difficulty level of the material in medical school is not horribly challenging for me, but the quantity most certainly is. Because I am a highly organized person, I felt the need to have a good “plan” for studying, along with developing a schedule that would allow me to cover all the material. Silly me.

There may be people out there who found it easy to master all of the material that is presented to them in medical school, with time to spare. I’m definitely not one of them. In fact, according to my calculations, even if I decided to stop sleeping and taking breaks for food and exercise, I probably still wouldn’t have enough time to learn every single item that was presented in class.

This dilemma caused me to think back to the words of a colleague who advised me that the best way to handle medical school is to accept the fact that you simply can’t know everything, and just try to do the best that you can. This was certainly good advice. However, it goes against my natural instincts. I want to master everything that is presented. I can’t help but feel that if I miss something that I should have learned, it could potentially mean that I might not be able to treat my patients effectively. What if neglecting to learn that one factoid in medical school results in me making an error, which hurts a patient? That’s a difficult thing to accept.

I’ve also realized that when I allowed the stress to overwhelm me, I compromised my immune system, which led to me developing a cold. Staying up all night studying and barely eating was also a very bad idea. Though I doubt that poor nutrition led to me falling into a ditch!

So, I’m trying to perform a delicate balancing act. I study as much and as effectively as I can, but eventually I have to rest, even if I haven’t yet memorized the brachial plexus. It’s not an easy thing to do, because there is no “right” answer to how much studying is enough studying; or at least I haven’t found one. It seems to really vary from person to person. Some of my classmates can sit in the library all day long, barely taking any breaks. But I have to go outside to breathe real air, and go for a jog to prevent my muscles from screaming at me. As future doctors, don’t we have the obligation to live healthy lives? We do, but it’s much easier said than done. I think it’s cruelly ironic that in order to make it through medical school, some students end up engaging in incredibly unhealthy practices like not sleeping, not exercising, and relying on potato chips and pizza for sustenance. But I understand the temptation, as it sometimes seems like the only way to cope with the demands of learning volumes of information in a limited amount of time.

The good news is that although I still feel overwhelmed, and I still believe that it’s going to take every ounce of strength that I have, I believe that I can do this. And I want to do it without putting my health at risk. I think I might just be seeing that faint light flickering on the horizon, and I’m going to keep walking towards it.

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