Advent of Year 2

Hiatus is over.

I'm notorious for excessively lengthy prefaces.  Perhaps this is because much of what I choose to divulge as your bright and shiny DO Blogger is so poorly defined by the parameters of three paragraphs and a clever header.  And so, like time and time again, I'll word vomit until you elect to stop reading.

But hopefully, you don't.  Hopefully, you are the right person, at the right time, reading those choice words.  Hopefully, something strikes a chord with you, whether you are like me, closing the curtain to first year summer limbo and entering second year; whether you are beginning your journey into the entering DO class of 2018 from whatever life event or academic segue that brought you about this way, or whether you are a curious onlooker, wondering if "it really it all they say it is."

In personal matters, I have news for you.  Miss Williams is getting married.
Jokes on you though: Miss Williams is my mom.  (We share the same surname).  Ironically, everyone is getting married.  Like...everyone. My best female friend just jumped on this bandwagon about two weeks ago. Don't roll your eyes just yet, this isn't to be followed by some sour-laden statement like "I'm just sitting here becoming a doctor, you all go on with your life milestones." I haven't met my mother's fiance yet; in a way, I have trepidation about the whole thing.  It has much less to do with the introduction of a new man (the only man?) in our small little circle of Williams' widows and singletons than it does with the fact that it is a very existentially alarming thing to see (recall) that medical school and all of its gravity and levity and trivialities and legitimate concerns and drama or mundanity are not the center of your life (all the time, anyway) or that of others  In the end, it's you within it, again, in this bubble that removes you from the ongoings of normal people, and when it's over, you have the blessing of an institution to rejoin it (albeit sleep deprived, you are qualified.  You are something. You are someone). Everything else, marriage included, must be malleable to the shape of your academic career.

But it is funny, in a way, to remember that people can mark progress, and personal growth outside of school with events and celebrations that don't pertain to "I passed this exam" or "I placed out of histology."  It is silly that I sit here, on the phone with my mother, a fellow single woman for as long as I've been alive, and briefly talk details of what is typically one of the biggest days in someone's life as a mere calendar event-in some ways, an inconvenience.  Because the topic progresses from "How exciting!" to "When?" to "Who?" to "But not around boards, right?" to "But yes, around boards" to "In that event, it is not feasible; I cannot go."

And that doesn't bother me so much, an inability to attend my only parent's first wedding.  It frightens me a little more that this mutual decision is one made so nonchalant, like that I can't order pizza in because the coupon expired.  Like this is just another exam.
For that, I will always have a distaste for the jail that is professional school.

But last night, I attended the gala (I'm just going to call it a gala...all things dinner and dance will hereby be known as Gala) for the Masters in Biomedical Sciences graduates.  Many of whom, in attendance, will be joining the Doctor of Osteopathic Class of 2018.  And I couldn't help but be so...excited.

Excited for them.  Excited for you, should you be one of them.  Excited that, regardless of what your acceptance means to you (maybe you have adopted the attitude of "it's about time" or "Thank God, I can spend the last bit of my 400 dollars in the bank" to "I have a life.  I am defined."), you are becoming Someone.  You have always been someone.  But now, someone (some school, really) has publicly declared they trust you with the knowledge and professionalism and genuine humanity that constitutes the intelligence and benevolence truly needed to be a physician.  I have always been of the mind that you cannot have medicine without an interest in people-all people.  Does this limit everyone to Family Medicine?  No.  But it does set a very nice stage for your approach to patient care in any capacity or specialty-not solely your aptitude but your concomitant desire to see and work for the improvement of their quality of living of others at what occasionally comes at the expense of your own. 

I am excited for you.  If you are like me (which I understand would make you eccentric, odd, a hot mess on occasion, verbally overbearing, etc), your acceptance to medical school means you never have to sleep in your car again.
It means you never have to park behind an Albertson's lot during summer school.
It means you never have to make a decision between money and food or education.
It means you can have all of those things.
It means that, you are given the opportunity, one that 8000 people this year sought out just like you, to sit in a seat 270 were priveleged with, to prove (not because you ought to, but because you want to) that you are working for the betterment of your immediate society and the advancement of a medical and scientific one.
It means that, you are assured a spot in Ginsburg, which is of the utmost insignificance, but more importantly-MOST importantly-you are assured a degree, pending your unrelenting hard work and dedication, lots of pots of coffee and occasional cynicism and sometimes missed marriages and tests instead of birthday-a degree that lets you physically CHANGE others.

You can CHANGE them. Most times, it will ideally be for the better.  It may be preventative, and life saving.
It may be defensive with intervention, and no one's lives are for the better.
But you CAN change them.  You are one of the few professions in the world where you can utilize your mind and your hands together, and you can feel for disease, you can think for curative measures, you can instruct and teach and palpate and feel and improve.  You can do this, and someone believed in you enough to grant you the greatest opportunity- a medical education.

And you will forget this at times.  You will be tired, and annoyed. You will be upset, and cranky.  You will say things you don't mean to your colleages and your friends at home, to your spouse or your children.  It will be mentally and physically demanding in ways (unless you've been to medical school before) that you have not experienced before.  It may not be "harder" than labor, or more "difficult" than an Iron Man, but it will be tough.  And it will be tough when you enter your second year, when you remember all those nights that melted into mornings, all those exams you could have cried over because, yea, damn right they dictate your future. That one scantron says "Yes, collect 500 dollars and pass Go, be a DO."  Conversely, it can say: Stop.

Work hard.  You will.  When you think you've worked hard, work a little harder.  Work as hard as those 8000 applicants worked to get where you are fortunate enough to be today.  I am excited for you; never forget how excited you were the day you read a header that began with

"We are pleased to inform you."


xo,
V