Dear junior medical students: It is hard to believe as I am writing this, that I am in my last year of my medical school. My 5 years has been amazing and has gone by so quickly. There is no way to predict or to prepare for what your junior years will have in store, but if it is anything like mine, it will be full of ups and downs.
Moments that you will cherish for the rest of your life and a few that you will wish you could forget.
You will laugh, with your colleagues, and even with your patients. Some of you will cry, definitely. Maybe during your first week of Internal Medicine classes, maybe alone in the hospital bathroom. But it will be OK. You will survive that day and the rest of the days. Later, you’ll appreciate what you have learned during that time when all you want to do is go home and crawl into bed, but instead, all you did was only washing your face and scrubbing back in.
You will make mistakes. You will overlook important labs or might even missed huge and obvious physical examination findings. You will always forget to ask something that seems like the most obvious question in the world. But you will get better.
Every single day you will improve, and you will realize that someone pointing out your mistakes is a necessary step in developing into a competent and qualified physician. You will change some one’s life. You will talk to patients. You will explain something they never understood. As medical students, we have the opportunity to know our patients on a deeper level than anyone else. We have the time to spend talking to them.
You will fall asleep. You will learn more than you ever imagined possible even when you do not realize you are learning. You might or might not be surrounded by incredible, caring, and compassionate people every day. The professors, fellow students, the nurses, techs and secretaries and most of all, your patients, will teach you about life, death, hard work, and also a little medicine.
You will grow as a person and begin to see your own potential. You will realize that the “3” on your transcript from first year really does not matter. Even if you failed a chemistry test or two, you are still capable of becoming a great doctor.
I hope your junior years is every bit as happy, sad, energizing, exhausting, confusing, simple, rewarding, and beautiful as mine has been.
D’Dyanna Lajamin is a 4th year Sabahan medical student currently studying in Kursk State Medical University, Russia. Know more about her under the Young Columnist tab.