I think there’s this preconceived notion, especially among people not in medicine, that med school is the equivalent of putting your life on pause for four years. We’re told that it’s an intense, rigorous endeavor, and that it’ll demand significantly more than any other academic experience we’ve undertaken in the past. While I’ve found a lot of those of things to be true and medical school certainly comes with its fair share of sacrifices, I’ve never really felt like I had to put my life on pause. Med school has been one of the best parts of my life, and as I reflect on my journey, I think back on the words of wisdom I’ve received from mentors over the past few years that have fundamentally shaped my medical school experience for the better.
While I recognize it is a privilege to have had such a great experience and acknowledge that many factors external to my control have played a large part in it, I firmly believe that these foundational mindset changes have helped me thrive in this space:
Prioritize Close Relationships
Undoubtedly, the one thing that got me through med school in one piece was the group of people that I’ve been lucky enough to call friends over the past few years. Med school is a marathon, and I am convinced the distance is twice as long when you’re running it alone. Especially during clinical year, it is all too easy to bounce back and forth between the hospital and home with no break, and it’s a process that I believe is fundamentally unsustainable and brings everyone one step closer to burnout and resentment. Clerkships, in particular, can feel incredibly isolating as you exist in this in-between space of being both a student and a colleague on your team. Filling my cup with deep relationships and prioritizing truly resting and recharging with a small group of close friends not only restored me to continue performing well on the wards, but reminded me that my life was just as fulfilling outside of the hospital as it was inside of it. This may sound like an oversimplification, but sometimes the solution to burnout is just a nice meal with a few loved ones.
Identify your values - and hold on to them.
Often times, we’re told in med school to remember our why, or the reason we decided to become physicians in the first place. I remember thinking the advice was rather saccharine at first, but the further along I got into my clinical year and beyond, the more I found myself falling back on my story during times of fatigue. Whether that’s a desire to serve a specific patient population, a personal story that drove you to apply, or a deep love of pathophysiology and procedural excellence, that little reminder of why you’re here in the first place can unlock stores of energy you didn’t think you had. If this sounds overly sentimental to you, I promise I felt the same way at first. After spending a month playing with babies on my pediatrics rotation, though, I can firmly say that I have always been able to find a little extra juice whenever I remember the kids I’ve already taken care of.
Let Your Values Guide You
The other aspect of values I want to emphasize is that they’re not only a source of motivation, but a source of direction. In medical school, it’s all too easy to get swept away in the hype and the energy of all the people around you considering all the different specialties available to them, but I urge you to balance keeping an open mind with remembering your non-negotiables for why you wanted to be a physician in the first place. If you find yourself exhausted and overwhelmed while simultaneously doing research you hate, volunteering for a cause you don’t believe in, and shadowing in a specialty that puts you to sleep, you probably already know the source of your problem.
I cannot emphasize this point enough: chase down what you love. The allure of prestige and glamour and lifestyle is incredibly tempting, but I have seen far too many young doctors in deeply unhappy spaces because they compromised on their fundamental values to pursue a specialty that, at the end of the day, wasn’t right for them. Listen to that voice in your head and pick the specialty you love, because I promise it will work out so much better in the long run.
Change How You View Failure
You will fail in med school.
This was one of the first lessons I had to learn, and it is one that I continue to learn on a near daily basis. At the end of the day, we are students that exist on a continuum of learners and educators; no matter how far along we get in our medical careers, we will always have more to learn and always have more room to grow, and with that comes an inevitability of eventual failure.
One of the best decisions I made was to stop viewing failure as a personal or moral inadequacy, but instead to view it as a potent source of growth, a mental framework which you may have heard of called a growth mindset. Some of the best attendings I’ve ever worked with have openly shared with me their most impactful failures, and to this day I see them regularly use those failures to inform the excellent clinical care that they continue to provide today. Essentially, they are phenomenal doctors because of, not in spite of, their failings, and they are people that I regularly aspire to be like when I become a practicing physician in my own right.
Growth mindsets save lives.Not just those of your patients, but also of your own. If you’re experiencing and acknowledging failure, that doesn’t make you less worthy of being a physician, it simply makes you just like everyone else. Learn from it, grow from it, and use it to continue inspiring you.
Comments