What We've Accomplished

One year ago, all of us in concert got a new degree. I am sure we had in our minds some expectation of what this degree would mean, and I dare to venture that intern year did not fulfill our hopes of medicine. This is how pre-meds imagine medicine, what their essays describe: a career in which every day is different, unexpected, challenging, thought-provoking, and intensely meaningful, a job that focuses on precious patient interactions in which a physician guides a grateful and scared human being through a difficult time in their life, a work highlighted by high-level discussions of scientific merit, an occupation where all components of the system mesh perfectly so that the doctor is only called upon when his highly refined skills are necessary, and in which every action the doctor makes has resounding and reverberating consequences of Good.

I assure you, internship could not feel more different. At times, we feel that we didn't do anything of particular significance. Our day to day activities are laden with the banal and trite. We seem to be learning more of the system rather than medical knowledge. More of our time is spent doing nonmedical stuff than medical stuff. Our schedules, lives, and free time are dictated by our programs. We have no flexibility, no freedom. And this system feels stifling. Where is our creativity now? Where do we find time to try new things, learn to cook, read a novel, write a blog, dance, see friends? And not only that, our day-to-day activities so rarely make us feel like a doctor, and this is insult upon injury when our job confines our spare time.

But now, sitting on my high perch at the end of internship, I propose that this is only transient. What have we but to be optimistic, especially with this deep sense that we've already invested four years of medical school for this. Residency gets better from here on out. Life opens up, it blossoms. And these "Dark Ages" - as one of my friends calls it - they are something we assimilate and learn to accept. I've, after all, learned something. I can't really say what it is exactly, and it probably doesn't have a place on the syllabus handed down from on high, but I think it's worthwhile. I've come into this system, learned to play by the rules, figured out its keystones and stress points, and made a bit of it my own.