The Start of Things: Countdown to Medical School

For the last two weeks, my family has accompanied me on a vacation around the East Coast, the final destination set in Albany, NY. It was quite fun exploring new places and being preoccupied on not-being-lost, but the busy schedule of taking pictures and sightseeing distracted me from really realizing my gap-year days ticking away and my medical-student days inching closer. Not that I am not excited for school.

Even moving in felt more like a method of distraction rather than a preparation into the start of school. I was stressing about things to buy, combing over my memory for anything that I might have missed, setting everything up. That solid, real feeling that I was going to start medical school all by myself started to sink in when my parents were hugging me goodbye.

As I spent that afternoon feeling a bit nostalgic and mopey, I realized two things: first, I was really going to be a medical student, and second, this was the first time that I was going be off to school by myself. In college, I had been away from my parents, an I do have a floormate (hopefully) for the next four years, but the situation feels somewhat different. I suppose there are several reasons for that. The most obvious one was that I did not start entirely alone in San Diego; I had a few friends who were already there, and he was down in Irvine - close enough to keep me company. I am not adverse to making new starts and meeting new people, but being in a new environment always scares me a bit. Maybe because every time I am terrified that this time will not be like last time - that the people this time will not like me like they had accepted me last time. The comfort of having an already established friend in my new environment always put me at ease knowing that I could have someone to confide in if I met troubles at the start. More than having to rely on my friends, I despise having to rely on strangers. 

And new places are always filled with strangers.

The circumstance is also quite different this time. In the undergraduate situation, everything was more casual and friendly. Everyone was here to learn and to explore. Here (not sure if this is just my paranoid self being its usual cantankerous self), I feel like the situation is more serious, more professional. Everyone here is a medical student, and everyone is certain. There seems to be more all-to-himself texture to the situation. Although, to be fair, my experiences with Albany Medical College (AMC) have all been friendly and positive so far, so maybe I am just trying to scare myself into failure. Who knows?

Or perhaps I am simply experiencing anxiety prior to the commencement of things?

New beginnings always feel so strange, like the way new toothpaste slightly chafes uncomfortably but not necessarily badly. Simultaneously, I am excited for school to learn about all the things that I have been dreaming and awaiting for; I am baffled and still uncertain that I have actually got into medical school and that I am really really a real medical student (not that there are fake medical students?); and I am apprehensive with a slight hint of doom that there is now no going back. A part of me has always dreaded and groaned in distaste of my stubborn persistence for medicine (a virtue, my friends say). Yes, I have almost always known what I have wanted to do, but that also strikes the fear of 

well, what if you don't succeed?

To me, there is almost nothing else that I can devote to like medicine. The doubts - what if I fail? what if I burn out? - and the worst - what if I hate it? bubble and become more pregnant in this lapse before I can distract myself with studying and immersing myself fully in the curriculum. 

What if I hate medicine? 

I do not think I will, and I know I have concrete backups that I can pursue if this dream sublimes into bubbles, but doubt always lurks. I do not like uncertainty and even more, change. To me, realizing a contradiction that I had been so sure all my life is more frightening that medical school itself.

But maybe I am just being bored and worrying about unnecessarily because I have nothing else to worry about. 

I apologize for the redundancies and now gloomy note that we ended on. Perhaps the next (and not so belated) post would be more fun and entertaining.