3/4 M.D.

This week marks the end of my third year of medical school. On Friday, I completed my last shelf examination of the last rotation of third year and turned in my final paper. The academic year has finally ended for me, and the next event is taking Step 2 before I am officially a fourth year.

Wow.

It's such a strange and anti-climatic feeling. 

Technically, I am less than 365 days away from graduation and earning the title of the M.D. that I had been in conquest for. Watching my fourth year roomates move out and celebrate their imminent intern year as newly-endowed residents, it's a very real feeling that the studying and practicing will end soon. In reality, the time when I come to practice "real world medicine" and hold lives responsible with my intellect is not so far away.

It's funny, but I thought it would have been more dramatic than this. I suppose, through the rigors of medical school and experiencing life on the wards, I have slowly realized that the definition of "being a doctor" entails much more than the simple degree. What it means to be a physician and the elements behind "good medicine" are lifelong learning endeavors. 

Earning my M.D. will only be another rite of passage - a garauntee that there will be many more years of learning and mistakes ahead. It will mark a cornerstone of my competence in knowledge garnered within these short years and my hardiness against its pressures, but it will also mark my green innonence to the vast canopy of medicine that only decades of experience will equip me. 

It's an odd exhillirating yet terrifying feeling that I will soon be in the place of my fellow interns/residents. Unlike them, I feel that I have no true knowledge and no idea of how to wholesomely manage patients. The experiences of medical school have taught me that I'm a mere neophyte in the giants that loom over me, and I have only had fleeting glimpses of healthcare in numerous settings. 

I know it's expected that I will know next to nothing when I finish medical school. I know that there will only be more intellectual hills to climb. I know that even though it's the end of third year, I still have so much to learn and study in the next upcoming three weeks. 

But I guess in this small moment, I will celebrate the small victory of marking another year of survival. To many more fighting days ahead!