Summer Camp and High School

Something not many people talk about when they tell you about med school is that leading up to it is just like summer camp. Then once school starts its like high school in the sense that you are stuck with the same small group of people for 4 years. The social circles are small and clicky. Every little piece of information will probably turn into gossip (watching second years talk about their classmates is all too common an occurrence). At the end of the day, I guess a lot of life is like that... in the office, a hospital, or any other workplace. As an undergrad it's easy to diversify the social groups you're a part of through clubs, sports, friends of friends, class, living situation, and so on... The trick over the next few years will be to attempt something similar to maintain balance and sanity. I imagine soccer, living with two second-year students, and maintaining friendships outside of school should do the job just fine.

I was told by a second year to watch out for a version of Stockholm's Syndrome that tends to come out during the depths of winter... Apparently in the dark gloomy months of December/January/February, after being stuck with the same people every day, we forget what the rest of the world is like, and that person working in the anatomy group next to yours suddenly seems much more attractive than they would in any other environment. For the sake of limiting the gossip and the number of potential mistakes that one might make in their first year of medical school, I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for this particular situation... But if it's anything like grey's anatomy, I guess we are all doomed to make plenty of mistakes and spend most of our waking hours gossiping about it. (I don't know why I keep referencing that show, I don't watch it)

Lastly, med students are planners. The average age of a student entering 1st year is somewhere around 24, which means that after four years of school they will be 27 or 28 and after 3 - 7 years of residency they will be in their early 30's... If a student is interested in having children, and they are single entering medical school, you can bet that there is some plan that they've thought through regarding the timing of it all. As a group we micromanage almost every aspect of our life, so its not surprising that I've already had way too many conversations with students about their personal and professional future. For better or worse, it makes sense. We're on a track, the train has left the station, and now its like "The Little Engine that Could..."

"I think I can, I think I can..."