Home Stretch

It's almost April. I have 11 weeks and 3 days until I take Step I.  I'm in that strange place where I really want time to slow down because I have so much stuff to do between now and then, but I also want time to continue to go by quickly because I can feel the familiar twinge of burn out.  Second year has been rough. First year, I was extremely good at school. I was near the top of my class in all classes except biochem and I still felt that excited twinge of competition that drove me to succeed and perform well on my exams. Now I'm just tired.  All I want to do is pass. I've been dragging all year.  I'd like to say its because I've been distracted by the wedding but I really haven't.  I'm just exhausted, and sick of sitting in a chair memorizing information, 80% of which I will most likely forget and never use in my career.  There are days when the only thing preventing me from quitting is my massive student loan debt.

All of that said, I'm really excited to start third year.  I know the hours will be long for some rotations,  but I do best when I actually get to interact with people.  I love interacting and building relationships with patients.  I recognize the relationship building is limited in 3rd year because of the rotation schedule, but even getting to see the same person a few times and working with them is really what I look forward to. This is probably why I'm leaning more toward OB/GYN and less toward surgery.  I do enjoy operating- the precision, the physicality, the ability to actually be able to "do something" for a patient.  I also really like building relationships.  Enter OB/GYN a nice blend of the two.  It's also a relatively positive specialty.  But I digress.... All of this is literally MONTHS away. Now at the end of second year it feels almost like the light at the end of the tunnel that just keeps moving.

The highlight of my week was picking my "grid" for the order of my rotations next year. Basically we  rank various orders of rotations by preference then some computer algorithm tries to give everyone their highest ranked choice.  In the next step, we will pick WHERE we rotate. Which I'm also very excited for. Anything that involves looking forward is exciting. Anything that involves doing the work I still need to do to get there is torture.