open heart surgery

this past week, one of my roommates and i agreed: it didn't really feel like medical school. the gravitas somehow got lost in the beginning.

it is coming upon the end of my first week of class and i think i am finally, maybe, 80% there. it is just hard to believe that someone like me could be inducted into such a sacred profession, and as i sat through Essentials of Clinical Medicine, i was overcome by memories of times i went above and beyond for a patient in clinic. of times i sold a patient short. of guilt and remorse for everything leading up to the person i am now, of pride and hope for the person i might become, of fear that i will end up failing out of school, or perhaps, failing later on. worry for those times i didn't cover my ass just out of plain laziness, and inspiration, that it may never happen again. fear of future lawsuits and M&Ms, hope for lives saved and jobs accomplished as best as humanly possible. powerpoint slide by slide flashed before the class, giving us a glimpse of the physician we would hopefully be trained to be, and it sunk in deeper and deeper -- my life from now on will never be the same.

to get to medical school, you need a concrete sense of who you are, your values and boundaries, your own lines drawn in the sand. they don't tell you that once you get there, you are still apt to change - nay, provided you aren't a completely insane hack, you WILL change.
you must.