Putting Medical School In It’s Place

I consider myself lucky having not experienced burnout to a significant degree thus far in medical school. Having looked at the statistics and heard firsthand from older students, including close friends, about how pervasive burnout is, I was fully expecting to hit it head-on in my first year. It almost felt like a rite of passage to a degree. Older physicians I’ve talked to have spoken proudly of their 12 hour study days throughout medical school and their 100 hour weeks in residency. They wear it as a badge of honor, and coming into medical school my expectation was to both experience this burnout and to see it as a point of pride as well.

My lifelong focus in medicine has for so long been to make as large of an impact as possible, regardless of the personal toll that long hours of clinical time and research took on my personal life and wellbeing. As I’ve matured over this past year and gained better perspective on what kind of physician I want to be, I’ve come to realize that I have no desire to sacrifice my life for 6 years in residency to pull 100 hour weeks, or to put my family, girlfriend, and friends on hold for four years in medical school and let all the opportunities of the 20s pass me by. I conducted myself during the first year of school under that mantra, and I attribute it to my lack of burnout thus far. I was gone a significant number of weekends throughout the year – visiting friends and family, taking vacation, and traveling the country. My initial concern with this focus on having a life outside medical school was that I would return and be drowning in studying to catch up, but I quickly realized that no matter if I spent 30 hours of the weekend in the library or zero, there is always something else to be studying. There is no finish line in medicine, nor in medical school, and the notion that I could somehow know everything if I committed my entire 4 years to studying now seems ludicrous to me. Hence, I spent weekends away, and took days off, and generally tried to live my life. I wasn’t at the top of the class, but I also wasn’t at the bottom, and I emerged from the end of first year unscathed from the specter of burnout.

That isn’t to say that everything has been perfect. I’ve seen my friends off making money in the real world and enjoying their evenings relaxing while I do yet another pass through of flashcards. I get the “what is the point of all of this” like everyone else around exam time as the pressure mounts. I get mini panic attacks before checking my exam grades. But having kept medical school from completely dominating my life thus far has also allowed me to derive self-worth from things outside of exam grades or OSCE scores. I know that I am more than the sum of my scores or evaluations. I also know that I won’t remember the vast majority of this stuff even a few years from know. And I also know that there is a lot else in life besides exams and studying, and I’m proud that I’ve been able to keep medical school tucked away in it’s own segment of my life and have continued enjoying everything else too. I plan to continue doing this, especially as Step 1 looms, and hope that it will continue to allow me to see through the mess of exams and lectures and stay focused on the big picture.