Previously, on Derek’s extra hot world famous blog:
(Blog #3) Derek: “Sometimes, school is stressful. *Giggles tee hee!*”
(Blog #5) Derek: “It’s important to deal with stress from school in a healthy way! Stress Stress stress! Right?”
(Blog #736) Derek: “Let’s talk about some of the stress involved in optometry school!”
(Universe 9B3 Blog# Glorbini) Derek: “Time to get real and talk about stress in school!”
Tonight, on Derek’s number one Twitter trending mind bending blog … we tackle the too little talked about subject of stress with professional school!
Despite the fact that I’m swimming in student loan debt, I decided to hire one of the world’s most talented graphic design artists to make this blog’s title card. The process was long and arduous, but the end result is totally worth the thousands of dollars I spent. Thanks *NAME REDACTED due to embarrassment of final product* for your amazing work!
So far, this summer has been great! Well, the school part that is. I’ve now seen a little over 40 different patients and each experience has been positive and full of learning opportunities! A few dozen down, a few thousand to go before I’m a doctor! Whew, that was a lot of exclamation points in a row to end each sentence. I’ve exceeded my exclamation point quota. So no more for the rest of this entry! I just can’t help myself, because of how exciting and rewarding eye exams have been. For the majority of the summer, I had been feeling on top of the world … that is, until one day my non optometry school companion, whom I dragged along with me to experience all my joys and triumphs, finally snapped and told me what a beast I’ve been to live with these past 2, apparently grueling, years. WHAT? Me? No way, I thought to myself. I’ve been crushing it at school and at home. Despite my 99% assuredness that I’m pretty perfect in most ways, I decided to reflect upon the quality of living with me throughout the many ordeals of optometry school. After a few minutes of reflection, it was as if the epiphany bus ran right through a red light of denial and straight into my brain at 70 mph. I may have been doing excellent work at school every day, but when I came home … I really was a monster. I never cleaned up after myself, I never engaged in conversations (in an attempt to preserve neural synapses for more important things like exams), I lived out of laundry baskets, I had terrible eating habits, I was moody, I didn’t contribute in maintenance/repair of our home etc.. The list goes on. Whoops. Part of my academic self has apparently found it a necessity to resort to primitive subhuman living conditions in an effort to preserve all efforts into those purely scholastic in nature … this is an okay strategy if you share a living space with another optometry student who understands the day and night grind associated with pumping our brain full of all of the ins and outs of patient care. But for the non optometry students? All they experience is the beast at home with no context as to why the beast exists. This causes them to wonder where the beast is coming from or IF the beast can be reformed with the help of a talking tea kettle and dresser, or if the beast will forever be a cursed angry soul who refuses to properly use a soup spoon.
This is an actual image of me at home. After uttering this dismissive phrase I proceeded to lie on the floor, eat an entire bag of pita chips and then immediately slept for 3 hours. Then I woke up, panicked about impending assignment due dates and stress howled at the moon for thirty minutes. Yeah … living with me during school is a bit much.
After my shameful epiphany, I wondered if this phenomenon extended beyond just me; so, I did an informal survey with a handful of other students and asked them if their after school personas were less than ideal. Surprisingly, this beastly home persona seems to be a pretty common experience. School is hard, and for a lot of people, it’s worth investing most of their time and energy into school at the expense of other things in their life. This can assist in cultivating an excellent doctor after 4 years of hard work, but it makes for a terrible second hand experience for living companions throughout the process. So, if you’re reading this and you’re living with a professional school student, I want to say thank you for putting up with all the stress and post school histrionics you are subjected to. It takes a brave determined soul to stay on this ride for a tumultuous 4 years. This painful, horrifying ride that is only second in awfulness to Disney’s Hall of Presidents.
NEXT TIME ON DEREK’S Blog:
Derek: I somehow ended up with 2 dates to the homecoming dance and I don’t know which one to choose … maybe, just maybe … I can do them BOTH! And also, school is sometimes stressful.