All through medical school I heard from upper classmen and residents that fourth year of medical school is one of the best of your life. Your rotations are all in line with your interests, exams are few and far between, you have a lot of vacation time. Now over half way through this golden last year, I find I’m still waiting to experience the magic described by those that came before me. This year has been both busy and stressful, and I kept picking arbitrary time points when I expected things to get easier. But the end of my sub-I month, the ERAS submission deadline, and the end of interview season have all come and gone, and I still feel pulled in as many directions as ever. The cause of this is admittedly a mixture of over-commitment and sub-par calendar management, and when these cause stress levels to peak I find I’m not the most pleasant to be around at home. Excess stress strains my communication style and impacts my productivity, and for this reason I believe that a sense of balance among professional commitments is an underrated component of professionalism.

I have had a packed schedule for as long as I can remember. Going back as far as middle school I can recall staying up late finishing homework after a day of school, soccer practice, and piano lessons. Balancing college athletics with pre-medical ambitions this continued through college, and at this point I get a sense of uneasiness when confronted with free time. There is a level of external pressure which reinforces the drive to always be busy in preparing for medical school or residency applications, and certainly a few of my extracurriculars have been designed to “check off a box,” so to speak. These experiences are usually memorable for me in negative ways, and my performance in these areas was generally less than my potential. Undergraduate research was something I did as a requirement for my degree, and while I was always thrilled by planning the project towards an end goal, I found I couldn’t the procedural aspects of bench research. My project was slow-going and ultimately resulted in equivocal results, and while I gained valuable experience with lab techniques I am sure my project could have pivoted in more promising direction if I had more time to commit to the project and more of a passion for the work itself. Further, my time in the lab took away from other things I enjoyed much more, such as spending time with my track teammates and tutoring underclassmen in my major.

Once I got to medical school I focused more on getting involved in activities that aligned more with my interests. I joined girls on the run as a coach, a community-based organization that teaches elementary school-aged girls confidence and life skills through running. I did a community health project that was based out of the high school I went to. I joined the Peer Elective Educational Resource to explore my interest in medical education. I felt more excited about these events, they came from a place of passion and they all gave me energy to be a part of them. As I continued to refine my interests and career goals, I threw myself into more and more extracurriculars that aligned accordingly. I started a medical education research experience with the family medicine residency program, joined the Ultrasound Interest Group executive board, started a pharmacology medical education project, joined leadership for the Ride for World Health. But as I kept saying yes to things, as I justified to myself how important involvement in all these activities was, I found myself feeling more and more stressed and struggling to maintain the level of quality that I had always expected out of my work. I missed deadlines, forgot to set meetings, and scrambled to meet neglected due dates, and found less and less time to do stress-relieving activities like running.

I started to lose my sense of balance in my professional and personal commitments. In addition to my extracurriculars, I’ve been planning a February wedding with my fiancé, Todd. Let me take a brief pause here to say that doing all these things would not be possible without a supportive partner. As an English minor he helped edit my personal statement in the fall. Just the other day Todd spent several hours cleaning up the Schottenstein center with other riders and myself to raise money for the Ride for World Health. Domestic duties like cooking, grocery shopping, and dishes often fall on his shoulders. We’ve joked from the beginning that we are both in medical school (Todd is an engineer, for reference), and as unexpectedly busy as this fourth-year has been, it’s helped me realize that my career decisions and work commitments no longer affect just me, but rather both of us.

My fiance and biggest support in the medical school process

This brings me back to work-life balance being a vital component of professionalism: such balance helps keep us energized so we can be more punctual, treat patients with more respect, and maintain accountability for meeting our goals (all goals I had set in prior professionalism portfolio reflections). It also helps us achieve a greater degree of quality in our individual pursuits if we are not pulled in too many directions. I am grateful for all my extracurricular experiences, and all they’ve taught me in the way of time management and communication. As I will surely continue to be busy through end of fourth year, I will work to communicate early with involved parties when my commitments overwhelming and ask for help if I need it. I will plan ahead so I don’t run into conflicts between the demands of different organizations. Viewing the start of residency as a sort of clean slate for extracurricular activities, in the future I want to work to be more intentional with my professional involvement. Rather than volunteer my time because something “checks off a box,” I will consider my level of interest, the passion I can bring to that activity, the way my involvement may be beneficial, and weigh that against the time it may require and what toll, if any, it may take on my personal life. I will take time to discuss things with my partner at home, and perhaps with my mentors as well. I see it being difficult to override my compulsion to be constantly busy but finding a balance that works for me will benefit both my personal and professional lives. Balance will provide the resiliency necessary to thrive in a rigorous residency training program and the capacity to act with professionalism in all situations.