This is War

Well the freak out in my last post wasn't as bad as I thought. I didn't do spectacular on the test but really no one did. It was worth 5% of our grade in three classes and was more like a practice test and indicator for all of us. Now that I know what the tests are like though I've been able to change my study habits slightly and adapt. Midterms are two weeks away. Which is why I'm up at 6:30 AM on a Saturday, time to start reviewing on top of the normal work load.

I come from a family that identifies itself as two things when it comes to careers, Nursing and the NYPD. Growing up in a family like that you hear alot about the benefits of paramilitary training. Discipline, discipline, discipline. Your boss tells you to kick in a door that has heavily armed crack heads behind it, what do you do? You sure as hell do it and rely on the fact that the men around are just as disciplined as you and are rushing in right behind you. Now one would think those kinds of ideals and techniques in training have no use here. Why would anyone want to be like a soldier in medical school?

I beg to differ, in fact, I've begun to model myself just like one.

The discipline has obvious positive ramifications. The guys are going out three days in a row to have a few drinks, as tempting as it is you are disciplined enough to decline without a second thought and hit the books. You've been studying for 6 hours and still have 3 hours more of material to cover in a short amount of time. Discipline keeps you to a schedule so you know you can get it done and still have time for sleep.

No fear. Soldiers stereotypically have no fear, however in the real world sure they get scared of alot of things. One thing that they do lose the fear of is being uncomfortable. They get used to the idea that there will be times where comfort must be traded to get a job done. Here in medical school, comfort is not always a luxury. So as I said in my last post, bring the pain.

A soldier never quits. This is an important one. There are going to be times where you will be discouraged, there will be tasks that seem impossible, you have to endure. Endurance, stamina, and constantly pushing forward is an enormous chunk of medical school.You keep fighting until your last breath or you might as well leave now.

Train, train, train. This whole experience is like a prolonged boot camp. It's meant to do what boot camp for the army does, break us down and rebuild us. Not to mention also to weed out the undesirables. Our very perception of the world itself is being changed on a daily basis by our training. Our thought processes and how we learn is evolving at an exponential rate from the amount of information we're taking in. By the time we are doctors we're all going to be very different people. All of our preconceived notions of medicine are being shattered and the real picture is being built, all of our social sensibilities and morals are being or will be challenged by the choices we sometimes have to make as physicians. We are being destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up.

So what do I want to be like?
I want to be an Airborne Ranger.

So it's 6:30AM and I'm about to go for a run, and then hit the books after a shower. By noon I'll have learned the entire abdominal cavity with any luck.

And now completely off topic is my song of the week.

"The bricks get laid,
and they get torn up,
and laid again,
but the bricks always get torn up again.

Your friends won't wait,
so don't believe that shit,
when they say they'll wait.
Trust me; your friends will not wait for you.
Then you'll be stoned in some park,
just nodding your head and pinching your arms,
when a girl walks along.
She's humming your song,
with your t-shirt on.
That's when you're done,
Oh, that's when you're done

There's a cotton crush
down in the southern states.
But back up here, man, we've got
so much thread and space
to waste, waste, waste.

There's a microphone
picking every word up
and it shuts itself off
when it's sure that's its heard enough

The quiet can scrape
all the calm from your bones,
but maybe it should.
Maybe we need to be hollowed
to get up and grow,
and stop fucking around,
to kick off our braces and start straightening out.
Let's sift through the static
to find a simpler sound
Let's sift through the static
to find a simpler sound
simpler sound than the shit that's clouding our heads now"
- Kevin Devine - "Cotton Crush"