Merry Christmas! Hope everyone is having a nice holiday. I have been very fortunate in that I got Christmas week off so I came home over the weekend and get to spend a few days at home. Last week was pretty busy though. I had to give grand rounds lecture so I spent most of the week preparing that. I don't think anyone is a fan of public speaking so I just had this horrible feeling of nausea the whole week in anticipation of giving the stupid lecture. Anyway it went well overall and I was just happy to get the dang thing over with. Between staying up late to research and waking up early to round it was one of those crazy weeks that went by quickly.
I've had this blog for just over two years. It's always amazing to reflect on how fast the time flies. I don't know if I've grown so much as a person since I first started this, but I've made some progress. Hopefully as a doctor I've learned a little bit in the past two years. My co-residents and I are always like...did we know anything in med school? Although when I'm an attending I'll probably think the same thing about myself as a resident.
I've been thinking a lot lately about what I want to do with my career. You always get asked what you're really gonna do after residency and I've been purposely avoiding the answer. But now my residency is exactly half over and i can't keep putting my head in the sand. I've purposely not mentioned this but my specialty is internal medicine. (three years) I have ideas of what I don't like but that passion that's supposed to grab me just isn't quite there.
I've also been considering staying on to do a chief residency year but again I'm not sure about it. There would be a lot of advantages to doing it and as my friend says you can only be chief once but I'm not terribly excited to spend another year with my salary in the dumps. Surprisingly I've become interested in hem/onc (blood disorders and cancer) over the last few months but I have no aptitude for research so I know that probably wouldn't be the best field to go into although I like the clinical aspects of it.
The point of all that rambling is to say I gotta do some soul-searching. In the meantime, enjoy the holidays everyone and start working on those new years resolutions. Some of my role models below. :)
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you. I've been following your blog for some time now, and though your post are infrequent, I find them thoughtful and insightful. I hope you enjoy your time off!
ReplyDeleteJack
Ben Chohen is way sexy in that picture, i would love to wake up to that every morning! haha but Merry Christmas man! enjoy your time at residency and try not to stress out about the future (my two-cents) haha
ReplyDeleteWell happy holidays! You could be a general internist for a few years and then go back for fellowship later (or not). I'm kind of avoiding that question on interviews now, saying (more or less truthfully) that I'm 50/50 on primary care vs specializing. But I know one day I too will have to make that decision.
ReplyDeleteYea I definitely feel like I haven't learned (or retained) anything in the past 3 years. It's kind of crazy how much the residents know cause that means they learned all that knowledge in a span of a couple of years!
ReplyDeleteAnd good luck deciding what specialty you wanna go into!
I also appreciated you giving me the link to the article on personal statements. I guess I need to be on campus to access the article but am planning to read it when I do have access!