Waiting on the Sunny Spells

One final exam squeezed unceremoniously between a late Friday lunch downtown and a class bar crawl– my first year of medical school came to a rather abrupt end.  Since the late July day in which my classmates and I were first draped with our white coats – a day of intermittent sunny spells mixed with rainstorms – my year had likewise been filled with brighter days and grayer days.

Here are a few themes that pervaded my year, for better or for worse:

Futility

On many days, long hours at the library often turned fruitless for me, as I would find my attention drifting away from the scores of Powerpoint slides in front of me, and to the people moving on the streets below.  I had entered medical school from two years of what I saw as immense personal growth.  I felt that, during my service, while I was constantly challenged in new ways by longstanding traditions, by difficult situations, and by the natural elements, that I was using my time and talents to serve those around me, and to better myself.  I remember being resilient and positive when faced with the impossible.  However, during medical school, I found myself thinking increasingly negatively about myself and the world around me.  I longed to feel like a contributing member of society again.  I found myself feeling increasingly distant from my coursework and my classmates – partly because I craved much more than the cycle of cramming for the weekly exams and hitting the bars afterward that many of my classmates were wedded to.  On some days, I dreamed about my days coaching sports on the field under the African sun and holding Chemistry review under the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro – and how heavily this reality contrasted with the stark white hallways of the hospital.  I was not sure that a career in an academic institution was one that would bring me fulfillment.  Honestly, I am still not sure, but know that I will continue to think about this as I progress through my career.

Fulfillment

At the same time that my time in the library felt futile, rare moments brought me back to the reason I chose this profession in the first place.  A patient in the student-run free clinic who left me with a tight, long hug after her appointment said that she could tell I was “all in,” and it was the best moment of my week.  Our interview that day led us through her medical concerns and deep into her psychological needs, and a nursing student and I were able to get her the help she needed.  Moments like these sustained me on days when I spent dawn to dusk at the med school.     

 Anxiety

At multiple points during the year, anxiety rocked me to my core.  I remember during my very first exam, my heart began beating like a bass drum as I opened the exam, the words blurring in and out of focus on hazy yellow pastel background until I pressed the “Submit” button and surprised myself with a respectable grade.  Often, my stomach turned would turn to knots on the day of an exam, and I had to slip outside to walk off breaths that had become shallow and labored inside the tightly thermoregulated air of our library. 

In March, one exam that I had dreaded for a full month, solely because of the dozens of students before me who had failed it, pushed me to what I felt was my breaking point.  Anxiety hit me in full force, and I couldn’t rid myself of it.  I had obtained permission to take the exam up to two days later as I worked through this stressful episode, but as the exam day drew closer, I found little breathing room.  Prayer, yoga, running – all of these helped for a while – but as soon as I sat down again at my desk to study, the anxiety returned.  I began to see the rest of medical school as merely a series of increasingly stressful exams, and became convinced that I was not cut out to deal with the stress that lay ahead.  Every time I sat at a computer and tried to study, I would instead find myself searching online for “ jobs with Peace Corps” or “NGO openings in Detroit.”  It seemed like I welcomed any escape from my current reality.  My school counselor – bless her – got to know me far too well during this week, and offered words of encouragement and understanding that helped me through the process.  It became clear to me that I needed a break from school – and luckily, one refreshing night of going home and spending a relaxing night with my parents was enough to give me the courage to go back to school and take my exam – and ended up passing the sequence, to my immense relief.  Anxiety is a very real part of medical school that I will continue to work through.

Fear of Failure

Those who knew me before medical school might have trouble believing how pervasive the fear of failure became for me.  Before medical school, I’ll admit that most things in life came easier to me than they did to others.  I was blessed with a lot of talent, and I found that a little bit of hard work could place me at the top of anything I set my mind to.  Medical school was different.  For the first time in my life, I did not excel.  Sometimes, fear of imminent failure paralyzed me with fear such that I was unable to study – like in the episode I had in March.  One recent moment of growth when I was finally able to leave behind my fear of failure.  I went in to a difficult exam sure of impending failure, and was ready to calmly accept a failing grade if it was my rate.  I had not studied at my best that week, yet surprised myself with the knowledge that I had absorbed, with a grade that I was happy with.  At the tail end of the year, this became a lesson to leave fear of failure behind, to trust in myself, and above all to trust in God.

Mentorship

As I watched the gray hairs multiply on my head, I held onto one thing that kept me young – mentoring youth.  Through the Doctors of Tomorrow program, I met and mentored young people from the famous Cass Tech High School in Detroit.  I had my feet in all arms of the program – the ninth-graders working through their adjustment to high school, upperclassmen nervous for their SATs, and even college students at U of M!  One of my favorite parts of this program was guiding young people to grow and become independent thinkers.  My ninth-grade capstone group, who constantly kept me laughing by eagerly doing my silly  “Mama Jamila”  cheer, ran into a few roadblocks in their project with a Detroit shelter and outreach center for women.  At one meeting, just a month before we were supposed to have the final results of our outreach project, I delivered the news to them that their “cute clothes drive” wouldn’t be possible.  They were dismayed only for a minute, and then we rolled up our sleeves and brainstormed.  “What unique challenges do girls face?”  In just a few minutes, they brainstormed an intervention to raise awareness about menstruation, and collect menstrual products for the shelter.  They mobilized their resources, divided tasks, and one month later had filled five large boxes with pads, tampons, and new underwear, and had collected over $350 in donations!  Thinking about these students, and the courage with which the faced challenges in their lives, helped me to deal with a year that challenged me in so many unexpected ways.

Strained Relationships

During my first year of medical school, I missed every single important family event, being unable to travel across the country for graduations, birthdays, and anniversaries of my extended family.  I felt out of my element without this strong connection to family, and felt less-than-adequate about my ability to devote time to my family.  With my parents, I was able to talk to them frequently enough, but felt unable to explain everything that I was going through.  With friends, I felt that there were few with whom I could share my true feelings, so I placed most of my relationships on the back burner.  A few close friends remained on my speed dial, and we were part of each others’ lives on walks home and in hushed tones at night.  My rapid transition from Peace Corps to medical school didn’t leave me with enough time to catch up with all of my old friends.  I didn’t know how to go about re-forming connections when it had been more than two years since our last encounter – how could I say it all in a text message?  It would take hours and hours to catch up with a phone call or Facetime – how could I afford that?  Pondering these silly questions took days, which turned to weeks, and then months.  Where do I pick up from here? (Actual question)

Love

My family, who had gotten used to evolving relationships throughout my service and my return back to the U.S., were not able to completely understand my feelings – but were well used to this feeling.  However, their overwhelming love and support strengthened me in my weakest moments.

I got into a new relationship beginning in October of my M1 year.  Dating someone who shares my Indian heritage and Christian faith has been a first for me – and has made things easy and familiar from the start.  He is good to my parents and has helped me to grow in faith in my weak moments.  He gives me tough love when I need to stop complaining and tells me bluntly to grind my teeth until I finish my work.  He will drive a two-hour round trip to Ann Arbor to have a weekday picnic lunch in between classes.  While he is wonderful to me in every way, I found myself getting frustrated with petty issues, and realized in horror that I was turning into the crazy girlfriend that I promised I would never be.  Maybe it's an artifact of being in a relationship during a time that is metamorphosing me.  Since my realization, I've tried to leave the crazy behind (really!) with communication and understanding.  Working to speak the same love language has taken time and patience, but this process has taught me much about love during my M1 year. 

This year was a year of exploring parts of myself that I never knew of.  At times, I knew that I wasn’t being my “best self.”  I was hard on myself for it, but learned that I needed the little things – morning runs in the cool mist off the Huron river, the smell of onions and garlic simmering on my stove, or 10 minutes of prayer at night – to stay sane.  Luckily, after ever gray day this year came a sunny spell.  Ahead of me is a summer of travel, new experiences, and time to rest, reflect, and gear up for the year ahead.