today was a bad day
Yesterday was my first day of medical school. We had anatomy lab to kick off the school year and my labmates seemed nice enough. I skinned a cadaver and asked a lot of questions. After, we had a short lecture then I went home and took a nap since I was exhausted. When I woke up, it was already 8PM. Luckily, it was the summer time, so I still went on my run. By then, it was 9PM and I needed to study the day's materials as well as prep for the following day's clinical skills class. Unfortunately, this took until 1AM. I had to wake up by 6:30AM to get ready and find a parking spot at my school.
When I did wake up at 6:30AM, I was exhausted. Still, I managed to take a shower, put on my scrubs, pack a change of clothes, and leave the apartment by 7:00AM. There has been a lot of construction across my apartment complex to build new even more apartments. Therefore, after starting my car, I had to wait for the construction people to move their cars around. Just as I'm about to pull out of the lot, a guy in the grey Honda parked across from me gets out and apologises profusely for hitting my car. I honestly didn't notice the damage when I initially got into my car, so the news shocked me.
He says his car was parked next to mine, but when he was trying to pull out and turned right, he hit the left front bumper of my car. He gave me his name and address written on the back of a receipt. I was tired and shocked and displayed little reaction, so I didn't ask for his insurance information or other important details. I told him I had to go and will follow-up later.
Anyways, when I get to the school, I park my car further away from the school, and assess the damage. The front left bumper was badly damaged. There was paint all along it, and for some reason, a little hole on the bottom part. I took a photo for record-keeping.
I then head to the clinical skills class, where I learned to palpate the upper extremities. To be rather honest, I don't think I identified some structures properly, so this is something I'll need a lot of practise with. After this class, it was noontime. I head back to my car and call this small insurance agency that set me up with my auto and rental insurance. They told me the information I would need to get from the driver. I call the guy, who ends up being a PA student at my school. He was friendly and happy to exchange the information and was willing to pay out of pocket or go through insurance.
Unfortunately, with my car, since it's an EV, paying out of pocket would be very expensive for repairs, so we decided to go through with insurance. I call back my insurance agent, and they said they'll file a report and follow-up soon.
Alright. I head to the cafeteria, which didn't have anything I wanted to eat, so I just went to the library and did some house-keeping on my laptop before I went to my final class for the day, histology lecture. I didn't know anyone in this class, but when I entered, I saw some girl who I had lunch with for two orientation days last week, so I sat next to her in the third row. However, she started talking to other people, and silently just left me for other people.
I figured fuck it, I'm heading to the front row since that's where I thrive best anyways. Despite this lowly high-school-like interaction, I enjoyed the class for the most part. Probably because I enjoyed my time shadowing pathology in the past since the attending would explain the abnormality and normal findings every slide she read, so it's a specialty I'm highly considering.
After class, I went to the library to finish some work. During this time, I kept reminding myself that I was here to be a doctor, and the military was paying me to be a doctor, not make friends. I am also not eager to make friends since it has screwed me over in the past, mainly with people being happy with group chats but then started branching off without me. However, I guess with the car accident and the petty incident prior to histology lecture starting, I couldn't help but feel down and break down. It was only the second day of classes and I was already overwhelmed.
Sometimes, I feel like things aren't cracked up to be. I remember always clocking into my shitty scribe job and telling myself I couldn't wait to leave. But now I am where I wanted to be a year ago, yet it's not all I hoped for. Maybe I just romanticised the idea of medical school so much, that it would have never lived up to what I had always imagined. I also had to remind myself that one of the doctors I scribed for, who patients loved and praised, with one of them remarking that she should be doctor of the year, wrote me a letter of recommendation when I was applying to medical school and gifted me a stethoscope on my last day of the scribe job. If she believed I could be a physician, I am definitely capable of it.
No one in my class seems to care about skateboarding or video games. Those are the two things I really like. Running is great, but it's something I prefer to do alone. I met another girl also doing the military scholarship, and we share the same background and culture, but we're not in any groups or classes together.
Still, I hope things will get better.
I will meet with my assigned second year companion tomorrow. I think they'll help get me oriented to the new setting better. I'm also seeing a learning specialist tomorrow just to plan things out to feel less overwhelmed. I had a learning specialist back in undergrad, and she ended up going to medical school and used to always tell me to just focus on one thing at a time. I think I need to do that.
Well, I should finish my pre-lecture learning objectives for tonight then head back to bed. I took another nap today since running off 5 hours of sleep sucked. No run today because I napped until 9PM and it was dark out by the time I woke up.
Thank you for reading, if you made it this far.