Monday . March 18 . 2002 . 10:12pm |
working and playing nice Today was an unusually uneventful day. Well, I guess not so unusual, since this is Primary Care, notoriously one of the lighter rotations of the year. This morning, we met with one of the attendings in charge of the clerkship, and spent about an hour talking about the Joint National Committee's recommendations for the treatment of hypertension. (Summary: hypertension be bad, yo.) Then we spent another hour and a half grilling the same attending about the intricacies of career choices and the residency application process. He's a pretty cool guy, very involved in academic medicine, and happy to advise. We warned him that we were coming back to his office next week with a new list of issues for him to weigh in on. Like, "what should I do with the rest of my life?" I'm a little stressed career-wise these days, in that the more I learn about the field of medicine, the less clear I am about what I want to do. Currently, I'm torn between Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, which is a strange feeling for me, since as long as I've been pursuing medicine, I've been presupposing some Peds-related life path. For reasons too complicated and/or boring to delve into right now (but possibly open game for a future rant), I'm now not quite sure that I want to throw myself into the Peds ring without getting some more information or getting a better sense of my options. Meanwhile, we have to decide what fourth-year electives we want to take within the next month, with the unspoken-but-nonetheless- understood message that you should know what you want to do specialty-wise by now, and are therefore planning your elective choices accordingly. The more I think about it, the more ridiculous it is that third-year medical students are basically forced to choose what they want to do with the rest of their lives before they've really had anything more than the most superficial exposure to all the different fields medicine has to offer. We're stupid! We're naïfs! We don't know anything! Don't make us commit! After work at the clinic this afternoon, Joe and I went to the gym, stopped by the supermarket, and made pasta for dinner. The big supermarket buys of the night were the six-pack of Mott's pear-flavored applesauce, and a big mesh strainer. (I do so covet all that houseware stuff, you know. Mmm, potato masher...) You know, as much as this town sucks (and I know that you're surprised to hear that it sucks, since I haven't really been complaining about it that much, right?) it's actually been kind of fun to be here with Joe. We have our own apartment across the street from the hospital, we've been working together nicely and living in close quarters without incident. We have private time in the evenings where each of us does our work separately, and at least on my part, I haven't felt at all crowded or territorial about space. And this is a good sign, because sometimes, I can get a little crazy. I know this is an artificial environment in that's it's a like summer camp, and I know that we're all extra-lovey-dovey and considerate now because of the whole new-engagement thing--but it makes me feel good that we're able to work and play nice together. Two weeks ago, before the start of Primary Care, I was talking with Laurence about Joe and I doing our rotation together in Crapville, USA. "That's fun," Laurence said, "it can be practice for when you two are married!" (This conversation actually took place the day before Joe proposed, so you go, Laurence, you prescient thing, you.) I kind of laughed when he said that, but I suspect he may have been right. xo Michelle |
