Dear MS1,
There are probably two ways I could go about writing this letter: I could write to my retrospective nervous-yet-excited self, or I could just write the letter and see where it goes. We’ll see which form this takes.
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You’re here. You made it. I’m not talking about the “Mama, I made it” type of I made it, I’m talking about the fact that each one of you has made it through something that none of us MSX’s can say that we’ve experienced. While I’m sure it was nerve-racking, all of you should be incredibly proud of yourselves.
I am ill-equipped to give any advice whatsoever, but I’m in the business of signing up for things that I am completely unqualified to do. If I could imprint on you just one piece of advice as you start medical school, I would say this: Take care of yourself. Cliché, I know. You’ve probably heard it so many times. This time though, it’s a little different. By “take care of yourself,” I don’t just mean self-care days, oil diffusers, and UberEATS orders (although those are all great) — I mean truly tend to yourself. That way, 10, 20, 30 years down the line, as you inevitably gain more social capital and power, you can actually reflect on your positionality and confront the ugly truths that many institutional leaders (not just political) don’t care to confront. That refusal to face reality is no longer acceptable — and really, it never was acceptable. Self-awareness doesn’t happen by accident.
To take care of yourself, first and foremost you actually have to recognize the space that you take up in every single space in which you exist. Taking care of yourself means recognizing privilege and using it to benefit those in less privileged situations. Taking care of yourself is speaking out against injustice from a classmate, peer, friend, you name it. Taking care of yourself is confronting the realities of the world that we exist in and recognizing that while you can’t fix it all, you can certainly play a role in moving it forward or backward. Taking care of yourself means knowing when enough is enough.
This global pandemic has forced us to think about who we are outside of what we can produce. Whoever that person is, tend to it. At the end of the day you’ll be a doctor, but outside of the accolades and the recognition, who will you actually be?
So, I say all this to encourage you all to take these next few months to learn in ways that work best for you. Take it slow, but also figure out ways to challenge what feels right and what seems normal.
I’ll leave you with three questions to continuously ask yourself:
1) Who am I outside the output I can produce?
2) For whom and what do I advocate, and how does that change when I’m the most powerful person in the room?
3) When’s the last time I checked in with myself?
Sincerely,
Maryam
Maryam Alausa is a MS2 at the Perelman School of Medicine. Maryam can be reached by email at [email protected].
