While I was getting my hair cut last month, the first question my hairdresser asked me was “Which high school do you go to?” at which point I politely informed her that I was most definitely not a high school student nor a college student. To her shock, I had graduated almost a decade ago from the same high school that her daughter currently attended. She gave me a look, and said, “Are you sure? You look so young.”
Having a baby face means that I’ve received some variant of this line of questioning my entire life. It’s hard to feel like an adult when I still get carded or am subtly accused of skipping school. But if there is one place where I feel as though I am still just a teenager, it’s lying in my pajamas on the tan couch in my parents’ living room. No matter where I have ended up for school or work, my parents’ home in Georgia feels like the one place that never changes.
That of course, is a lie.
Things change all of the time. A new coffeehouse opened on the corner. The trail we used to hike on Sundays in my last year of high school just expanded into a five mile loop. My brother, who attends the same high school that I did, has teachers that I no longer recognize. For the first time since we have lived in Georgia, I can say that my US representative and senators are Democrats. Watching the election coverage, all I could feel was shock. Georgia turning blue seemed something of a pipe dream, one that others could predict and call, but always a part of a “someday” or the “near future.” When did that future become the present? When did it all change?
As a fourth year, I feel the same way about almost graduating medical school. One day, you’re in a small group going over yet another biochemical pathway and the next, you’re expected to make medical decisions for ten patients at a time when you start as an intern. How did I even get here?
I have grown in both medical and self knowledge from where I was four years ago, even though it may not feel like it when I miss questions on hyponatremia for the twentieth time in a row. I remember how bamboozled I was on the first day of clerkships, starting on surgery. Reading the Carelign felt like deciphering ancient runes, and all I could tell you about the patient was that they had a lot of lines. Progress is being able to tell if the patient has a G tube versus a colostomy, even if I’m not always sure what to do about their tubes.
When I was a MS1, I thought that there would be a moment when it would all just click for me, that I would know exactly what specialty I wanted to go into and feel like a real doctor. There were many moments that I stressed about being directionless and inadequate because I thought that I had to know what I wanted to do in order to have a fulfilling and successful career. In hindsight, most of the revelatory moments in medical school were neither grand nor planned. Many of them just happened because I answered an email on a whim. I can pinpoint my decision to choose between Internal Medicine and Neurology to a random general information meeting about Neurology and just feeling like it wasn’t for me. If my journey during medical school was made into a movie, it would probably be a pretty boring film with reviews panning its timing and pace.
All this to say that we grow into the physicians that we will become little by little, every day, even if we can’t realize it ourselves in the moment. Putting on a long white coat might signal “I am a doctor” to everyone except yourself. This is reminiscent of a realization I had while I was at home. One of the new investments my parents have installed is a digital photoframe. They took a bunch of old family albums to Costco, and lo and behold, I now saw old pictures every night at the dining table.
Like many people, during middle school, I had a range of insecurities about my appearance that made taking and looking at photos unpleasant. The less I saw of my unfashionable clothes, glasses-braces combo, and frizzy hair that one girl told me looked like it went through a toaster, the better. Looking at my old middle school photos now, I was shocked to find that… I actually looked way better than I remember, and my hair looked awesome. I told my mom exactly that, and in her typical fashion, she responded, “I told you that all the time back then, but you just didn’t listen.”
While it was nice to have the realization that I was better looking than I had remembered, revisiting those old photos made me realize just how much I had grown up. My hairdresser might’ve called my parents if I had shown up looking like I had when I was actually in high school. All this to say that sometimes it’s hard to accurately judge yourself. How we feel in the moment does not predict the future and may not even represent how we are in the present. You may not believe me now, but like my mother told me, I hope that you see that you are likely better than you think you are and already transforming into the doctor and person that you want to be.
Casey Kim is an MS4 at the Perelman School of Medicine.
Image by Yuchen Chen, an MS1 at the Perelman School of Medicine.
