Dear MS1s,
Everything you’ve been told about Penn Med is accurate. True or false?
As you know, there is a gloriously disconcerting period between May and August each year during which former medical school applicants are neither premeds nor medical students. They know where they are going, but they know almost nothing about where they are going. They are freer than ever before, and yet they are also undeniably trapped. Worst of all, they have no way of knowing if the choice they made was right. All they have is the counsel of upperclasspeople, who will give that advice with an almost desperate willingness (case in point). Let’s agree that the differences between an applicant, an incoming MS0, and a current MS1 are blurry and inconsistent; the only reliable distinguishing factor is the directionality of the flow of advice. That advice can be salvation to both the anxious recipient in need of information and the exhausted giver in need of a confidence boost. After all, no matter how many endocrinology lectures I missed or how long it took me to learn the cranial nerve nuclei as an MS1 last year, at the very least I was worthy of responding to pleas from applicants, interviewees, and admittees. (My one true calling! I am needed! I am good! I have something to contribute! Pick me, pick me!)
“BUT WHAT IS THE TRUTH??” I remember thinking to myself as an admittee in May 2019. “WHO IS LYING TO ME??” I recall trying to discern which advice-giving medical student seemed the most “real,” the most genuine, the least likely to obfuscate their suffering with pretty lies designed to trap unknowing admittees into the same den of academic turmoil. I thought that once I started medical school myself, I would be able to discern the liars and the truth-tellers and the truth-in-a-lie-ers. Instead, about halfway through my MS1 year and midway through some words of advice to yet another interviewee, I began to realize: I’m a liar, too. Or, at the very least, I rarely tell the full truth.
For example, I can tell you that my first year of medical school was my favorite year of schooling so far. I can tell you that Philadelphia is my favorite city in the world. I can tell you that I had a shocking amount of fun getting to know my classmates last year. All of the above statements are truths, but only in a broad sense — after all, these are only the ambiguous average of a long, muddled, mutated, half-forgotten series of feelings and memories. When you ask me or my classmates the age-old “What do you think of Penn?” question, we won’t bore you with the grueling details of how suffocated we felt the night before the third neurology exam while we waited for our godforsaken spaghetti from last week’s meal prep to heat up in the microwave. We won’t overwhelm you with the play-by-play of how euphoric, how unreasonably happy, how immensely powerful we felt stepping out of JMEC into the endless wonder of a post-exam weekend. We certainly won’t walk you through the panic of digging through the JMEC refrigerator in search of our long-buried tupperwares between lectures.
“So what’s the point, Catherine?” you may be thinking. “Is all of this just a garbled, over-long thesis about how everyone tricked me into attending Penn and that all truth is relative and that I shouldn’t read letters of advice because they’re just futile attempts at summarizing the truth? (And also that you like to overshare?)”
Well, no (except for that last point). Luckily for all of us, my wordiness is a habit that transcends this letter written to you. Since the second day of MS1 classes in August 2019, I’ve kept a journal that has shamefully grown into a 500-page behemoth of 95% drivel. Of the remaining 5%, I want to share some tiny snippets that I hope will give you a sharper, less “averaged” snapshot of my first year of medical school. Below you’ll find some of my journal excerpts (original entry titles included when available), which I originally shared as part of my Doctoring 1A final presentation in December 2019:
8/20/19 – Recentering in a moment of overwork
Today is day 2 and I am exhausted.
8/21/19 – on the privilege of being able-bodied
[In response to an impactful patient panel:] How can we junior medical students, three days into a journey of which none of us understand the full depth / challenge / magnitude, even begin to surmount the issues left by our profession’s (the world’s) history?
8/22/19 – After an exhausting 5 hour, 4-lecture streak…
I have to figure out how to not be so tired during lectures… 5 hours later, after 4 lectures on topics that had no relation (but led one to another to yet another with no break in between), I felt beyond exhausted. Not just mentally, but emotionally. Again, I ask myself: Why am I here? Why am I in this building, surrounded by people who all intend to be physicians someday (and who are far more interesting than their current student lifestyles might suggest), frantically typing into Google documents? Am I achieving something in particular here? I don’t quite understand what it is that I’m going to do with this information.
9/11/19 –
I’ve decided that I love Penn med as much as I think that it can be changed for the better.
10/16/19 – another entry with my brain at half-mast
I have never been expected to spend as much time studying (weekly! daily!) as I am now as a medical student. This is the first time that the academic expectations placed upon me by an external force have been greater than the internal expectations I have for myself.
10/22/19 – days and days and days of events, all in one day
It’s late. I need to sleep. There’s a lot I did today that I want to reflect on. But also, I need to sleep!! Why is this always what happens at the end of my days.
Good night. And good riddance.
11/3/19 – I am a mess and I am working so hard to be less of one
Last Sunday at exactly this time, I felt exactly the way I feel right now: irrevocably behind on everything. My emails, my personal life, my not-fully-unpacked travel bags, my academics (!!!!!!) — everything is in a total disarray.
11/12/19 –
It’s interesting being average at a place like Penn med.
11/13/19 – lately I’ve just been word vomiting into this document in my random spare time, but it’s not like my mind is really focused on reflection/unpacking my emotions. Also haven’t felt the urge/freedom to call home much. Probably a symptom of having too much other stuff to juggle mentally
11/18/19 –
[Written for a Doctoring Reflection, in response to a prompt about how medical school has changed me as a person:] I don’t yet feel transformed. I don’t feel any closer to becoming an excellent physician than I did three months ago; I don’t feel any less of a person or student for feeling that way. And as anticlimactic as all of that sounds, I know that there is much more to come — and while there is no perfect moment at which I’ll become the flawless physician that I fantasized about in my childhood (or a magical transformation after which I will suddenly be pimple-free), I am certain that my medical career will deeply shift (and broaden / deepen) my understanding of the world and myself.
As I mentioned previously, I put together the above entries for my Doctoring 1A final presentation — but of course, another semester has passed since then. Here are some representative entries from Spring 2020:
1/13/2020 –
I feel wiped out, but I’m not sure why.
1/15/2020 –
After an extended Goldie’s lunch and Starbucks trip with —, I went home and read all of Brain on Fire in one sitting. I don’t have my thoughts fully formed yet, but I will note that at least three moments in the book made me tear up/eke out a few tears. ……. The level to which the physicians in this story — as heroic as many of them seem — become the sole crux of entire families’ joy, suffering, pain, anticipation, anxiety, waiting, hoping, despairing… it’s a lot to take in. I feel a sense of both excitement and fear at this realization; it’s definitely something to consider more deeply over the next couple of years.
1/24/2020 –
Ahhhh today is too much. So many things to juggle at once….… I need to calm down and figure things out piece by piece, but I simply don’t have the time for it at this point.
1/29/2020 –
See you tomorrow for another wonderful, happy experience of med school life. I’m so grateful to have the friends I have here — I sent — out-of-the-blue texts today, either to tell them how much I appreciate them or to see what I can do for them/whether we can hang out. I’m in such a wonderful place/time in my life, and I didn’t do anything special to deserve it.
2/3/2020 –
I have so many extracurriculars to juggle at any given moment…. it’s like a whole job outside of my academics.….
[Later in the day:] My stomach is incredibly full! My mind is rested! My emotions are in balance! I’ll see you tomorrow.
2/19/2020 –
This morning / through 4pm, I felt like a chicken running around with its head chopped off. There was something about the combination of knowing I had multiple important meetings with — (who is lovely and lovable and loving but also accomplished and incredible and somewhat intimidating), lots of emails to respond to, plenty of upcoming travel to plan for, a ton of B&B material to sort out, etc… all of it felt like A LOT. But life is good. I’m roasting brussel sprouts and sipping sparkling water with cranberry juice. Time to get back to working on lectures.
2/26/2020 –
I’m starting to feel a little burned out academically speaking — as in, I’m still loving the material in B&B [Brain and Behavior] but I’m VERY tired of cramming in new material everyday — which may or may not be linked to my slight disappointment over my midterm score. This has been a good kick in the pants to really learn / engage with the newer material, though, so I guess I’m not too worried.
Learning team spent an entire afternoon in Spread together today, mostly chatting and also doing just a smidgen of work.
[I’ll stop at February 2020, because we all know that there is a different story entirely to tell about the remainder of 2020. Please wear your masks and register to vote.]
Now that I’ve shown you some of the disturbingly mundane, easily forgotten, embarrassingly unfiltered, suspiciously fragmented, difficult-to-summarize minutiae of my first year at Penn Med, I’m tempted to add my editorial thoughts to the above — but I won’t. What is far more important is your interpretation of the excerpts as you live out your own MS1 year. As I noted when I shared those journal excerpts with my doctoring team (who kindly snapped in solidarity whenever I read an excerpt that resonated with them) in December 2019: “I hope that, in the far-off future, this document will give an older and wiser Dr. Yang the opportunity for a good cringe and a mortified headshake. I view this capstone presentation as a healthy and worthwhile practice of honesty, reflection, and vulnerability.” Even just seven months after presenting that doctoring capstone, I feel as if I am looking back on a different person’s life. Interpreted optimistically, that means that I must have learned something over the past year — even if I can’t remember it fully, and even if it has faded into a vague and distant jumble of averaged feelings.
To finish, I’ll leave you with a few unsatisfyingly vague, yet accurate statements about how I feel as a brand new Penn Med MS2: I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going; I’m proud of who I am and who I am becoming. I have so much more to learn; I have learned and grown so much. I feel exhausted constantly; I feel exhilarated constantly. I feel less sure about myself than ever; I trust myself more than ever. I am more intimidated than ever by the prospect — the immense privilege — of becoming a doctor; I am more eager than ever to become a doctor worthy of that privilege. Also, because I couldn’t bear to leave them out: My learning team, anatomy team, and other close friends made my first year at Penn incredible. I am blessed to be surrounded by classmates who are such giving and thoughtful people.
Truths or lies? I’ll leave you to decide. In the meantime, welcome to the team.
Sincerely,
Catherine Yang
(P.S. I hope you’ll write some disturbingly mundane, embarrassingly unfiltered, etc. journal entries yourself.)
Catherine Yang is an MS2 at the Perelman School of Medicine. Catherine can be reached by email at [email protected].
