an end of an era

I finished my last final yesterday with one remaining OSCE scheduled for Monday morning and then I will have officially completely my preclinical education. It's still surreal because it honestly feels like my white coat ceremony was just yesterday meanwhile two years have quite literally flown by.

I still remember how nervous I was to start school in August 2019. There were so many factors still unbeknownst to me - from the people I'd meet to if I'd be able to handle the workload. My medic friends had always told me about the cutthroat nature of medical school and how any semblance of a life outside school work becomes a figment of one's dreams so going in I fully expected to be miserable for 2 years straight.

The first few weeks to months of school were undoubtably brutal. Adjusting to the volume of material I needed to cover everyday while trying to figure out the best studying strategies for myself was probably the biggest challenge I faced. That and the daily commute of 45 minutes to school. I think by mid September I was already exhausted.

October was the month I got a taste of essence of medical school. I think we had six or so exams in two weeks and having barely needed to study in college to get by, it was really really difficult to figure out how to allot time to study for everything.

But as all students do, with the combined strength of coffee, fear of failure, and encouragement from our lovely professors - we made it through. It was also around this time I met K and A who graciously allowed me to join their carpool, making my commute to school

100000x better.

I was lucky enough to be selected for a self-directed case based learning program of only 36 students per class, and our "learning" process consisted of 0 lectures. Instead, we were split into 4 groups of 9, learned the foundational sciences in addition to each of the major systems using medical cases and combing through volumes of textbooks.

Although we might not all be super close with each other, having experienced this unorthodox style of learning together for two years, we're bound through indescribable ties. The culture and community we fostered is truly something special which makes the end of this program even more bittersweet.

One of the perks of the program was early patient contact - we were assigned to a preceptor and out in clinics seeing patients within 5 months of being a medical student.

There were both pros and cons to this - it was really nice to see whatever we learned in the books translate into clinical practice and interact with patients, but since I had close to 0 clinical exposure prior to medical school I was definitely shocked by a lot of very commonplace things in medicine.

I think this is when I started to question if my choice to pursue medicine was the right decision, but that is a story for another day...

Campus was so lively and a fun place to be everyday. Even though it was taxing physically and mentally, it felt rewarding to be around brilliant minds, incredibly personable faculty, and to be able to finally learn the medicine we all yearned to learn for so long. From our scheduled group sessions to meeting up with faculty Tuesday mornings for a walk - I really thrived having that kind of structure in my life.

Fall on campus was absolutely beautiful and K and I would always take walks between our studying together and just enjoy the crisp autumn air and the aesthetic scenery. It's actually one of the things I missed most when corona hit and we were all sent home. I think we all expected to have maybe a week at most off.

None of us could have predicted the impact or severity of the issue, nor did we know we'd experience the majority of the rest of first year completely remote.

Albeit unexpected, I think the school and the students all handled the transition to an online format quite well and we made it though first year with minimal scars. The directors of our program fought to allow the 36 of us to have our group sessions on campus and fortunately we were all socially distantly reunited once school opened in August.

The biggest difference between group assignments between first and second year was that we almost got to choose our groups. In the past, we would be randomly assigned into groups every terms because it was important for us "get used to being uncomfortable and working with people you might not like".

I had one group where I was constantly at war with my group members and it was a tough semester, but the wise directors were right. I truly learned to how respectfully disagree with people and learn to compromise with people even though our visions differed greatly.

My second year group assignment were basically singly handedly chosen my friend group and I because we all put each other down for a survey trying to assess who had frequent contact. We didn't know at the time we would be together for a full year, but these people truly were the highlight of pre-clinicals.

I fully expected to become close with them, but I didn't know we'd become like 9 siblings who just love goofing around together. It was been such a blessing to learn, laugh, and grow with these 8 people over the past two year.

From our group sessions to saving crashing mannequins, almost losing my finger mid resuscitation to the miserable weeks of endless testing we literally have been to hell, detour to the moon and back.

I never really understood why doctors would say their best friends even to date are those they went to medical school with, but I get it now. When you've been through the amount of stress, tears, frustration, and thrill that is the ride of medical school as a unit, a precious friendship is born out of it. I'll always look back on these days with such endearment because they really were my family as we trudged to the finish line. I'll always cherish the time I spent with them, even if we do grow apart.