Here it is. My entire life culminates into what happens tomorrow. You know that feeling when you are on a roller coaster and you're just about to the peak of that first climb before you start the descent, at the exact moment when your stomach starts to go? Yeah, that's nothing like this.
I'm not one to be scared or stressed about shit like this. During college, if I knew I had stuff to do, I'd prioritize it and get it done rather than stress about how I'd do it. I'd just do it. But, for some reason, I am horrified of the prospect of medical school.
Maybe it's the horror stories I've heard from doctors and current M-2s, M-3s, or M-4s. I don't know. But what I do know is that I'm lucky to be in the position I'm in.
During the last three weeks, I've been in an intensive medical gross anatomy boot camp at DCOM, learning almost an entire semester of medical gross anatomy in a very small amount of time. My decision to take that course, I can already tell, was the best possible use of my final three weeks of freedom. I learned a ridiculous amount of material, I learned how to study, I learned how NOT to study, and I made some great friends and have a solid study group, right out of the gate.
Not only have I fallen in love with the school itself, but the area itself serves to affirm my decision to study here. Today, I hiked about 8 miles of the Ridge Trail in Cumberland Gap National Forest, which is quite literally 5 minutes from my apartment. I made sure to hike the section including an overlook of the tri-state area (which, I later learned, you can actually just drive to...) and had a pretty cathartic experience.
I've been re-reading Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman off-and-on for the last month or so, and I brought it along with me. I read a little up overlooking Cumberland Gap and just felt really at home. Here's the passage that I really connected with today:
"O hope and faith! O aching close of lives! O many a sickened heart!
Turn back unto this day, and make yourselves afresh."
I forgot how fulfilling it is to sit, looking out over the earth. I forgot how small you feel when you can see for miles. I also forgot how worried I was about starting school tomorrow.
Normally, my posts are longer than this, but I think there's not much to drag out here. More than anything, I'm excited to finally get the chance to fulfill a lifelong dream of mine.
See you soon, often, and for a very long time to come.
Hope You Hated It.
