"I Don't Even Have a Pla"

... as Phoebe from friends once said. Somedays, I feel as if the path to get to where I want to be (i.e. medical school and an unknown specialty) is clear. On other days, its confusing and makes my head hurt. I've never been more confident in the fact that I will be a physician one day but because everyone takes a different route to get there its hard to know for sure what Im doing right or wrong; is what everyone else doing better than me and do I need to step up my game?

Its hard not to think about that, to compare myself, but whenever I come to MedEx I always feel reassured. Not because I feel reassured that I am doing everything right but that I am at least trying to do what I love; thats what matters most.

A picture that I took of my sister in Peru. For me it demonstrates how scary yet exciting everything that I have to do.

Today, Mr. Squire spent about half the day with us which was fun! He's talks are always really invigorating and inspiring (especially when he tells us someone got into medical school with a 497 MCAT score). He began by first putting us through an exercise that would help us refine what we truly value from a sheet of 37 values (and we could only pick 7 with so much "money" to spend on each). This was hard, really hard. I know that the same values that I picked for this year would not be the same values that Tier 1 Claire would have picked. Then I wanted to be a pharmacist, was much more quiet, a follower, and didn't really know what I wanted to do... Now I know I want to do more of an aggressive type of specialty, I want more from the world, and there is so much more I want to do than what I thought I would be able to do before. It was easy, yet difficult, to explain why I chose what I chose to other people in the Tier; mostly because I was different in the fact that I don't care particularly where I want to work, being close to family isn't as important to me, and several other things. Its definitely something to stew on. Sarah and Henry made me question a lot of my choses and think about stuff in the future that i hadn't considered... I hadn't even put meeting someone and starting a family in my flowchart of the future. Its not necessarily a priority but I can't deny that it won't happen.

Anyway, I definitely went home and had an existential crisis that night.

Nevertheless we had bibliotherapy to go to that afternoon. This was my second time going to Foothills Presbyterian. The location outside is really nice but I wish that the inside layout had more windows; it just seems a little dark to me. I do enjoy the patient interaction there but out of the all the other places I've been to so far I find that its the hardest to find patients to talk to or who want to talk to me. Im trying not to take it personally but it is hard. I guess there are things I still need to work on with my patient interaction.... better now than later. Most people that I have met so far too are caucasian, from the South, or haven't traveled much out of their home state. Its hard for me to connect with that since I've bounced around the world my home life and Im not even from the States but I try to find a different way to interact with them. I personally think that the only difficulty that's come from our age gap has been our differences on progressive standpoints such as healthcare, immigration, and more global topics. I try to stay away from those as much as I can if I feel as if a patient and I will disagree on them.

- Morning Drive-In Jam -

More Than You Know - Axwell /\ Ingrosso

2U - David Guetta, Justin Bieber

Issues - Alan Walker Remix

Suggested books and articles:

Meryn S. Improving doctor-patient communication: Not an option, but a necessity . BMJ : British Medical Journal. dsfsdfmdfjkljkjnnnjkj1998;316(7149):1922-1930.

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