Keep On Keeping On

Just when I finish my last audition rotation and get ready for a supposed month of vacation, I realize that interviews are still in full swing. With only a couple days of down time at home, I will soon be preparing for my next adventure on the east coast. All this travel, preparation and match anxiety has me worn out.

Performance Exhaustion

Working in the spotlight for months on end with few days in between shifts and plenty of loose ends on those days off, the moments of relaxation are nice to come by. I feel like everything is just move, move, move until there is no more energy to move. The alarm goes off, back to work, hit the road and repeat. I remember well the warnings last year's seniors gave about becoming exhausted throughout the interview season. Experiencing the long hours of peak performance and never knowing who is watching, I feel the fatigue setting in just as foretold. I can only hope that my efforts thus far and in the coming weeks will pay off come match day in mid February.

The excitement of traveling and visiting new cities is great, though it's equally rivaled by feelings of inadequacy and trepidation. I have met wonderful people in all these places, learned a great deal about the world of emergency medicine and thoroughly enjoyed my time exploring potential residencies. It's been a mixed bag of vacationing and working where the lines cross from time to time blurring the extremes of either. I really enjoy not knowing what is next or how things will turn out. It keeps an element of surprise around long enough to make things exciting. But all things being told, I am starting to realize a sleep deprivation that resembles those long days in class followed by nights of endless study, something I thought would only be a memory of the first years in medical school. In reality it is a lifestyle associated with this profession as I am quickly learning.

Question of the Week

Now that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, when do you actually become a doctor?

Answer & Wishful Thinking