Longing for the Past...

Last night I dreamt I went to camp again. Just like they did every summer when I was younger, my parents dropped me off at the St. Louis airport and when I arrived in the Minneapolis airport, I was instantly surrounded by familiar faces--former campers and counselors and (because it was a dream) friends from undergrad and even a few familiar faces from medical school.

In real life there's a three-hour bus ride that separates camp from the airport, but in the dream I was just suddenly standing in the midst of the familiar-smelling cabin with the mesh windows and perpetually dirty wooden floors and (somewhat uncomfortable) beds that I had not so very long ago called my home away from home. My things had magically unpacked themselves and sorted themselves onto shelves and into my tiny closet. And so I just stood for a moment, letting my eyes wander over the dozens of names and memories that had been carved into the cabin's walls.

When the camp bell rang out I instinctively knew it was the 15-minute warning bell for dinner and my feet began to carry me down the path to the dining hall just as they had done hundreds of times before. As I walked by the cabin where the counselors-in-training slept, one of my friends (who I haven't spoken to in years) called my name and we walked arm-in-arm to the dining hall, talking about who we thought might end up dating that summer and what activities we planned to sign up for for the first two weeks. The rest of the dream was a hodgepodge of camp activities, which I will refrain from describing. Suffice it to say, I was genuinely happy in the dream.

For a moment, when I woke up, in the pitch black of my bedroom I thought I was really in my cabin at camp, but as my eyes adjusted to the dark and my mind cleared, I realized I wasn't anywhere even remotely close to camp. No. It was 5:27am on April 20, 2012, and I was in my apartment. In just two short hours I would be awoken, not by the camp bell, but by my alarm clock. And all too quickly I remembered that instead of having a day of swimming and kayaking and sun-bathing ahead of me, all I had to look forward to was reading First Aid and doing yet another set of USMLE World QBank questions. And that's when I started to sob.

When the tears finally subsided, seeing as it was still only 5:40 in the morning and I figured even my grandma probably wasn't awake yet, I went and grabbed my computer. You see, when I feel anything but happy, I like to look at quotes online. Sometimes I search for quotes on specific topics like "moving on" and sometimes I'll look up quotes by my favorites authors or other well-known people. Usually I keep looking until I find a quote that describes how I'm feeling. I guess it helps me feel less alone to see that, at some point in time, someone else felt just as sad or lost or stressed out as I feel. And so it was that I happened to stumble across a quote by Leonardo da Vinci that said, "Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward; for there you have been, there you long to return."

And, while I didn't literally long to fly or spend my day with my eyes turned skyward, I realized that I longed for the life I had once had. For camp and undergrad and the hours and hours of free time I had prior to medical school. For the time when I was able to spend four hours a day at dance practice. Or six hours making dinner and dessert for my friends. Or an entire day laying in the sun at the beach. Or an evening dancing. Or a morning doing absolutely nothing at all.

My days now consist of anywhere from three to six hours of lecture and small group sessions followed by another eight plus hours of studying and then an hour or so of tossing and turning in bed because I can't get my brain to stop thinking about all the things I still need to do and how I can never seem to remember everything I read and what might happen if I don't pass boards. Some nights I get so stressed out trying to fall asleep that I end up doing things like cleaning my apartment at 2am or baking cookies at 3am--anything to take my mind off my life.

When I talk to family, they sometimes ask me if I'm still sure I want to be in medical school. Part of me almost always wants to reply, "No way--please come help get me out of here as fast as possible!" But I always end up saying, "Yes. I'm sure."

And it's true. Right now, I may long for my old, carefree life. But, deep down, I don't really want to be anywhere but in medical school because I really do want to be a doctor. And I'd like to think that one day I will be able to look back on these years and long for them like I currently long for camp. Because really, my life isn't so very terrible. School is difficult--there's no doubt about that. And I don't have as much time as I'd like to sleep or to do fun things like going dancing or going to the pool. But I have a great group of friends and a loving family who provide me with much-needed words of encouragement when I feel like I giving up.

And, at the end of all this, I get to be a doctor. If I can just survive medical school, I will get to spend the rest of my life making a difference in the lives of those around me. I will get to help patients and their families through the worst moments in their lives. When I go home from work at night, I'll be able to say, "Today I did everything I could to save someone's life." And that is something I truly long for.

And so, for now, I'll leave you with a couple quotes that will hopefully help you feel a little bit better if you, like me, have been feeling a little stressed and/or sad lately:

"Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities--always see them, for they are always there."
– Norman Vincent Peale

"I am a very old man and have suffered a great many misfortunes, most of which never happened.”
– Mark Twain

"Everyday may not be good, but there's something good in every day."

Until next time.