I can't believe it's the end of my second week of classes and I am halfway through my mini "vacation" from work. As my teacher says, "el tiempo pasa rápido cuando te diviertes."
One thing that I've appreciated over the past two weeks is the difference I see in myself during this time away from the relentless demands of the hospital and clinic. I was supposed to check my work inbox while away, but due to technical difficulties, I haven't been able to remotely access it. Even as I struggle not to think of the trash fire that is inevitably developing, this complete disconnect from my work life has been doing me good. Each day, I adhere loosely to the same schedule. I spend my mornings at school, explore a different place for lunch every day, and study Spanish at a cafe or at home in the afternoons. If I'm tired, I siesta. If I'm bored, I hang out with my host brother and play checkers. There is no pressure from deadlines or grades, the only marker of my performance is the increasing degree of comprehension I attain at the dinner table. Life is so much more relaxing and the future bright when the most stressful decision you have to make each day is what you want to eat for lunch.
Just two weeks ago, I would text Uram daily by 10AM, already complaining about my day in clinic. At the start of my third year of residency, one whole year into this crazy little thing called COVID, you can call me toast because I am burnt out. Now the memory of rushing from one room to another to stay on time, the spike of annoyance when I couldn't extract myself from a patient fast enough, the feeling of despair when there's 15 messages in my box at the end of a busy day are so distant that it almost feels like someone else's life. They say you can see someone's true nature when they're faced with adversity and it makes me despair -- is that who I really am? There are days I feel truly devoid of empathy and compassion, when I have a knee-jerk reaction of rage whenever a request is made of me, when I reflexively deploy cynicism as my first line of defense. There are days when it's difficult to be kind, when it feels taxing to do the bare minimum let alone go the extra mile. Let's just say I am no longer the idealistic college grad who applied to medical school because I wanted to help people and wrote essays about feeling called to primary care. Instead, there are times I ask myself why I should keep working so hard to help people when it feels like they couldn't be bothered to help themselves.
It's funny, I can't pinpoint when exactly I stopped thinking like a patient and transitioned to thinking like a doctor.
Don't get me wrong, this is by no means an announcement that I am quitting my job and leaving residency. (Let's be real, momma needs money to buy a house if she wants to stay in the Bay Area.) But this opportunity to divorce myself from the myopic world of work and academia has been eye-opening. Some people in my shoes would say the experience is "freeing", but for me, it's been quite the opposite. As much as I am enjoying my time now, I can't help but be aware of the ephemeral nature of it all. The knowledge that I must return to reality looms over me and has forced me to think critically about what it is exactly that I dread going back to. I feel I may have lost my sense of self trudging through residency and now I have been granted the chance to take a step back and better examine my own motivations and aspirations. I always joked that I didn't have any dreams, no 10-year plan. The truth is that none of my dreams take place at work and that I have started to view work as a necessary evil to achieve my dreams -- - getting married to Uram, buying a house, and having kids.
Maybe the timing is perfect. I have interviews lined up during the week after I return to the US. No better time than the present to figure out what I'm looking for in my future job environment...and how to make the necessary a little less evil. And who knows, maybe tripling my salary will triple my tolerance for work shenanigans :P
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