As an intern, I take days one at a time. Once in a while, I'll actually look a few days ahead and plan to do something fun on my day off. However, I rarely look much further in the future. One of my medical students was bemoaning that the school was asking them to put in schedule requests for their rotations next year. It does seem difficult when you've only finished half a year to figure out what you want to do the next year, especially when these years are supposed to shape your future career. I told my medical student to suck it up because it doesn't end. I just submitted my schedule requests for the 2008-2009 year.
Filling out that form was mind boggling. When do I want to take vacation next year? I had to email all my engaged friends and ask if they were planning weddings before July 2009. When do I want to be in the ICU? Which ICU? What about electives? What do I want to be doing on July 1st? That's when I'm a brand new resident with brand new interns. I'll be a resident in less than six months!
Luckily, I'm on emergency coverage now with more than average free time. (Thank goodness my co-interns haven't been inflicted with that raging diarrhea that's going around.) So, I was actually able to step back and look at myself. I found that a lot of me is the same. I still want to spend vacations with my husband when he's on break from school. I'm still interested in outpatient medicine despite the copious amount of time I have spent in the hospital this year. And I'm still terrified that I will make a mistake and kill someone. Those were my guiding principles in filling out my requests.
What's changed about me? Less than I thought. While I'm on the wards or in the ICU, time is limited, so I don't get to indulge myself in my hobbies. Yes, spending time cooking or watching TV seems like an indulgence. (Luckily the writers' strike is making it easy for me to stay away from my television.) However, now that I have more free time, I have found happily that I am much the same person that I remember I was. And I'm relieved. Yes, I've changed as a clinician, but I'm still me.
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Submitting my schedule request was similarly bizarre. I weighed the benefits of maybe possibly having a holiday with family this year versus the length of the month and how I might be able to strategically ask for potential vacation months to minimize the most painful rotations. An IM attending in SoCal reminded me that there is an end in sight, a gleaming light at the end of the dank resideny tunnel. Here's to that!
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