“Why did you decide to be a doctor?” she asked. “And don’t tell me you wanted to help people.”
I was exhausted. I sat on the edge of Mandi’s bed. “It’s true,” I said. “I want to help people.”
“Ha!” She poked a mound of vanilla pudding with a fork. “That’s what they all say.”
–”A Fire, Deliberately Set,” Peggy Sarjeant
(with apologies to Aaron Sorkin)
Even as I charged ahead towards a new future in my trips to Boston and DC, in my visits with old high school and college friends I was reminded of an altogether different past—a past in which I envisioned something completely different than the path I now find myself following, a future characterized by Fourier transforms and Smith charts. Delighted as regions of my brain probably last exercised in college sprang back into action talking shop with Amanda and John the electrical engineers and Angela the computer engineer, I nonetheless felt wistful at leaving all of that behind. At the same time, in Donna the teacher, and in other classmates and friends who went onto separate careers, I found some reassurance.
Technology never stopped exciting me. Math and physics still excite me. But are they enough to make me want to wake up in the morning?
Only if I can directly help someone by doing it.
I’ll just have to find some way to be an EE-doc, I guess.
(274/365)
It’s probably a good sign that I haven’t felt much need to post anything lately. Were it not for the end of the third quarter of year 29, I might have let November go without a post and kept October company.
Probably all that needs to be noted (and it’s old news for anyone keeping up with my Facebook status updates) is that my long national nightmare of disposable income now definitely has an end date (see the Countdown to Freedom in the blog sidebar). The anxiety of “will I get in somewhere” has since been replaced by “will I have a choice of where to go,” which is at least less stress-inducing but still admittedly tied to feelings of self-worth, however irrational it may be—yes, the applicant pool is beyond saturated with qualified candidates, but I wouldn’t be human if I said my ego doesn’t bruise at least somewhat from rejection.
I suppose all that’s left for this last quarter before I turn 30 is to have fun and enjoy it, but I’m hard pressed to remember a winter that wasn’t colored with some sort of melancholia…
I had no idea what I was agreeing to, but when Swanson invited me to go with him to a screening of Stop Making Sense sometime my sophomore year I think it was, I said sure, why not. Thus do I credit him with introducing me to The Talking Heads. I can’t be certain, but he probably also had a hand in my ownership of Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here. He most definitely introduced me to Steve Goodman, however.
Later on through his intervention would he also introduce me to Larry Swenson and Lee Murdock.
Dammit, don’t wonder why we called.
We love, and then we were afraid we lost.
(182/365)
The midpoint of year 29 kind of snuck up on me. I suppose that’s because these last three months have been a whirlwind of activity: with med school secondary apps (19) and Red Cross shifts (100+ hours) on top of the usual work responsibilities, it’s been busy, but in a good way. (Well. I can say that now, but in the thick of essay-writing, I think I had different emotions.) It has given this latest quarter a different quality than the one before it, feeling more purposeful and less like merely treading water. There are glimmers of hope for the future, maybe from proofreading my secondaries numerous times; they are tempered by doses of realism, but in the end, optimism wins out, buoyed by the sense that I’ve found what I want to do.
Maybe it’s fitting that this past weekend I hit the ground running to start this third quarter, logging some not-uneventful hours at Irish Fest, but the tone for this quarter will be set by the folks on the various admissions committees and whether they like what they read…
(147/365)
I had already gotten the unofficial word from Jerry last Friday, but last night’s shift at Festa Italiana was my first as an official full member of the team. “Take that red dot off your badge!”
Work-wise, it wasn’t a quiet shift, which felt like a good way to kick things off; there was a good mix of trauma and medical cases, some ordinary and some less ordinary. And hanging back with my teammates, the EMTs, and the paramedics is always fun times.
Okay, when can I start doing this full-time?
After having logged 56 hours working first aid at Summerfest (over its 11 days, I worked seven of them, one a double shift) in addition to putting hours in at the office, it’s going to be weird going back to a more normal routine. The adrenaline high that can come on busy nights like last Friday contributes to a post-Jessup-like withdrawal, which makes me thankful to have today and tomorrow off from work so I’ve got some time to decompress and regroup (and take some time to write about it, I guess).
Eight shifts in such a short span of time might be nuts, but it was entirely worth it. Training is one thing, but experience is another matter entirely. Every shift was a chance to reinforce and practice what I learned during training and to build on the experiences of the previous shift. If I let too much time lapse, it’s likely that nothing would stick. And there was a lot yet to pick up–simply getting familiar with what supplies are available and where they are, both at the stations and in the run bags, takes time; not to mention the matter of what do you actually do when you are called on to help someone. While a lot of it just involved mundane tasks like dispensing band-aids and ice packs, I handled some less-mundane traumas and medical incidents that let me actually put my skills to use in real life situations as opposed to the safety of the classroom. Even in situations where the EMTs or paramedics were in charge and our only job was to provide assistance if needed, I learned a lot just watching what was going on. And every incident was a lesson in patient care and interaction, no matter how brief or trivial.
Even the idle times were still valuable. I had the opportunity to work with and learn from people who really know what they’re doing and who also had genuine interest in helping me learn and grow. Yeah, a lot of the downtime was spent chatting (when not talking through responses to hypothetical scenarios or stealing moments here and there to go listen to nearby bands), but I got a lot out of simply getting to know everyone on the team. And, if nothing else, I’m more solid on taking blood pressures now.
After 56 hours on the job, I’m confident that I can take the lead now. Even though there are skills I didn’t get to practice, the hesitation and nervousness that comes from inexperience is gone. And I’m increasingly sure that this is the type of work I want to do.
(127/365)
First of seven Summerfest shifts completed last night. It was not without its quiet moments, but the night was still busy enough for me to get some practice in–some minor traumas (blisters, cuts, nosebleeds), a couple of medical situations that were most likely just anxiety/panic attacks, but nothing catastrophic. The flow went something like this–long periods of downtime alternating with short bursts of multiple persons to tend to. I like to think that Fate or whoever was screwing with me, because the night was pretty slow up until I took the first bite of my dinner (a brat from Mader’s). It must have been at least 30 minutes until I was able to get a second bite. Not that I minded–it felt good actually doing something useful.
If my next shift is at least as busy as this one was, I might regret thinking I’d be up for six consecutive nights. oy.
old enough to feel ways about stuff
What lengths would you go to for something like grabbing a drummer’s sticks tossed into the crowd after the set was done or getting the band to autograph your copy of their latest album? Would you think that leaping into the air from the bleachers to grab the sticks was too much, even though the drummer’s “hot as hell”? Would you ditch your friend, who had just broken his ankle leaping for said sticks, to go harass the band for an autograph?
My FAST teammates couldn’t really understand it. I just thought to myself, man, I remember when I was that age and felt that way about stuff.