Med School vs. Life

I have wanted to be a doctor since I was seven years old. I remember this decision-making with ease. Prior to the Christmas of 2000, I had always wanted to be a …. pause for dramatic effect … veterinarian! I LOVE(D) DOGS! I LOVE DOGS. I LOVE DOGS. And I was dead-set on hanging out with them day in and day out. Fittingly, my parents got me a Vet Emergency’s computer game. I was beyond ecstatic. I could not wait for the Christmas festivities to end so I could fire up the Mac and start playing… Bing! Mac fired up, I put in the disc, turn it on and WHAMO – an elder German Shepherd was my first patient. Elated to be treating a dog, I went through the prompts and the dog had CANCER and NEEDED TO BE PUT TO SLEEP. I’m sorry, what?! I thought being a vet was going to be a dreamboat and I could just play with puppies every day for the rest of my life. Turns out they put dogs to sleep. Seven year old me said bye-bye to that. I decided the next best thing to dogs were humans, alas bringing me here.

I know many of us have wanted to be doctors since we were yay high: dreaming of wearing a white coat, using a stethoscope, and helping treat the illest of the ill, the most in need. But I might venture to say none of us knew the process would mean the only thing we have to choose for our life during these times is medicine. Many of us lose our hobbies, our sleep, our relationships. The expectation of us from the time we get the acceptance letter to the time we ??? that our lives are medicine and our lives are for everyone else. They do not come outright and say that, recommending we continue doing what makes us tick, but they give you exams every two weeks on four different classes, four hours of lecture per day, three hours of patient care labs, three hours of OMM labs, over a thousand pages of material might be covered in a week. They recommend shadowing, volunteering, researching, “getting involved.” Then, they put us in the hospitals and on top of working 40-80 hours per week, we have quizzes and modules to cover during the rotations, sometimes big exams to study for at the end, and didactic sessions that come with their own set of quizzes and modules. We have more board exams than I still even realize exist. I don’t know about you, but I used to joke about not having enough hours in the day to do everything when I was in undergrad, but now I mean it. I mean it when I say that getting to the hospital at 5am for your surgery rotation is only great because Michigan Ave has blinking yellow lights until 6:30am, so it takes four minutes less to get to the hospital. I’m scrounging for four minutes. And I am not alone in this. My peers have engulfed into this world as much as I have. But if we want to be a physician, medical school wins.

Challenge this mindset.

They tell us to maintain our hobbies, because our hobbies are what makes us, us. Our passions, our dreams, our goals don’t have to stop because we have a lot going on. We are all busy, whether you’re in med school, a physician, not in the medical field at all, but many of us struggle to pursue things outside of our line of work or family. I speak to medicine specifically, because that is my area, but I am sure countless of you feel the exact same way.

So, now what. I am telling you it is possible, but how?

I failed to subscribe to this mentality throughout medical school, not because I have a lack devotion to my path of medicine or because I am some hipster who doesn’t like social norms, but because I had passions and goals I wasn’t willing to give up on. I want to push my body’s limits. I want to pole vault. I want to travel the world and compete against the best of the best. I want to be an Olympian.

So, I prayed. OFTEN. I asked God – how will I do this? Is this the path I am meant to travel? Is this worth the struggle it will be? What if I don’t make it? Ultimately, God did not give me a direct answer, as He often doesn’t. But He gave me the motivation and drive, which I took as an answer enough. He also reminded me that doubting my own ability just means I need His help. So I embarked on this path toward two goals. The doubts came elsewhere as well. I remember my father lecturing me on creating a path toward one tree and you can only have one tree you’re working toward, which was a great analogy, but I flat out told him I have two trees and I am doing this. I should mention that since then, he (and my mom) have been my biggest supporters.

At first, I found this nearly impossible. Transitioning into medical school was difficult, but add in training 20+ hours per week? Fall of 2017 was hard. My uncle died unexpectedly the first day of classes that fall making for a difficult start. Looking back, I still am not sure how I made it out, but Spring of 2018 was easier class-wise after learning how to study and manage that level of content. In February 2018, my mark was accepted for my first Indoor U.S. Championship meet. I traveled to New Mexico to compete on a Sunday evening with one week warning, a quiz in Neuro on Friday and an exam on Monday morning. After this, 2018 was rough. Just to run through the list: I got sick and couldn’t work out because I was coughing too much, bringing an end to my outdoor season; Cooper got pancreatitis and was hospitalized; I ran in a Tough Mudder and thought I got a stress fracture (news flash: I am not a distance runner); Cooper swallowed a squeaker and had bowel obstruction surgery, went septic; I hurt my Achilles. That rounds out the year. New challenges came with starting clinical rotations, mostly being my time wasn’t something I could manipulate anymore. Because of this, I had to switch coaches. Somehow, I have managed to still improve and I placed 13th at the Indoor U.S. Championships, and I am keeping my eyes on the Trials 2021!

So… how have I made it this far? What are key things I live by?

• I planned. My coach (bless him) sent me training plans weekly and I sat down every week and wrote out my plan for my week: when I would wake up, work out, study, go to bed. Now, I write my own training in four week blocks. When you set out four hours of studying per day, and that’s all the time you have, those four hours are the most productive four hours you’ve ever seen. There’s no time to dink around on your phone when you have to cover 1000 pages of material in a strict time window. By forcing a time constraint on something that needed to get done, I was able to be more productive. This is by and large the most helpful to me.
• I use these plans to combat anxiety. If you are not the planning type, I am sure it is possible your way, but I will be honest, that gives me anxiety. Yes. YOU not having a plan for YOUR LIFE gives ME anxiety. How do you even do it? My boyfriend is this way and I have now called him an anti-planner because he …anti-plans. Having a plan is a tool I use to combat the anxieties of everyday life and I cannot imagine living without it. These plans do not have to go out exactly as I expect them to, but by golly I at least have something planned, with back-up plans for reasonable things to go awry A-E that can be planned for and then I don’t worry about it at all. Plans can always be changed. Is my Type A personality showing?
• Sometimes more important than planning is I respected myself enough to hold my plans as if they were written in stone. Unless key life things were happening and I had to adapt – which happens, that’s life – I stuck with it. You have to give yourself the respect you deserve by not letting your plans and goals get put on the back-burner. You are the only one that can make your goals come alive.
• I meal-prepped – because making every meal was time I did not have.
• I got enough sleep. There has been so much research done about the importance of sleep so if you don’t believe me, look it up. I learned that for me, getting enough sleep means at least eight hours, but if I get nine: I thrive. And when I wasn’t getting enough sleep (Fall 2017, perhaps), I was 0% thriving.
• I am especially disciplined. On days where I did not feel like doing my workout, I still showed up. Why? Because I set a reminder on my phone that went off everyday at 6am for two years pleading with me to “think of my long-term goals before making a decision” and it challenged me to live my life that way. Sometimes that meant waking up at 4:30am to work out before going into the hospital. Other times that meant after a long day, I headed to the track. Unless my body was telling me that I did not feel like working out or studying because I was too physically/mentally tired and I needed a break, I did it.
• I made the barriers low. What I mean is once I get home from the day, the likelihood of me leaving my apartment to go do anything, let alone workout, is probably around 4%. I wish this were an exaggeration, but I love being home and at the end of the day, I’d like to stay there. So, I combatted that by packing my workout clothes with me in the morning. Instead of testing the 4%, I took it out of the equation entirely.
• I had to learn to be adaptable. Take note how I said I had to learn. This is not something that comes easily to me. As much as I wish it were true, life doesn’t go according to MY plan. Take now: we are in the middle of a stay at home order in a pandemic in an Olympic year. Before the pandemic, I was trying to figure out how I was going to study for boards and take them the week before the Olympic Trials without being too stressed to handle it. Before the Olympics were postponed, I was trying to figure out how I was going to stay in peak shape, stay strong, find meets to compete in, and still make it to the Trials while also still figuring out handling the stress of my board exam. Now, I have to re-write plans because #Tokyo2021 gives me an entire year to improve, taking away the board exam stress, but adding on a different stress entirely. I don’t think anyone planned for this, but I am welcoming the change as an opportunity, which leads me to:
• I learned to see obstacles as opportunities. After enough wallowing and sometimes long after getting through it, I see how these obstacles led me to where I am today. God wouldn’t lead you to it if He wasn’t going to lead you through it. Sometimes, He leads you to it because it’s something you need to work through because He has a plan for it’s use. But what about the obstacles that are really hard? The ones that don’t seem to have a plan? Cry about it. Lean on your friends and family. Focus on your mental health.
• If medical school needed to win, I let it.
• I have more help than I deserve. I am terrible at asking for help, but sometimes I have to. During OB/GYN, I was working 12+ hours per day, leaving the apartment at 6:15, not getting home until 7:15, and going to bed at 9:30 meant that Cooper was only getting 2 hours of attention per day. Remember how I love my dog? Even though it is stressful for him and usually is better for him to stay with me (rescue babies are needy), I asked my parents to watch him. Luckily, I have two of the greatest parents who LOVE Cooper (my dad denies it, but he misses him too) and were willing to watch him. If they hadn’t, I would have asked for help from friends, dog-walkers, anything to keep him happy. Moral of the story: get help. I have been blessed with parents, coaches, family, friends, a boyfriend and I couldn’t do it without any and all of them! You cannot do everything on your own, even if you are too stubborn to admit it (ahem, me).
• This help includes a Savior who gave me endurance for the race (Hebrews 12:1-3). I could rattle off so many encouraging bible verses, but my favorite for a while has been Joshua 1:9 – Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. BE STRONG AND COURAGEOUS! We have an Almighty God on our side and He is fighting for and alongside us.

The mind is a powerful tool – hopefully you can take some of my experiences and use it to reach whatever goal you have made for yourself!

For God did not give us the spirit of fear, but the power of love and self-discipline.

2 Tim 1:7

xx, lauren.