Tag: First Year

London Bridge

London Bridge is falling down my fair lady. And there I stood; standing in the middle of a plan I called life. Crumbled all around me; the pieces of my glorious bridge.  Damn what a beautiful structure. Meticulously built, labored over and held together with love. The med school bomb just exploded. I tried, I really did but the tears spilt over, rolling down my cheeks. He was serious and the more I tried to talk him out of it, the more I realized there was no going back. My stomach sank and that very moment I knew life would never be the same. Perhaps I should’ve stood my ground, maybe threw an absolute bitch fit but in the end who I am to deny a man his destiny. He took the MCAT, applied to med school, and before I could even catch my breath we packed up and moved to Vegas. Welcome to year one.

Go ahead, search high and low for information on first year and being married to medicine. I did. I read every blog post, drowned in YouTube videos but nothing truly prepared me. Plain and simple, med school takes over. It will dominate and redefine every aspect of your existence. Choosing to go into medicine is not just a job. Year one exists to show you medicine is life; medicine is a calling.

Our medical transition is different than most. The best case scenario a med school candidate is young, single, has financial support and ready to take on the world.  Med school year one, we’re in our 30’s, twelve year marriage with older kids, two dogs, couple of parakeets, fish and a partridge in a pear tree. So let’s just say I haven’t handled it the best. I try but…

Long story short love, become one with change, breathe in change, breathe out change, obtain peace with change. And by change I mean the sooner you can deal with feeling alone the better. The loneliness will eat at you, don’t let it. Time to suck it up buttercup, you’re a med school spouse.  Year one is meant for you to build a support system.   You’re going to need this for the rest of med school. Each year is more difficult. Truly invest in things that bring you peace and emotional support. If at all possible stay close to family during med school and if that isn’t an option reach out and make friendships so strong they become your family. Year one I spent watching him study.  Don’t do that. Get out, do you boo and when you can connect with your S/O, go out and have a good time!

Year one will rock your world as will year two, three and four. Each year is a different hurdle but year one is about studying and labs and studying and lecture and studying more…did I say studying? My hubs spent hours studying, sometimes 16 hr days. Undergrad is like water hose of information being sprayed at you and med school is like a freaking fire hydrant. So when your S/O has to study don’t take it personally because they’re literally treading water, trying not to drown in information.  

You got this! YOU GOT THIS! Be gracious with yourself during this transition and realize there’s no perfect way to do it. Most of all know you’re not alone!

xoxo,

naomi

Medical School Recap – Year 1

Even though year one of medical school for us was August 2015 through May/June 2016, it sometimes feels like yesterday we were trying to navigate uncharted territory. It was learning where things were in a new city for the first time, learning how to live with Geoff (we hadn’t lived together prior to medical school), learning how to balance work with holding down the fort at home, trying to find a support system locally when we had no family around, and so much more.

When you move somewhere new I feel like you have to build in WAY more time than you think to get around. Google maps was (and still is) our best friend. Believe it or not, it is quite easy to get lost in Vegas. For the first several months, all I knew was how to get to the necessities – work, home, Costco, the grocery store, and the mall. Other than that, I Google Maps’d everything. Thankfully it did get easier to get around.

Google Maps
Photo Cred: Google

Geoff and I didn’t live together prior to medical school. We lived with our parents up until we moved. Sure he visited me in college for a weekend, but we hadn’t lived in the same space together for more than a week. There was a learning curve to moving in together as there is usually with most couples (I think). Habits that we had developed at our parents house were needing to be discussed and fixed. Discussing about how we were going to handle cooking, cleaning, and bills/finances. I would be lying if I said everything was sunshine and roses. We certainly had our rough patches. But we would end up talking our problems out and moving forward with a better understanding of the other individuals point of view.

Year one was also Geoff figuring out the best way to study for exams. Studying at home in the study or going back to campus after dinner and studying. Usually it was the latter of the two. He would come home from school when I said dinner was ready, he would eat, and then he would leave again to go back to campus and study for several more hours. Sometimes he wouldn’t come back till 11p or later and would do this for remainder of the year. It strained our relationship, as there would be days when I only saw him for dinner as the weekends were spent studying on campus too. He also spent some time during his first year figuring out what materials were best and which ones he could do without. When and how he should start studying for boards. I can’t speak on those two topics, but whatever he found, it worked! Maybe I’ll have him write a piece on study tips for those who may be struggling to find what works for them.

I had either read it on a website or heard it from Geoff when he had interviewed, that it was important to build a support system and make friends with other S.O.’s who were in the same boat. Moving to Nevada, one of my biggest fears was that I wasn’t going to meet any ladies/spouses I meshed well with. Would they like me? Would I like them? Will we be friends during medical school? After medical school? These were questions I thought often. Something that we did when we first moved down was go to the events that the school put on to help all the first years socialize with each other. It was there that we met some of our closest friends – Charles and Nicole. Right after the first exam of medical school, Charles and Nicole invited us and a group of others to sushi. It was there I met Tommy and Naomi. It was like God was watching out for me. He put two amazing ladies in my life and I knew that I was going to get through medical school just fine.

My Support System
From Left: Nicole, Me, Naomi

The first year would also be the first year that I was away from my family for the holidays. I was lucky enough to be able to go home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. For Thanksgiving I was able to surprise my mom. She had no idea I was coming. My dad, my sister, and my grandma knew. She did not. The look on her face was priceless and one I will never forget.

I feel like the first year of medical school was all about adjusting. Adjusting to a new place, new people, and a new way of investing in your relationship(s). It’s funny to look back on the first year of medical school now and remember how long the next four years were going to be. There were lots of things that I wish we could have done differently, but there are a lot of things that I wouldn’t change. Knowing that things were only going to get more challenging moving forward, I braced myself and said ‘Bring it on.’

xoxo
Michaella