What I Would Tell My First-Year-Med-School Self

Dear small girl in the white coat, two sizes too big, walking into anatomy lab on a Monday morning in 2018 — let me try to tell you a few things you do not yet know. I know you will not entirely listen. None of us would have, at your age. But some of this is going to land in the next decade and save you a year or two of unnecessary suffering. So I will write it anyway, with affection.

You will become a doctor. You will become tired in ways you cannot yet imagine. You will lose patients and grow up and lose people who were not patients. You will pray more than you used to and cry more than you used to and run more than you used to. You will grow into a woman whose hands know what they are doing. Be patient with the version of you who does not yet.

On the work itself

You do not have to know everything to be safe. You have to know how to find out and when to ask. The latter is more important than the former.
Anatomy will get easier. The first cadaver lab will not. You will remember the smell for the rest of your life. That is the price of the calling.
The students who terrify you with their confidence in first year are not the best clinicians five years on. Quiet competence is more durable than performance.
Failing an exam is not a referendum on your worth. It is information. Use it; do not become it.
The nurses know more than you. Listen to them. Especially the ones with grey hair. They have saved more patients than you ever will.

On the body — yours

You have a body. You will keep forgetting this for years. The library is not a substitute for sleep. Coffee is not a substitute for water. Stress is not a personality trait.
Start lifting weights now. Do not wait until you are twenty-six and reading studies about bone density at 3 a.m. with regret. Future you will thank you.
Eat food, not whatever was on the cafeteria counter. Your concentration depends on it. So does your mood, in ways you do not yet recognise.
Sleep as if your patients depend on it. They do. The hour you stayed up rereading paediatrics is the hour you wish you had back during the 4 a.m. on-call.

On faith

You will go through a season where God feels far. He will not be. Distance is sometimes a form of formation.
Stop comparing your devotion to the Christian women on Instagram. They have curated your envy on purpose. Read your Bible. Pray. Show up. The rest is noise.
Find a church that will know you, not just preach to you. The auditorium model will not survive your residency. You need people who will sit with you in the waiting room.
Memorise scripture in your twenties. It is the most portable comfort you will ever own. You will need it on a night you cannot yet imagine.
Theology done in a library is not the same as theology done at a bedside. Both matter. The second one shapes you more.

On men

The boy in second year will not turn out the way you hope. Be sad about it for a season, then keep going. He was not the answer.
Do not date someone who does not respect your work. The hours of medicine ask too much of a relationship for it to also be carrying disrespect. You will not have the energy.
The right man will be quietly impressed by your competence, not threatened by it. Settle for nothing less. Your career is not the obstacle to a good marriage; the wrong man is.
Stop apologising for being ambitious. The world will already do enough of that for you. You are allowed to want both — the work and the partnership. Refuse to choose.

On friendship

The friends you make in medical school will become the most important people of your life, alongside your family. Tend them well.
Be the one who sends the first message. Be the one who shows up. Be the one who remembers the dates. The economy of friendship runs on small, deliberate gestures.
It is okay to outgrow some friendships. It is not okay to outgrow them and then resent them for not keeping up. Let them go gently.
You will be lonely sometimes. Lonely is not the same as alone. Loneliness teaches you something solitude can also teach you, if you let it.

On money and the small dignities

You are going to earn a salary one day. Save twenty per cent of it from the first paycheck. You will not miss it; future you will be grateful.
Do not buy the bag. Buy the books. Buy the running shoes. Buy the flight to see your sister. Spend money on becoming and on being-with, not on appearing.
Furniture lasts decades. Do not rush it. A well-loved second-hand chair is better than a new one you regret.
Pay your debts on time. It is a small daily discipline that protects your peace.

On the kind of doctor you want to be

Be the doctor your patients will quote ten years from now. Not the most famous. The kindest. The clearest. The one who looked them in the eye.
Never miss a chance to honour a nurse, a porter, a cleaner, a kitchen hand. The hospital functions because of them. Acknowledge it.
If you are wrong, say you are wrong. Quickly. Specifically. Without performance. Then move on.
Do not become cynical. The system is broken in many of the same ways it has always been. Cynicism does not fix it; it only joins it.

On the woman you are becoming

You will not be the woman you imagined at eighteen. She was a sketch. The woman you will become is more complicated, more disappointed in some places, more delighted in others. She will have laugh lines from a thousand things you have not laughed at yet. She will have shoulders that have learned to carry weight without complaint. She will have a deep, slow love for the work and an honest, sometimes weary love for God.

Do not try to be her too quickly. You are not behind. You are arriving on time, by the long road. Show up to your formation. Do the small things daily. Trust that God is doing in you what you cannot yet do in yourself.

I love you. I am proud of you. Pick up the bag, put on the white coat, walk into the lab. Be brave. Be slow. Be honest. Pray more than you think you need to. Cry when you need to. Get the sleep. Drink the water. Lift the weights. Send the message. Read the Bible. Eat the food. Be kind to the woman in the mirror. She is doing better than she thinks.

— Your future self, who is finally, slowly, becoming someone you would have been proud to know.