Hey guys!
So I decided to take 3 weeks off before starting school, heeding advice of more experienced people. Well, other than the fact that it’s nice to not have any responsibilities right now, it’s sooo boring!! AND, I am freaking out. I thought I would be relaxed and calm and get some reading done, but after years of suffering from pre-med nuerosis, I forgot how to relax. How stupid is that?
I was just wondering if anyone else, with their all their dreams about to be realized before them, are in freak-out; can’t relax; nervous mode?
I have hyperventilated 3 times in the past week! I am taking my vitamins, exercising and trying to be calm (wooo saaaa), but the only thing that relaxes me is keeping busy. Am I crazy?
Danielle
Danielle,
That would be me also! Of course, I won’t start in August, but in January, and though I’ve been (and will keep) working full time until we leave for England in December, and spending MUCH more time with housework and cooking, its as if I can’t find enough to do. I feel brain dead!! I guess we’ll feel brain strain shortly enough! 
Kathy
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Hey guys!
So I decided to take 3 weeks off before starting school, heeding advice of more experienced people. Well, other than the fact that it’s nice to not have any responsibilities right now, it’s sooo boring!! AND, I am freaking out. I thought I would be relaxed and calm and get some reading done, but after years of suffering from pre-med nuerosis, I forgot how to relax. How stupid is that?
I was just wondering if anyone else, with their all their dreams about to be realized before them, are in freak-out; can’t relax; nervous mode?
I have hyperventilated 3 times in the past week! I am taking my vitamins, exercising and trying to be calm (wooo saaaa), but the only thing that relaxes me is keeping busy. Am I crazy?
Danielle
Hey Danielle,
I can’t tell you how wise it is for you to take some time and just relax. You just can’t get this time back. Enjoy the fun of just knowing that you are going to start school soon and that it’s going to be all interesting stuff. (No more general education requirements!)
Try to do some pampering stuff like manicure, new haircut, pedicure. Try to read some trashy romance novels (Dr Stud the supersurgeon etc) and try to start a good variable work-out routine. I can’t emhasize more, how much physical activity will reduce stress. After classes begin, you can make your own study tapes (Thousands of times better than the commercial ones) and listen to them as you powerwalk or run. Pump some iron and get out your aggressions!
Realize that you are only in competition with yourself. There is always someone in the class that is going to outscore you in something and you are always going to outscore some of your colleages in something. Medical school is a great equalizer not sorter. Help your colleagues and be colleagual. Don’t make generalizations based on race, sex or age. They can come back to bite you in the B–T! Everyone of your colleagues is there because, like you, they have the potential to be a good physician.
Enjoy your classes and be good to yourself and your significant others. You are living your dream so share the good will. It will come back to you in spades. Eat as well as you can (substitute veggies for chips during those study sessions) and drink plenty of water.
Chapel Hill is such a neat college town. Get into the UNC basketball/football stuff and scream your head off at games! This is also good stress relief.
Enjoy! Enjoy! You have nothing to be nervous about!
Natalie
Danielle-
I’m there with you on the nervous freaking out part! Class starts this Monday!!! Yikes!!!..but really…I can’t wait!
Chris, I will miss getting to meet you in person finally!
I’m not freaking out, yet…but everyone here is asking me if I am ready. How can I be ready? I tell them I bought two pens the other day…
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everyone here is asking me if I am ready. How can I be ready? I tell them I bought two pens the other day…
LOL. I’d forgotten about that question. It felt to me like people asking the question thought maybe there should be some sort of Medical School Boot Camp to toughen you and get you ready for the grueling experience. Or at least a book to read that would give you all the secrets of success in medical school.
To be ready you just need to go in the first day determined to get to work (right away) AND have fun. I’m not worried about any of you!
Mary
Hi Danielle,
Yes, I’m where you are too! But orientation week starts tomorrow so all I have to do is make it through today!!
I’ve had the entire summer off to “relax” and spend w/ the kids…spent most of it worrying and wishing I were still in class. Go figure.
The best thing we did was spend a week at a horse ranch, riding 6-8 hours/day. No clocks, t.v.s, etc., great food, great scenery, came home completely relaxed! (Husband and kids, too.)
Today will be devoted to shopping: my second best stress reliever (after horses.)
Ann
I am so ready! After all the time off, I am so ready, I might explode.
Thanks Natalie, for the advice. I had a chat with my husband. It turns out, I have a little fear of failure that’s been subconsiously freaking me out. Also, I have noticed that once people find out I am going to be a doctor, they develop a perception about me that isn’t necessarily who I really am.
For example; my mother asked me the other day when I was going to die my hair brown (I am a Loreal #2 Natural Light Blonde). I told her never and she said that people would never take me seriously.
I got to thinking about that statement and others like it from other people (not so much about hair, but about being clumsy, scatter-brained, or sloppily dressed, etc.) and I began to get very nervous that I would have to change who I am to match the perceptions of others. Don’t get me wrong, I know there is a line between behaving appropriately and bucking the system. I’ll be damned if I am going to let others people’s perception of what I am supposed to be rain on my party!!
I realized that I have to be MYSELF no matter what, or what’s the point. I made the decision to enter medicine as the individual, with all my quirks and shortcomings, that I am today. If I change because someone thinks I am supposed to be somebody else then I am guilty of the thing made me a non-traditional premed in the first place. Meaning, if I had listened to my heart and soul from the starting gun, I wouldn’t have believed an office job, big house, weekend trips to Home Depot, etc. were MY American dream. They were somebody else’s.
So there it is. Sorry for rambling, but this transition can be pretty complicated on the emotional level.
Danielle
MS-1 in 9 more days
Hi Danielle,
I look like a very fat “welfare queen” but I am a surgeon. If I ran on my presumption of “other’s perceptions” I probably would be working in the hospital laundry instead of repairing carotid arteries. People still ask me to take out the trash when I come on the wards even though I am wearing a lab coat that says Natalie Belle, MD Department of Surgery. I usually oblige them and empty the trash.
Be scatterbrained if that is you. Your whole life experience got you to this point anyway. So what if you fail. It is your life and not to try is worse than any failure. I am with Mary RR. I am not worried about any of you. In a couple of weeks, you will be “knee deep in the hoopla” of studying all that MS-1 stuff. Right now, you have too much time on your hands. Boy, are you going to want to get this time back in a couple of weeks.
Enjoy all of this stuff because it is great fun. I just finished having two full days where I didn’t have to go near the hospital. I spent most of one, researching papers for new cytokines that are involved in wound healing. I am giving a presentation on Tuesday afternoon on that very subject. I did spend some quality time on Lake Erie with my dogs. It was a glorious two days and my presentation is done.
Natalie 
LOL! You take out the trash. That’s awesome. I have met you and you do not look like a welfare queen. You have a commanding presence and I bet after the jerk that asked you to take out the trash realized who you were, felt really stupid.
I know I am going to want this time back, and I promise I have been treating myself well. Just bored OH! and I have been trying to redifine my definition of success. It’s not being the best, it’s doing my best, so there is no way I can fail.
Thursday, I am going to a talk about Circadian Rhythms and disruption of the cell cycle. I am looking forward to that.
Danielle
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For example; my mother asked me the other day when I was going to die my hair brown (I am a Loreal #2 Natural Light Blonde). I told her never and she said that people would never take me seriously.
I’d better not have to give up my strawberry blonde dye job for med school.
Truthfully, as a soft-spoken blonde with a very slight southern accent, people sometimes fail to take me seriously. But then when something particularly intelligent comes out of my mouth the contrast with their original perception is so stark that they often think I’m a freakin’ genius. This odd little phenomenon has given me many hours of amusement over the years, as well as little bonuses of extra credibility or excellent customer service from time to time. Be blonde, and shock them silly! It’s fun!
Woohoo. Blonde Power!!!
Same thing happens to me. I am 5 feet tall, but people don’t actually realize how short I am until I stand next to them. It’s my BIG personality. HEHE
Danielle
Hey Danielle,
I’m too busy to be freaking right now. I took the two years off to do the premed, now I’m working my butt off since January to make up some of the income I lost. I move in 5 weeks, and school starts the following week. We just got an offer on our house, but have to be out by the 25th of this month! It looks like I will be renting a small trailer, which I have yet to secure, and moving just a few things with me. Then there is furniture shopping, getting a new cell phone, registering the car… I think I will be busy till the day classes start. Better this way because I would be going crazy if all I had to think about is starting school!
I was freaked out and now that I have actually started …well I am still somewhat freaked out. The information IS a lot but it can be managed…I hope 
Drd, I thought the same thing. I love Nat to death. I would have said something that would have gotten her in trouble though, like: Hey idiot, do you see the name tag? It does not say Housekeeping!! Its Says DOCTOR you MORON!!
But I wasn’t there. So she is safe for now.
I would have said I missed the clinical lecture on how to take out the garbage 
HAHAHA
No…I prolly would have taken out the trash too.
6 MORE DAYS!!! ACK!!!
Danielle