First of all, apologies for leaving the blog hanging in the wind like a bad M. Night Shyamalan cliffhanger for the past 3 months. You may (or may not) have noticed I dusted off some of the things around here and updated the header to note than I am no longer a short-coat-wearing, deer-in-headlights, hopelessly-clueless medical student. Since our last interaction, dear reader, I have shed the shackles of medical school, packed up all of my "stuff", drove 2,353 miles across the country, and settled down in a small city with a very big medical center where I have spent the last week preparing to be a long-coat-wearing, deer-in-headlights, hopelessly-clueless... intern.
Progress.
I debated for a long time what the fate of this little corner of the interweb would be when I would be forced to stop writing about medical school. For a long time, I was content to let it ride on out into obscurity like many medical student blogs before me. Less time during residency (especially a surgical residency), the changing face of medical social media, and increasingly stringent institutional policies would all stack up and make it easier to just stop writing altogether.
But a few things changed my mind. First, I remembered a conversation I had with a good friend of mine who is in a *wink* elite *nudge* branch of the military. During our conversation, we talked about unique and stressful experiences and how it is important to take time to reflect on those experiences to learn and grow from them. I know myself well enough to know that unless I'm writing it on this blog, I won't take the time to write it at all (I don't know what that says about me as a person... but moving on). Secondly, as I nostalgically romped through the end of medical school, I decided to go back and read this whole damn blog in its entirety. Reading posts was like reliving experiences all over again, and I was surprised by how much of those memories had already began to seep away into the dark recesses of my brain. Finally, during a conversation with one of my new co-interns, I discovered that he both read my blog and liked it, despite the fact that we never interacted on the interview trail and hailed from states on different ends of the continental time zone. I was reminded about the common thread of the medical student experience and how many comments in the past have remarked "I'm glad you're writing about this." These things have led me to the conclusion that:
Remembering the process is important.
Over the 4 rapid years of medical school, this blog has evolved from something analogous to a teenage chick flick, to a place for me wax sophomoric about my "difficult" life, to a place to reflect on the incredibly powerful moments laced into and around my chosen profession. But what this blog is is far less important than the purpose is serves... to remember the process.
So I plan to keep on writing. I have no idea how this space will change, only that it will change along with me. Hard to believe over 60,000 of you have been here to this point, but hopefully a few of you stick around for the next chapter. Because tomorrow I'll put on a long white coat for the first time, walk into the hospital, and get to be Dr. MedZag. And I'm sure it'll be a process.