Goodbye third year

If nothing else inspires me to blog these days, I should at least mention here that a big milestone passed in September - we finished (survived) another year of medical school.

I wonder if perhaps I am more negative than other wives about medical school. I see blogs from some of my med school friends and they seem cheery and don't mention much about what their husbands are going through. I know putting into words how I honestly feel on this topic will result in one very whiny, depressing and boring blog.

However, the mood has struck and against my better judgment I will now proceed to complain.

Medical. school. is. a. beat. down. I. hate. it.

It is a never ending list of things to complete, hoops to jump through and tests to study for. It costs a fortune. It is a huge time suck. It overshadows everything, even the fun moments. It is always looming, demanding, a monster needing to be fed constantly.

To say that I will be glad when it is over is a gross understatement.

So I am compelled and happy to report, there is less than one year left. All signs indicate C.J. will graduate in May.

Not that it will get any easier then. He will start a residency in July which will mean an additional three to four years of long hours and hard work. We will face a mound of debt that we are completely ignoring at the moment. But maybe (I can only hope) it will feel like less of a struggle. 

Just to recap what happened in the last few months of third year - there was an internal medicine rotation with a lengthy patient case study due every week. There was an application process that included busy work and more busy work and asking for letters of recommendation and writing a personal statement and researching programs and uploading information. There was a board exam that required weeks of non-stop studying followed by lots of anxiety while waiting for the test results.

It seemed there would be a break then. The hard part was over. The test was done, the application was in, the fourth year electives began and they are, after all, electives. No pressure.

But of course there was pressure. Anxiety and fear and disappointment as the rejection letters started showing up and far outnumbering the interview invitations. There is that hard, cold, bitter truth staring us in the face - there is a disadvantage to being a foreign medical student. There is a stigma. Yes, C.J. will be a doctor. Will he be the doctor he wants to be in a place he wants to live at the program of his choice? Likely not.

Then there are a few interview requests. They trickle in slowly. This is very good. But wait, it requires plane tickets and hotel rooms and researching and practicing and scheduling and planning and thank you notes. More time suck, more pressure, more endless "what if" conversations about places like Michigan and Newark and West Virginia.

Not to mention the sobering feeling that on one day in March, our fate will be decided by a computer algorithm. Not just the fate of the next few years, but the fate of the rest of our lives. Because we will make a commitment to one specialty that will dictate our life style and potentially where and how we live for a few more decades.

Assuming we match. There is always the chance of not matching, and that is a scary thought that I'm pretty sure keeps C.J. awake at night.

I am encouraged that we've made it this far. I like to think about three years behind us. It seems we can make it six more months. We have done some fun things lately, we don't have a bad life. I am not walking across a scorched earth in Somalia with a starving baby, I like to remind myself.

But if I said this experience wasn't hard, I would be lying. If I just posted pictures of apple picking and pumpkin patches and the latest adorable thing Liam is doing, I wouldn't be painting the whole picture.

There is something dominating our lives and consuming all our thoughts and expending all our emotions. It is the beast called med school. And we are now in our fourth year.