A super common narrative surrounding medical school is that you will basically disappear from real life for 4+ years due to the workload. I want to elaborate on this because I don’t necessary think this is a true or healthy narrative. To be fair, I have only been in school for 3ish months and have not had a normal medical school experience due to the pandemic. However, in these 3 months I’ve started to see how my life doesn’t have to involve only school. I was going to say that my life doesn’t revolve around school but, to be honest, it does. Still, I am able to work with my school schedule to make time for myself, family and friends.
I came into school thinking that I would study 24/7 and it did start off that way. I moved and didn’t have much else going on besides schoolwork, especially because we were discouraged from meeting up with our classmates. Over the past couple of months I’ve realized that studying 24/7 does not work. I still struggle with the guilt of “I should be studying” because there is ALWAYS something I could be doing. But, I’ve become more comfortable with taking time waking up late (like I did today) if I feel super tired, going to the dog park with my family or watching a movie with my boyfriend. I have also started to make more of an effort to make friends at school outside of study sessions. I don’t study 24/7 anymore and I don’t think it has effected my knowledge or grades.
This isn’t meant to make medical school seem easy because it is not. I still spend 10-12 hours a day studying on most week days and a similar amount on the weekends before a test. I never go a full day without any studying (because I always at least do my Anki Reviews). So as you can see, my life does revolve around school and sometimes I miss out on things I would love to do. The point of this post is really that work-life balance is important and if you spend all day, every day studying and give up your social life, self-care and sleep you won’t succeed. Find something that makes you smile and do it daily, keep in touch with the important people in your life and remember to get enough sleep.
Happy Wednesday!
Xoxo
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