stethoscope

A classmate of mine writes a blog about her medical school experiences. I don't know if her blog receives heavy traffic. I don't feel inclined to link it here, because I would rather not connect myself in any matter that my classmates in real life may discover me here. But J sent me a text about this girl's newest blog post, and I felt inclined to take a look.

In short--it was a bit surprising for me to read. As a bit of context (from my point of view), this girl, whom I shall refer to as Emeraude, is one of those girls that everyone knew almost immediately. Truth be told, I was almost scared of her at first because of how much power she seemingly wielded. In the beginning of the year, when everyone still went to class for anatomy lab and the class dynamics were still a novelty, gossip and secrets were abound. Allegedly, Emeraude knew them all. She was hardly a Regina George in terms of deviousness (in fact, she was generally nice in person, to me at least), but she imposed an intimidating figure precisely because you didn't know what she thought of you, and how she chose to deploy such info could easily influence how the rest of the class thought about you as well.

That, in part, was a big reason behind why my goal in the beginning of med school was to stay under the radar as much as possible. Regarding Emeraude, I tried to be cordial to her whenever we crossed paths. But she and I didn't make much of an effort to become more than friendly acquaintances, and I was at peace with this. On a surface level, she struck me as my complete opposite--extroverted, in the spotlight, etc. And I did not exactly see eye-to-eye regarding her enthusiasm for keeping up with the gossip on others.

Back to the topic at hand. The bulk of her blog post was about loneliness. Specifically, that she felt lonely in medical school, and that she felt as if it were incredibly easy to amass social friends but that she was amiss to name even five people whom she felt would be there for her if she needed someone. She speculated if we professional students were too selfish to invest in more legitimate relationships, as opposed to her close friendships during her undergraduate years.

I was a bit startled by her admission of loneliness--after all, she is someone who takes immense pride in having gone out of her way to meet every single person in our class. But I have to admit that I found myself disagreeing with a lot of the conjectures she was making, which is why I felt compelled to write my own post.

Sure, I've been lonely here too. I've written about it before on this blog as well. But her experiences of loneliness do not strike me as something unique to our medical school--or any medical school in general. It'll happen anytime you move to a new place and have to rebuild your social niche brick by brick. Friends of mine who found jobs in new locations post-graduation had to deal with the same loneliness as well. To me, it's part of the greater scheme of transitioning into full-fledged adulthood. You quickly learn that if you're feeling lonely, the simplest thing to do is simply reach out to others first. Because more often than not, someone out there is also lonely, but they're just sitting on their haunches waiting for someone to find them first, either out of fear or out of pride.

There's no shame in texting a friend, "I miss you. Can we hang out soon?"

On my end, I would have to admit that I may not have amassed a huge cohort of social friends here. But I can definitely think of five friends I would immediately call if I had an emergency. Granted, this has always been my nature--to have a few really close friends as opposed to a large social circle. But it's not impossible to do this here, and I don't think it's as difficult as my classmate makes it out to be. I didn't build these friendships by going out to all our class block parties and class social events. These were cultivated from all the little, quiet moments--studying together at a coffee shop, sitting on the pier and relaxing after an exam, inviting someone over for dinner while we study biochem, making a quick Costco trip together.

It's true -- friendships take work to cultivate, and it can be especially challenging when we feel compelled to study during all of our waking hours. But if there's anything I learned at Duke that has stuck with me even now, it's this: You don't have time to do things. You make time for them.