almost done

It's hard to believe I'm almost done with my second year of medical school. It's really flown by. I've done the best I can do, but sometimes it seems it can never be enough. I'm going to miss my medical school friends when they vanish into the wards. In some ways it's kind of sad because I've only just know started to get to know some of my quieter classmates. I feel more comfortable with the physical exam, coming up with a differential diagnosis (except for kidney diseases!), talking with patients and taking a history. I'm better at memorizing things (marginally). I have a much better appreciation of the human body in health and in sickness. In some ways it's a little sad to realize that my friends will be going onto the wards without me. It's almost anticlimactic in a way not to make that transition - they are all looking at their clinical schedules, celebrating or moaning over the order of their clerkships, choosing electives that interest them. I think it's more that second year builds up so much to transitioning to the hospital that it feels strange not to go, in a way. But it's not what I came here to do - at least, not for a while. I'm also glad that I may have the opportunity - if all works out - to be a clinical student in free clinic so I will have the chance to in a small way also make that transition and take on additional responsibilities in patient care, even as I enter graduate school full-time. I think it'll be a small taste of the life of a physician scientist: always juggling, doing one thing will trying to maintain another skill. I like that kind of thing - having multiple things going on. It makes life more interesting.