Recently, thousands of new residency and fellowship graduates have earned their wings and will be, mostly metaphorically, hanging out their shingles. Sadly, though, as the excitement of finally finishing training after decades of schooling wears off, e…
At the moment, I should be studying for my first round of boards, but there is something I can’t get off my mind: sacrifice. If you ask a medical student what they have had to sacrifice to study medicine, the list could go on for days. It could be smal…
Whenever someone asks me what year of medical school I am currently in, I answer that I am a “four-out-of-five.” To those outside the milieu of Stanford Medicine, this is an odd response — four-out-of-five of what? But at Stanford, th…
I excel at intellectualization. It is a fickle defense mechanism, allowing the observer to fully comprehend the situation in front of them without fully engaging in the emotional context. Throughout my medical training, intellectualization has aided me…
I worked with someone (not a physician, but that doesn’t really matter here) whose title was “assistant director.” He and I quickly recognized that we worked well together: His head brimmed with big visions and ideas, whereas my head brimmed with plans…
I wasn’t as happy as I expected to be when I walked out of the hospital on my last day in medical school. But then again, there was little to celebrate — my last few patients had terminal cancer, a stroke, and end-stage liver disease from a…
One of the most common experiences faced by a medical student is being asked for health care advice from a friend or family member. My initial reaction to these questions is usually something along the lines of, “Are you sure you want to be askin…
The residency interview trail quickly becomes a lonesome journey, so when I was on it this winter, I’d usually have the hotel room television turned on for some background noise and often find myself watching ESPN’s SportsCenter. On my last interview i…
I’ve finally stopped thinking about the process of getting into medical school. But with friends going through the application cycle, waiting on and making decisions, I’ve been reflecting on my process and remembering just how terrible the whole thing …
In 2015, I began having in-depth conversations with directors of service, students, and residents about their educational needs. I asked, “What do you need? How can the library budget help you to solve your problems?” Everyone was thrilled to have this…
