What do you do when your brain has reached full saturation? How do you proceed to inject a mountain's worth of information into your skull when it's full to the brim and you can't find even the tiniest free space? I wish I knew the answers to those questions, I wish there was an easy answer.
Being a medical student is like having a suitcase for a brain. You start packing, and at first it goes really well, you fold everything and put it in neatly and think to yourself that of course it will all fit in. But then time starts to fly by, seconds whizzing past and turning into hours and the packing isn't anywhere near done. Sweat starts to bead on your forehead, a cold panic creeping up your back as you desperately try to ignore that voice that's telling you that it won't be enough, that there just isn't space. You fight the voice away, ignoring it with everything you've got and keep packing. You just keep folding things with shaking fingers, making it harder to stay neat, harder to stay optimistic, harder to find enough space.
You keep working, fumbling through your task with nothing keeping you going but a sense of dedication, panic and the tick-tock of the clock. And then suddenly you look up, and you see for the first time that the bag is full, it's more than full, and there isn't room for anything more. The clock keeps ticking, your despair keeps growing as you stare at the piles of information around you and wonder how on earth you'll find a way to make this work. Panic, despair, fear and overwhelming exhaustion are your only allies as you stare an undoable task in the face. You wonder if you jumped on the bag, if you sat on it with all your might would you be able to close it? Can you find extra space?
The strangest thing of all is that even though time never stops ticking by, threatening you with that looming deadline, and even though there truly isn't enough space, in the end you make it work. Med students are magicians, we stare an impossible task in the eyes and with a battle scream coming straight from our souls we bend the laws of physics, we create invisible extra compartments, we shove that information in and we close the bag and we do it all in time. That is a fact. But in that period of time before those magical powers kick in, desperation and doubt are our only friends and we find ourselves blinking back tears, wondering how on earth to make physics bend?
Being a medical student is like having a suitcase for a brain. You start packing, and at first it goes really well, you fold everything and put it in neatly and think to yourself that of course it will all fit in. But then time starts to fly by, seconds whizzing past and turning into hours and the packing isn't anywhere near done. Sweat starts to bead on your forehead, a cold panic creeping up your back as you desperately try to ignore that voice that's telling you that it won't be enough, that there just isn't space. You fight the voice away, ignoring it with everything you've got and keep packing. You just keep folding things with shaking fingers, making it harder to stay neat, harder to stay optimistic, harder to find enough space.
You keep working, fumbling through your task with nothing keeping you going but a sense of dedication, panic and the tick-tock of the clock. And then suddenly you look up, and you see for the first time that the bag is full, it's more than full, and there isn't room for anything more. The clock keeps ticking, your despair keeps growing as you stare at the piles of information around you and wonder how on earth you'll find a way to make this work. Panic, despair, fear and overwhelming exhaustion are your only allies as you stare an undoable task in the face. You wonder if you jumped on the bag, if you sat on it with all your might would you be able to close it? Can you find extra space?
The strangest thing of all is that even though time never stops ticking by, threatening you with that looming deadline, and even though there truly isn't enough space, in the end you make it work. Med students are magicians, we stare an impossible task in the eyes and with a battle scream coming straight from our souls we bend the laws of physics, we create invisible extra compartments, we shove that information in and we close the bag and we do it all in time. That is a fact. But in that period of time before those magical powers kick in, desperation and doubt are our only friends and we find ourselves blinking back tears, wondering how on earth to make physics bend?
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