Wow! How time flies. Seems like that's how i start of all the posts i have managed to create this year. It's been hard! So hard, with patches of brightness thrown in here and there, but I have grown tremendously this year. I have matured so much and I am finally expressing myself without fear or shame and I guess that makes all the torment and self doubt that i have gone through worth it.
As usual, I create the post in my head but then when I actually sit here to type it up, I do not know where to begin. I guess I will start from the beginning.
I am about to wrap up my surgery rotation. 3 months of sleep deficit, food deficit, time for me deficit, time for God and family deficit and I could go on... A friend of mine predicted that I will end up a surgeon. LOL. The amazing thing is that I am being recruited to be a surgeon, apparently the surgeons I have worked with have identified me as having great potential as a future surgeon.
I still do not want to be a surgeon, the lifestyle is too rigorous. I want to get married and have children and be there for my children. I want them to know me. Surgery is even more jealous than medical school. It wants you to give up everything for it, and I can't do that. I mean throughout this rotation, I was in the hospital every single morning by 5am for weeks at a stretch. In the other rotations, we at least had a mandatory day off during the week. In surgery, we are supposed to have 10 hours between shifts and keep an 80 hour week. I was on call every 4 days, which means I spend 24 sometimes more hours in the hospital. I can't live like that for five years! No way. And then there's my age, even though i may look mad young, or as one attending put it, 21 lol, the fact remains, i am going to be 32 this year. I have three years to pop up out a baby before my eggs degenerate for good. LOL.
Nah, my heart does not lie in Surgery. My heart lies in pediatrics, a place where they are not even checking for me. I knew I loved Peds, when I would come home after a tiring day on wards and I would still stay up all night studying and reading. I come home after surgery and I pop in a movie. I half heartedly study; my mind is just not there.
It feels good to be wanted though, especially since each rotation has been so disappointing, whether I work hard o, whether i work little o, i get the same grade: student performs as expected, and to me, it's the kiss of death, especially since I have no desire whatsoever to stay in Boston for my residency. Coupled with my average board scores, I need serious prayer in order to get into a residency of my choice in the city of my choice.
I cheer myself up though by remembering how God has seen me through. I remind myself that it is not the middle that counts but the end. I remember how I was put through a lot of stress in my last job before medical school. I used to work at a helpdesk at some uni, and it was such a diverse workplace, (the surgery residency at my school is very diverse too, unlike all the other residency programs at my school which is blond and whitebred. not a spelling error). I guess the powers that be was not feeling that diversity too much, so they decided to give us all competency tests. We had to score a minimum of 90, we were not given any study materials and we were not even shown our scores after the exam, nor were we allowed to know how we missed the mark. I remember telling God that if He could just see me through August of that year, which was when I was planning to be done with the premed classes i was taking at the time, I was going to give Him $1000 as a thanksgiving offering. To me then, and even now, $1000 was a whole lot of money and I started to plot how I would save a bit of my paycheck so I could fulfill my vow. I told myself that all I had to do was hold on until August of next year, after which I would run off to naija for 3 months, work on my webdesign skills, (I used to run a webzine about boston at that time; work on my photography skills and so on. My ass got fired along with the rest of my coworkers in November. I cried. Then I dried my eyes and realized that they had given me $10K as severance pay plus i could collect unemployment for 3 months or whatever the maximum is. Because they had fired me in November, I had to drop out of my classes ( I refused to pay for those classes and i guess i could have negotiated that they pay for my classes). I decided to re-enroll in Umass Boston but the next semester did not start until January. So I had 3 months free. In short, God gave me my heart's desires in a way I did not expect it. 1) the stress of the job was gone. i hated that job so much.. I used to be late every day even though i started at 10 in the morning and even though i went to early morning prayer every day at 6am. I hated going to work! Hated it. 2) i got to go to nigeria for three months since i had nothing else to do and i had money. 3) i paid off my remaining student loans. 4) i dedicated myself to studying for my mcats and retaking my classes because the severance pay + the weekly unemployment checks meant i didn't have to work at all. 4) despite the three month break, I still finished all my classes and took my MCATS in August. 5) Despite all the naysayers, I passed my classes with flying colors, passed my mcats with flying colors and got an interview at almost all the medical schools I applied to, plus got recruited for and interviewed at the #2 medical school in the country at the time, they even paid the application fee. The only school that did not interview me was Tulane and well, we all know what happened to New Orleans in 2005... I actually wanted to go there too, they had a hot program in Tropical Medicine. 6) oh yeah, how could i forget, i got into medical school, my number one choice. 7) and when I was done with interviewing, in fact, while i was at my last interview (although i didn't know it was my last interview at the time), i got the call that I should come in for a job interview. I got the job. God just rocks man! Can someone shout allelujah! 8) last but not least, what is the tithe on $10k? enough said.
I remember during all those times feeling so hopeless and depressed and discouraged but then God would just show up and show off and do some amazing things that all I could say was wow - He loves me.
So right now, in the midst of my discouraging grades, I hold on to that testimony and other testimonies and I trust Him, that as always, He will work it out for me.
Gotta run. I am 43!!! minutes behind schedule. Yepa! The head of the clinical site i was posted to has warned me not to embarass her so I had better study. I would like to do well on one rotation.
in a minute...
As usual, I create the post in my head but then when I actually sit here to type it up, I do not know where to begin. I guess I will start from the beginning.
I am about to wrap up my surgery rotation. 3 months of sleep deficit, food deficit, time for me deficit, time for God and family deficit and I could go on... A friend of mine predicted that I will end up a surgeon. LOL. The amazing thing is that I am being recruited to be a surgeon, apparently the surgeons I have worked with have identified me as having great potential as a future surgeon.
I still do not want to be a surgeon, the lifestyle is too rigorous. I want to get married and have children and be there for my children. I want them to know me. Surgery is even more jealous than medical school. It wants you to give up everything for it, and I can't do that. I mean throughout this rotation, I was in the hospital every single morning by 5am for weeks at a stretch. In the other rotations, we at least had a mandatory day off during the week. In surgery, we are supposed to have 10 hours between shifts and keep an 80 hour week. I was on call every 4 days, which means I spend 24 sometimes more hours in the hospital. I can't live like that for five years! No way. And then there's my age, even though i may look mad young, or as one attending put it, 21 lol, the fact remains, i am going to be 32 this year. I have three years to pop up out a baby before my eggs degenerate for good. LOL.
Nah, my heart does not lie in Surgery. My heart lies in pediatrics, a place where they are not even checking for me. I knew I loved Peds, when I would come home after a tiring day on wards and I would still stay up all night studying and reading. I come home after surgery and I pop in a movie. I half heartedly study; my mind is just not there.
It feels good to be wanted though, especially since each rotation has been so disappointing, whether I work hard o, whether i work little o, i get the same grade: student performs as expected, and to me, it's the kiss of death, especially since I have no desire whatsoever to stay in Boston for my residency. Coupled with my average board scores, I need serious prayer in order to get into a residency of my choice in the city of my choice.
I cheer myself up though by remembering how God has seen me through. I remind myself that it is not the middle that counts but the end. I remember how I was put through a lot of stress in my last job before medical school. I used to work at a helpdesk at some uni, and it was such a diverse workplace, (the surgery residency at my school is very diverse too, unlike all the other residency programs at my school which is blond and whitebred. not a spelling error). I guess the powers that be was not feeling that diversity too much, so they decided to give us all competency tests. We had to score a minimum of 90, we were not given any study materials and we were not even shown our scores after the exam, nor were we allowed to know how we missed the mark. I remember telling God that if He could just see me through August of that year, which was when I was planning to be done with the premed classes i was taking at the time, I was going to give Him $1000 as a thanksgiving offering. To me then, and even now, $1000 was a whole lot of money and I started to plot how I would save a bit of my paycheck so I could fulfill my vow. I told myself that all I had to do was hold on until August of next year, after which I would run off to naija for 3 months, work on my webdesign skills, (I used to run a webzine about boston at that time; work on my photography skills and so on. My ass got fired along with the rest of my coworkers in November. I cried. Then I dried my eyes and realized that they had given me $10K as severance pay plus i could collect unemployment for 3 months or whatever the maximum is. Because they had fired me in November, I had to drop out of my classes ( I refused to pay for those classes and i guess i could have negotiated that they pay for my classes). I decided to re-enroll in Umass Boston but the next semester did not start until January. So I had 3 months free. In short, God gave me my heart's desires in a way I did not expect it. 1) the stress of the job was gone. i hated that job so much.. I used to be late every day even though i started at 10 in the morning and even though i went to early morning prayer every day at 6am. I hated going to work! Hated it. 2) i got to go to nigeria for three months since i had nothing else to do and i had money. 3) i paid off my remaining student loans. 4) i dedicated myself to studying for my mcats and retaking my classes because the severance pay + the weekly unemployment checks meant i didn't have to work at all. 4) despite the three month break, I still finished all my classes and took my MCATS in August. 5) Despite all the naysayers, I passed my classes with flying colors, passed my mcats with flying colors and got an interview at almost all the medical schools I applied to, plus got recruited for and interviewed at the #2 medical school in the country at the time, they even paid the application fee. The only school that did not interview me was Tulane and well, we all know what happened to New Orleans in 2005... I actually wanted to go there too, they had a hot program in Tropical Medicine. 6) oh yeah, how could i forget, i got into medical school, my number one choice. 7) and when I was done with interviewing, in fact, while i was at my last interview (although i didn't know it was my last interview at the time), i got the call that I should come in for a job interview. I got the job. God just rocks man! Can someone shout allelujah! 8) last but not least, what is the tithe on $10k? enough said.
I remember during all those times feeling so hopeless and depressed and discouraged but then God would just show up and show off and do some amazing things that all I could say was wow - He loves me.
So right now, in the midst of my discouraging grades, I hold on to that testimony and other testimonies and I trust Him, that as always, He will work it out for me.
Gotta run. I am 43!!! minutes behind schedule. Yepa! The head of the clinical site i was posted to has warned me not to embarass her so I had better study. I would like to do well on one rotation.
in a minute...
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