46 Days to Go
I’m
sure I’m not the only incoming medical student my age that has loved scrubs
since I first saw it. I watched the first three seasons as reruns and the
moment I caught up, I watched it obsessively. It was, without question, my
favorite show. For the same reason that I get anxious around the pre-med
society people, seeing the possibility—even the farfetched hysterical one
portrayed in scrubs—of my future filled me with dread. Even thinking about it
would give me cold sweats and a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
As the
fall went on, and the spring began, and I got my acceptance to St. George’s, I
still felt the anxiety. Scrubs, Grey’s Anatomy, and Private Practice—shows I
watched almost religiously in my first two years of college—only made the
anxiety worse. I would avoid episodes of Scrubs on Netflix, change the subject
as quickly as I could when one of the three shows came up in conversation. I
told people I stopped watching Grey’s because the “plotlines got too
unrealistic.”
It’s
only now, as the anxiety is starting to fade and the reality is taking its
place, that anything has changed. This morning, rushing to get out the door so
I could make the train on time, I grabbed the first DVD in the messy cabinet;
to give myself something to watch on the train. I didn’t even look at it.
As the
train pulled away from Hackettstown station, I worked on budgeting out my
financial aid for the fall. I looked in my bag and pulled out the DVD. Without
my choice, and a 2 hour train ride ahead, I popped in the first disk of the 4th
season of scrubs, and with a twinge of anxiety, pushed play.
No
sinking feeling. No dread. My stomach felt fine. I descended the mountain of
med school applications and dredged my way through the valley of interviews and
decision emails and climbed the mountain—which may have only existed in my own
mind—of going to St. George’s, and suddenly I found myself on the other side looking
out over the world, and I realized that my entire future is in front of me, and
there’s nothing to be anxious or nervous about anymore.
Well
until the first exam…
No comments:
Post a Comment