Jumping Right In...

For those of you who know me and those who do not yet, my name is Jess. If you would like to know more about me and my background, you should check out the "About Me" section of this blog. However, I believe that the main thing you should know about me is that I am a first-year medical student. That title in itself consumes my life currently.

This blog started as a nagging idea between classes. It was an idea that grew in the afternoons on my walk home from school and would spring new ideas during errands and other times when I least expected it. So hopefully these ideas will continue to grow and be cultivated through this endeavor. I will be honest. I have no idea how often I will be able to post, but I already have plenty of stories to tell you all.

So I mentioned previously that I am in medical school. I moved from my beloved city of Birmingham, where I grew up and went to college, to Dothan, a small city surrounded by farmlands. That in itself was an extreme culture shock. I am used to interstates and restaurants being on almost every corner. Now, the closest restaurants to my friends and I are fast food places right by the hospital. Wal-Mart and Target stores were right down the road in my hometown, but now they are on the other side of town. Again, it has taken me some getting used to. The main thoroughfare is The Circle. There might be an entire post on that topic later as I still don't understand why someone wanted to build the main road in the shape of a circle.

So everyone has told me that medical school is like trying to drink out of a fire hose. Personally, I believe that medical school is more like a riptide. You believe that you are swimming fine, and then, before you know it, you are underneath the water, struggling to reach the surface for air. I use this metaphor because I never felt like the material was too much until the week before the exam. I would believe that I was staying caught up with the dozens of lectures until one day I felt like I was drowning beneath the amount of material. I will admit that I have gotten better at swimming and managing the material, but there are still some days where I am overwhelmed. Well, I will definitely write more later. I just have class in fifteen minutes.

Remember, you just gotta keep swimming some days.

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