Tomorrow I Begin My Clinical Year
After Midnight
Dear Future Melody,
It’s the night before I begin my major clinical year.
I’ve spent the last 2.5 hours helping Jenny prepare for her boarding school interviews and I’ve laid out my scrubs. To be honest, the scrubs are a little small and there’s a voice in my head whispering that I spent too long on Jenny’s interview prep, but I have a feeling everything will be fine.
I start on Pediatrics (as you know) and I am filled with a mixture of feelings I’m not sure how to be honest about. I am excited- not just for Pediatrics but for every single rotation. I mean it. I am excited to care for patients. I am excited to remember why I decided to pursue all of this learning and training. I am excited to help my teammates. I am excited to witness healing. I’m also anxious. Everyone keeps telling us that our greatest source of anxiety right now is likely that we don’t know what to expect. I think that’s part of it. I don’t know what will happen when I walk into the hospital tomorrow. I’m not sure what form my days will take. It’s unclear how much we’ll be asked to do or take on, but I am also nervous because I’m worried that I haven’t done enough to prepare. I’m nervous because I can’t shake the feeling that I should’ve done more. I’m worried that I don’t know enough medicine to correctly apply a band-aid.
Dear future Melody - I hope that when you read this again you’re filled with a sense of pride. I hope you’re proud of your effort. I hope this year challenged you in more ways than you could have imagined but that you continued to put one foot in front of the other. I hope you were a good human. That’s important.
Dear future Melody - I wonder if you’ll know what kind of doctor you’re going to be. I’ve had my sights set on the OR for as long as I can remember. I wonder if now, as you re-read this, you can fully envision yourself as a surgeon, or if you’ve fallen in love with another specialty. I can’t wait to know what you know.
Dear future Melody - I wonder how many times you’ve cried in the last year. I know you thought about family a lot, about grandma, about life. But I hope the sad tears were few and far between, that the happy ones flowed like a river, and that you kept the waterworks hidden from your attendings.
Dear future Melody - I pray that you have grown to fully appreciate all the ways in which your path here will make you a better physician, that you’ve continued to nurture the relationships that give you life, that you’ve made time for the people that care about you, and that you’ve come to live by the same words you preach to little Jenny: It’s not about being the best. It’s about trying your best.
Dear future Melody - I hope all of these nerves were for nothing. I hope you are happy with “how you did”. If you are, YOU REALLY DID THAT. If you aren’t, YOU REALLY DID THAT. I’m here to remind you that being here is no small feat. I’m proud of you.
I hope you’ve learned a lot but never at the expense of a patient or compassionate moment. I have believed in you from the time I was in pigtails and first had hopes of “going to Harvard” and “being a doctor”. I hope when you refer to this letter again you bring with you a list (short or long) of patients you’ve impacted, and never forget all of the ways they’ve impacted you.
Dear future Melody - Great work.
