It's difficult to explain (or even comprehend) the extent to which medical school has changed my perspective on life. Medicine as a career aside, just going through the process of becoming a doctor and being in a clinical environment is... a character building experience to say the least.
I was talking to my best friend and struggling to put into words what has and what hasn't changed about me, but the only logical way I can explain it is this: imagine that your life is a canvas (tabula rasa and all that) and all your life experiences are shapes drawn on that canvas. Everything you go through in life leaves some mark and the overall 'picture' changes with time. Some situations will only be represented by a small speck somewhere on the canvas - a miniature detail that might only come up in conversation at 4 am while grabbing a kebab from the van outside the club (you know those conversations). Other life experiences will be so defining and monumental that they will form a central part of the narrative of who you are - if you have a moon crescent in the middle of your canvas, people who pass you by in life will start a conversation with you about the sky.
Well now imagine that you're walking around with your canvas. Unbothered. Moisturised. In your lane. Focused. Flourishing. And then someone spills a glass of wine over it. The experiences that formed who you are - all those shapes and doodles - they're still there, yet somehow they've all changed. They're different because you're different. And you notice that. Heck, even other people notice that. And then you start walking around with this painting, trying to re-interpret and, in turn, get re-interpreted by others. Everything is just the same. Everything is totally different.
P.S. Part of what attracted me to medical school is that it is so intimately linked with thinking of and acting on those bigger questions: life and death, what makes us human, where can we draw a line between body, mind and person... As far as jobs go, it is definitely a unique one and I'm not sure how I feel about it. As far as life experiences go, my mind is blown daily and I think that philosophy courses at university should definitely feature a rotation through medical school just because of how fundamental the experience can be (you have been warned).
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