2 April 2008, Bored, but busy

Many of you are on Becky's list as well as mine. Last update, I tried creeping around the issue that our friend Addie and her son Noah went home to Indiana. Becky simply stated it. Since then, our neighbor Kit, Addie's husband, has also gone to Indiana on a medical withdrawal from the semester. Our good friend Ashley has also dropped out of medical school--I'm pretty sure her withdrawal is permanent. What this means is that the good portion of Becky and my social lives have left the island, leaving a big hole in our non-academic lives.

This has really made me think about a lot of things. Both Kit and Ashley were really great students here. I think both of them had 4.0 gpa's. Medical school is hard--everyone who uses a doctor has a good reason to expect that it is. We want well-qualified, intelligent, broadly educated physicians. However, we rarely think about the cost that it has on the students.

One medical school I've heard of was having an orientation ceremony for its incoming new class. The dean of students told all of the students to introduce themselves to the student to their left, and the student to their right. Then, the dean told them to remember that name well, because statistically one of the people they just introduced themselves to will not be graduating. Why don't people graduate from medical school? What I've found thus far is that it usually isn't failing academically. What seems to be the reason is that life derails us.

That's the part that is hard to get out of my head. We can dream all of the dreams we want, but we still have to deal with realities. Here are some harsh realities I've heard of people dealing with: pregnancy, physical illness, family illness, mental illness, lack of interest in medicine, disillusionment, and administrative hijinks. Add to that uncertainty in grades, the sheer difficulty of medicine, culture shock of living in Dominica, and the odd earthquake or hurricane, and you've got a lot of things to keep your dreams as just that, dreams.

We all work hard to make sure that we can attain our dreams. And, with the subject this is on, you could certainly be led to believe that I am second-guessing mine right now. I'm not. I am trying to wrap my brain around the attrition rate at medical school, though. It's really a hard thing to think about because whenever I do, I come to the conclusions of both the students and the schools having unreasonable visions of the other that then make for "irreconcilable differences" when the two mix for up to four years.

What does this all add up to? Well, essentially, I've spent a lot more time in innerspace the last few weeks than gallavanting over Dominica. There's lots to do, but when you lack people to do things with, oftentimes you just wait for the people to come. Sadly, I don't think they're coming before the end of the semester. So, Becky and I will spend a lot of time entertaining ourselves.