M4 year has been oddly chaotic. Where to even begin?
1. I finished my peds sub-I last month. The last week and a half were awesome and really renewed my desire to pursue peds. While on night float it was just me, a senior resident, the nurses, and the attending physician that I rarely saw or talked to. I liked the smaller team structure and I enjoyed interacting more closely with the nurses and got the opportunity to know all the patients on the service a bit better. I also became really efficient literally overnight and that efficiency carried over when I returned to the day shift. Unfortunately I'm still worried that my comparatively poor performance the first 3 weeks caused irreparable damage to my grade and comments, which could pose an issue later when I interview for residency programs.
2. I'm taking
USMLE Step 2 CK at the end of this month. I'm so not ready!! I keep hearing that most people do better on Step 2 CK than on Step 1, and I desperately hope that's true because I didn't do nearly as well on Step 1 as I had expected. :-/ Must study study study!!!
3. I'm working on my
ERAS application to pediatric residency programs. I'm partway through but I honestly expected to be mostly done by now. I just haven't had the energy to dedicate sufficient time towards it. There's so many little things to do and complete! And I have to really do some introspection into what kinds of programs are a good fit for me. Ugh.
4. I have to touch base with all my writers for letters of recommendation. In addition I need a letter from the Chair of Pediatrics. Fortunately, in an oddly deus ex machina fashion, that bit worked out far better than I could've dreamed. So now I'm just waiting for one letter writer to get back to me as to when he can meet with me to finalize things.
5. I went out on a date with this guy a couple weeks back (he considered it a date, I thought we were just hanging out having brunch - clearly I suck at such things). He's about my age, is a good conversationalist, is witty. We've been flirting a little bit back and forth via the app we first chatted on (he has limited texts, so I avoid texting him too much). Hopefully there may be more?
6. Last month I visited a friend in a city about an hour west of me. It was a lot of fun. I also ended up (unintentionally?) jacking him off . . . while his boyfriend was out of town. Oops.
So yeah. Oddly chaotic beginning to what's supposed to be the best year of medical school. But these first few months are death.
