Today is July 1. Actually, it’s July 2, but I was thinking about this yesterday and just couldn’t make time to write it down until today. So I’m going to say it’s July 1.
Exactly ten years ago was July 1, 2016, and it was the last day of the life that I decided to leave behind – my last day of general surgery residency. But this note isn’t about July 1. (Then why did she just make such a big deal about it being July 1??) This is about 6 months before that July 1, which is when I actually decided to quit.
Journal entry from January 7, 2016, written by 32 year old me
I think 32 year old me was disappointed in 20 year old me for doing what she thought she was “supposed” to do, and wishing that 20 year old me had thought more carefully about who (and what) she wanted her future self to be. I think 32 year old me felt like she would have had more “options” if she hadn’t chosen the career path she did.
For more context on 20 year old me to understand why 32 year old me said what she said:
- Age 20 was when I was starting to become an adult and having to make grown up decisions like choosing a career path.
- I was getting an undergraduate education at a pretty good school, but I hadn’t declared a major yet, and although I was strong academically/book smart (derogatory), I was very lost in all other aspects of my life, and definitely did not feel like an adult.
- I think what I meant by “limited” had two facets: I felt limited by time, rushed into deciding what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and felt a lot of pressure from the adults in my life to make the decision. (Which is objectively so nuts because I was twenty. An adult baby.) I also felt limited by the actual career options that I believed were available to me. Many of the aforementioned adults were saying it was my decision, but also in the same breath that medical school made the most sense for me, and I didn’t have the confidence or sense of self to ask why or interrogate what they meant. I really just accepted that other people knew what was best for me because I had no clue myself.
- I don’t remember seriously considering any other career path at that time. In retrospect, I can easily say that I was really into computers and the internet and websites and webdesign and should have thought about that as a career, but I truly didn’t perceive any of that as a viable job option. (It’s not that I considered it and then ruled it out… I literally thought that computers were fun and that jobs were boring so there was no way that I could get a job doing something I thought was fun.)
Even though 32 year old me was a little hard on 20 year old me, I’m really proud of 32 year old me for realizing that some future version of them (a.k.a. me) wasn’t going to be happy on the path they were on, and that she did something about it. I’m infinitely thankful to her for having the courage to make a leap into the unknown and for prioritizing finding her own happiness even though it probably looked irrational on the outside.
What would I tell her now, 32 year old me, that version of me from 10 years ago who wrote that emo advice for 20 year old us? Maybe something like this:
- Hi! We’re 42 now and perimenopausing. Ugh lol. I’ll tell you more about that later.
- Telling 20 year old us to figure out who she is is good advice, but don’t rush her. We’re going to figure it out. You have to DO the things first in order to figure out who you are. Tell her she has both more and less time than she thinks she does, and everything is going to be okay1.
- You’re NOT as limited as you think you are right now. You’ve been working 100 hours a week for the last half decade at a job and even though you don’t think you’re burned out, I am telling you this in the gentlest way possible, but that’s absolutely insane, you are. It’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility to be healthier and do what is within your control to not let things get to that state again. Leaving medicine is a great first step :) You got yourself out of there, and having time and brainspace to just THINK (and also being able to sleep in your own bed at night without holding a pager) is going to feel more amazing and energizing than you can imagine. Then you can think more clearly about what your options are and think bigger in the way 20 year old us wasn’t ready to. You are going to be ready.
- You’re going to find some really interesting work and get to do it alongside the smartest and kindest people you’ll ever meet, and you’re going to feel valued and appreciated and like you’re doing something meaningful. It’s going to be hard, but a different kind of hard, a good kind of hard. Residency and clinical medicine are not the real world. You’re also going to learn a lot about who you are without your job and not feel like you have to define yourself by your work (while also enjoying your actual work!), if you can believe it.
- I know there were many times that you wanted to rage quit and throw the pager into the East River (or the Gowanus Canal). More and more as we age, you will appreciate that you kept it together(ish) and left the right way.
- You did not waste ten years of your life. You made the next ten a whole lot better for us.
- You can blame the patriarchy a little bit.
- Are we happy? Happy is complicated, but I promise you we will feel joy on more days than we don’t. We will feel secure in ourselves in a way you don’t think is possible right now. We will feel like if we don’t like the way things are done around here, we can influence the way things are done around here (even if it’s just saying out loud that we don’t like the way things are done around here, which can be a lot more powerful than you think). We will upgrade the espresso machine to a fancy one2!
Epilogue
July 1, 2016. My last day. My actual last day was June 30, but I was on call, so I spent the requisite 27ish hours in the hospital, supervising the juniors and students, seeing consults, checking on the sick patients, etc, and left the morning of July 1. I remember it was pretty light in terms of consults, and I got a few hours of sleep – a gift from the universe. Around 7 am, I called the attending on call to let them know whatever had happened overnight for the last time ever, signed out to the incoming resident (who like all residents and medical students every year had been promoted overnight on July 1) for the last time ever, and because I had already done all the administrative things I had to do to leave, all I had to do was grab my bike from the call room and ride away into the sunset (or, because it was around 8 am, into morning rush hour traffic). I didn’t care. I was so, so happy I can’t even describe. I was probably sleep deprived and dehydrated and maybe a little delirious, but I only remember feeling elated and intensely optimistic and FREE. Like the last day of school before summer break and you don’t even bring your backpack. That free.
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I mean in terms of the career stuff you are so worried about, everything will be okay. The world at large is actually going to get worse in a lot of ways [laughs nervously]. I won’t go into too much detail, but he does end up winning the election, and that’s not even the worst part. But we can talk about that later. U doing anything after this? ↩︎
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When I graduated from medical school in 2010, my sister gifted me an entry level espresso machine that I used every single day throughout my residency and for years after. It lasted a total of 15 years. I actually still have it in my hall closet because I can’t bear to part with it. I did not set many work-life boundaries during residency, but one non-negotiable for myself was that I would not leave my house in the morning without having an espresso and pooping (sequentially). It was one of the only forms of self care that I did during that time. I remember telling that to one of the junior residents (to explain why I was late that day) and her eyes got real wide and she whispered “I’m so jealous”. To this day I don’t know if she was talking about the espresso or the poo. ↩︎