Day 95: The OUWB family3 min read

Today’s inane image of the day:

THESE ARE ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. I have to say… the U.S. is definitely missing out on these Coffee Crisps! [Kudos to my favorite resident/Big Sib program coordinator for passing these out during his Radiology lecture!]

Imagine this: 50 medical students dressed in various types of gym apparel sprawled across a large Beaumont Hospital classroom with every square inch of the carpet completely covered in colorful beach towels and yoga mats. As the lights are turned off, a meditation audio plays. Interspersed are extended moments of silence when suddenly every slight noise seems to make a racket. As time passes, you can hear the breathing rate slow to a steady, calm pace. After a few more moments pass, you hear one student’s slow, steady breaths turn into snores.

Doesn’t sound much like class, eh? Well, that’s what the last 15 minutes of PRISM entailed. And even though this may sound ridiculous, I think people really enjoyed that forced decompression time [even if it involved a slightly creepy voice guiding the meditation] — I definitely welcomed it after today’s… events.

Let me start by saying that sometimes my emotions get the best of me. I recognize that this is both a huge weakness and strength — weakness because I’m going into a high-stress field that sometimes requires us to repress our natural thoughts and feelings, but strength because I feel like emotions lead to deeper interpersonal connection. Anyway, I discovered last night that one of my grades that has been up for at least a couple of months now took a downward turn. Now, this doesn’t really affect whether or not I pass the course, and I already lost enough points that honors wasn’t going to happen… but for some reason, this really upset me. It’s probably a combination of the fact that our TBL [Acetaminophen overdose] was relatively difficult this morning and that I have been plagued with a dark cloud of disappointing academic performance, but I really shouldn’t have had reacted the way that I did.

Since I couldn’t seem to hold everything in, I had to leave the classroom to get some air.

I was fine after a little bit and actually quite content with everything after a couple hours. Why? Well, you see, when you matriculate into OUWB, you become a part of a family. Sure, I don’t get to hang out with all 49 of my peers on a regular basis, but we all are there for one another. Today, two of my TBL group members really stepped up and made sure that I was alright… honestly, after their comforting words/presence, everything seemed to lighten up.

Plus, the first speaker for our PRISM meditation session mentioned a man and his wife who were in a hurry to make a flight. En route to the airport,  they ended up getting a flat tire. After quickly resolving that, they got to the airport, didn’t bother dropping off the rental car and ran to their gate. As they tried to rush through security explaining that they needed to catch their fight, someone stopped them and told them that they had already missed the flight — but it had crashed upon takeoff.

When you put it all into perspective, sometimes those little setbacks have a profound positive impact on the rest of your life.

Today’s medical school fact of the day: [A quote from Kaivan during our PRISM group discussion] “In undergrad, you’re a big fish in a little pond, but when you get into medical school, you’re a big fish… with all the other big fish…” [this was meant to be comical, but is totally true].