This is the start of my last year in medical school. Wow. Just a few days ago I was trying to figure out where MBRB was, right? (That's where our classes are held at UNC.) I was talking with a friend and classmate recently and we decided that looking back on the last three years of medical school is like seeing through bi-focals. Depending on the moment, it can seem like no time has passed at all and somehow you just appeared here at the start of 4th year with some knowledge and skills you can't even remember learning. Or at other times it can seem like those earlier years are a far distant memory, so much living and doing and experiencing having transpired within them. No matter which way you look at it, it impresses you and makes you pause and reflect.
What really gives me pause is this: I remember realizing at the beginning that I didn't see how I'd ever get to where I am now, just one year from graduation. I guess I knew I would one day, but it didn't seem tangible and real. Now that I'm here, I know of course that it is real. What's cool is that the retrospective feeling is like the mirror image of a prospective one about the future, the former almost forcing the latter on you, making the experience going forward so much richer.
What does that mean? It's hard to capture the feeling, but I know it when I feel it. There's another situation where I feel the exact same feeling. Hiking up a foot trail in the mountains, climbing for miles, sweat pouring, your eyes fixed on the rocks, roots, soil, plants in front of you, listening to the sound of your breath, focused internally on keeping your body moving. You reach a switchback, a place where the trail makes an abrupt 180 degree turn in order to keep making upward progress. You've encountered switchbacks before, hundreds of them, but this one has a clearing just beyond it, a rock that juts out beyond the trees. You take a brief moment and step out. For the first time in a long while you remove your pack, take a deep breath and look at the view. It's been there the whole time, but you were focused and didn't see - and for good reason, the going is tough. But now you see. You see the mountains, the forests, the animals, the sun and blue sky. And you think for a minute and start to piece together what you're seeing. That ridge - we just came up that ridge an hour ago. And just beyond it, the peak right there, that was the crazy climb that nearly whipped me. And if you look really carefully and the sky is particularly clear you can see all the way back to where you started. It's so far away. How did we come this far? And how did we get here so fast? A joy wells up and you think to yourself, "I'm doing it; I'm actually doing it!" Then you look ahead and see way off in the distance a peak that marks your destination. Were this the start, and were you just now gauging the effort to come, you might balk at the idea of it. But now on this rocky clearing, with the beginning and end both in view, you see how far you've come and it impresses you. You remember how it felt to be at the beginning with so much to come. And when you consider the distance, the sweat, the climbing that remains, you feel the difficulty just as you did at the beginning, but your view is changed. There is a sense that it passes, that the end does come, and you've felt the joy that comes with progress. Your recent accomplishment laid out before you, you can imagine yourself at your destination, looking back over the ascent with same feelings you're having now. And this dual view - looking back over your progress and forward over what lies ahead - gives you the freedom to enjoy the road to come. Yes, there will be stretches where your eyes are fixed on your own footsteps and you block out the world around you. But always you can smile, anticipating the joy that comes, relaxing a little because you're confident it will come.
