Learning How To Adult #BehindTheBlogger

Where I Belong: On the path to becoming/being a medical student, there are invariably many unfortunate instances of self-doubt. I wish I could tell you that this magically disappeared after graduating…but that’d be a complete and total lie.

I figured it was about time for another update in the realms of my medically-related life! Back in March, I matched into my first-choice residency program in the specialty of my dreams and…I’m already on the tail end of my orientation! (Time flies. ._.)

This is 1 of 3 ID’s that I got in a span of 2 days.

This is actually the first time I’ve ever had a real and legitimate job (or at least, one that pays me enough to survive in the world). Learning how to adult has been rather interesting, but hopefully it’ll come naturally eventually! It’s weird not introducing myself as “Student Doctor” or even just saying that I’m working instead of being a student.

Life has been pretty hectic (so what else is new, right? :O ), but it’s way better than it could be because my residency tries its absolute best to ease us in instead of throwing us to the wolves. (Thank you! <3) Orientation has consisted of:

• Welcomes, master schedule reviews, Intern 101’s, personality tests, EHR trainings, procedure trainings, office experiences
• Meeting the entirety of the FM team, peds + IM chiefs
• Presentations on the principles of FM, professionalism, presentation skills, EMR writing, diabetes, communication skills
• Reviews on adult preventive care, child immunization schedules, MSK exams, antibiotics, OB, prescription writing, well woman exams
• Morning reports on care of the elderly, radiology, EKG
• Hospital + clinic scavenger hunts (if you recall, the hospital I’m at has its own app to help you re-orient yourself in case you get lost o_o)
• Workshops on hospital admissions, admission orders, discharge summaries, patient simulations, mock cases

These past two weeks have reaffirmed a number of things…for instance, the fact that I really need to brush up on lots of things–particularly in the inpatient setting. We’ve been told time and again that it’s fine to feel lost and clueless–that’s part of being an intern, but they’re here to help us out if when we need it.

Meet me + my intern class! :D

A photo posted by Farrah @ fairyburger (@fairyburger) on Jul 2, 2016 at 9:29am PDT

The residents and the faculty go out of their way to make sure our questions get answered and ask often to make sure we’re not overwhelmed. I love that they’re so receptive to feedback and so flexible.

They even matched our teams to our respective interests! Two of my fellow interns are interested in women’s health/maternity care, so they’re on the pink team where they have more patients who are pregnant. I’m on the green team, which consists of more patients who speak Chinese (mostly Mandarin, but some Cantonese as well[!]) and has more geriatric patients, both of which are populations that I especially enjoy working with! <3

They also made us shirts! :D!

The advisors we’re matched with apparently handpick us based on our interests and how they can best help us to do whatever it is that we want to do, and they do their best to send opportunities our way. I actually bumped into my mentor from grad school at the residency graduation! She’s one of the nicest people ever and was responsible for helping me to shape a research project tailor-made to my interests back in the day.

I’m super super excited that I may get to work with one of the other residents and my advisor on developing the Nutrition curriculum for our program! :] Maybe I can finally find some way to incorporate work with Elijah’s Promise! (I doubt you’ve been around here long enough to know of my Soupervan craze, but it’s part of what I wrote about when I answered an email last year from my residency program asking if I was really applying because I wanted to come here.

My intern bio!

I think the muff likes it here a lot too! :]! She chills at my apartment while I’m gone for the day and always comes to greet me at the door when I’m back. We spend evenings curled up on the couch or my bed while I review things and she purrs. <3

Maybe it’s too early to reallyreally tell, and I’m sure I’ll have my bad days along with the good ones, but…I’m really glad I’m here. I’m so happy that I went with my gut when I was making my rank list, and I truly believe that this is where I belong. I hope I make em’ proud! <3

• When did you have to start learning to really-truly adult?
• Where do you belong?