What You Bring

What you bring to the table, that is. After reading Kari's last post, I remembered that feeling and fear from Adam's first year. I wondered if he would begin med school with this group of future doctors and they would all be talking about their classes and medicine and I would be a dunce in the corner, picking my nose and nodding along as I compared my job to their lives.

Maybe there were moments that I felt like that, initially. However, even though I am far from a medically-versed person (I mean, I was a Psych/Spanish major...c'mon), I feel like I bring a lot to the table in our relationship and in conversations with his groups of friends. You are an interesting person, you have thoughts and opinions and views about the world. After having his anatomy group over for supper during his first year and hanging out, I realized that I could carry on a conversation with any of these people. Heck, there were even times that I had to CARRY the conversation.

Of course, they talk about what happened at the hospital, etc. And I'm okay with that- I can ask questions about what they saw, what their reactions were, what the doctor said. A lot of times, though, we can get the conversation going away from medical school and towards other things, like...life things. Girlfriends, water parks, dogs, God, family camping trips, British Literature, snow cones, whatever. And I think that's GOOD for them- to know how to talk about subjects outside of microbiology. And it's good for them to get to know the people that they sit by for two years straight. Like, really know them.

Anyways, this post was rambling but all to say that we, as spouses or girlfriends or whatever, bring a lot to the table. We are the strings holding their helium balloons of heads down to earth. Reminding them of who they are, reminding them that not everything is a competition, reminding them of life outside of medicine, reminding them that they're going to make it.

A lot of Adam's friends ended up having girlfriends/boyfriends, spouses, & fiances outside of medical school. This is a great opportunity to have REAL conversations because the significant others want to be included, too. It is more difficult when it's 1 non-student with 10 students. When you can up the number of non-students, it often helps keep everything balanced.

Okay, the end!

P.S. Even though I'm not a medical mind, I've found that I can hold a conversation about most medical things, especially once they start rotations and are out of the basic science classes. You are able to bring insight to those stories from the hospital because you are a human, by golly, and an intelligent one and they are treating humans.

Plus, they will have some great stories after their Psych rotation.