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When you enter a hospital as a resident for the first time, your world changes. You become a child again - the environment is new, and you must learn quickly just to survive. Orientation is over, and I am on my second clinical day. Incisions have been made and closed. Just a month ago, I delivered food. It seems like ages. Every place has its quirks and politics. I'm not much of a politician. My continued existence here is uncertain, as I am contracted for one year. It's a tryout. What happens after this year lays only slightly in my hands and is left mostly to the vagaries of fate. It is nice seeing fellow residents engaging in banter and enjoying their categorical positions, and I admit to being slightly envious that they have it all figured out. At the very least, they have job security. The flood of emotions from one day to the next is overwhelming. On my first clinical day, I felt like I was back at home where I belonged, assisting in operations and acting as a doct

Date: Early July, 2019 The sympathetic engine is churning at near-maximal revolutions [sympathetic nervous system: fight or flight response, fear]. At first, it was energizing. Now, I'm learning to ignore the steady trickle of catecholamines and glucocorticoids in my bloodstream. A constant nuisance of fire trucks and police sirens wails in my head. A new threshold has been set. Now we begin. Johns Hopkins Mediccine Residency has begun. Orientation is underway. It is a day that has been long in the making. Nobody could predict how I would end up here, least of all I. A promising, inquisitive, and immature medical student graduated several years ago and began a surgical residency. If not for delays, he would be finishing up and moving onto a fellowship now. Today, he is back at square one: hopeful, invigorated, anxious, and slightly confused. (Have you learned your lessons? If not, life will teach them despite all your cries to stop.) How should I begin? I began...r

It's finally here: Moving tomorrow. Fright versus Fortitude. Life flashes. Past errors and triumphs reel in sequence getting to now. Sit and wait. Get up and go. Wait, but consider the beckoning challenges. They taunt and goad. Go, and don't think. "Don't think...Feel. It's like a finger pointing at the moon. Do not concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all of the heavenly glory." Look up at the sky. It is the same sky you will see a few hundred miles away tomorrow evening, momentous and vast, unsettling and quiet. Before bed, you will think about running to help fall asleep. The simplicity of it. Remember you were called "Russian Rocket" in Track. Before the gun goes off, you line up, crouch with head down, and wait for the signal. Can't see the finish line. Crowd hushes. Heart beats against chest wall attempting escape, going nowhere. And then it stills. Time slows to pure silence. No more anticipation or worry. This is where you