When I first planned on becoming pregnant in medical school, I was one hundred percent certain that I would take no time off. I was going to have the baby, be back to take my Friday exam, and push through until Step 1 Dedicated study time. Then, I could just stay home all day and study, and use my nursing and changing duties as my study breaks. When the baby was 8 weeks old and I needed to start my rotations, she could go to daycare on the days my husband did not work and my mother could not watch her. That way, I would not have to miss a beat and I could graduate on time.
Then, when I got lucky and the fertility treatments paid off, I started talking to Dr. Garcia and my friends and family about my plans. They were very excited for me and supportive, but then Dr. Garcia asked me, “what is it about graduating ‘on time’ that is so important to you?”. She never doubted that I could hack it if I decided to take no time off, but that question really threw me for a loop. I was so dead set on staying the course that I never really asked myself why one year in the grand scheme of things was so important to me.
I have felt like I was running behind ever since I graduated from high school. I started college at Washington State University, but two stress fractures in my spine forced me to come home and heal with the help of my family. Then, my parents moved down to Texas for an exciting opportunity, so I applied to UT Austin on a whim for the spring semester. I got in, moved to Texas, and got to work. Being at such a large and competitive school was daunting, but I worked hard and finished the semester with all A’s in my science classes. Then, the opportunity my parents had moved for fell through. They were planning to move back up north, and I was looking at paying almost 60k in tuition as an out-of-state UT student. Knowing that I had a long road of student loans ahead of me, I did not want to start taking them out in undergrad, and that was far too much for my parents to pay. I moved back to Montana where I could get in-state tuition.
I remember sitting in the student counselor’s office when she told me that none of my credits from UT would transfer. I could not believe it, I had done almost an entire year’s worth of medical school prerequisites and they would all be considered “elective credit”. Now I was two years behind my “game plan” of when I should have graduated from college. There was nothing I could do, so I redid chemistry and biology and calculus and vowed never to transfer again.
Finally, I was done at UM, after having watched many of my high school peers graduate before me. I was ready to set off for medical school, but I was rejected my first round. That meant another year of waiting, getting older. I got into the only school I applied to on my second round, and started medical school at age 25, but for some reason I have always felt like I should have done more by now. I think that’s why the prospect of adding on another year to my schooling was a hard pill for me to swallow.
Thanks to loving parents, supportive faculty, my wonderful husband, and a truly magnificent group of friends, I have realized that there is no “timeline” I am supposed to be following. I still often feel that I should have done “more” with my life by this point, but taking a year off to enjoy my baby girl is absolutely the right decision for me. One additional year of school is nothing. It is the difference between being a gastroenterologist when I am 34 vs 35. That time frame is insignificant, but the first year of my daughter’s life is not. I want to be able to breast feed, wake up in the night with her without worrying about how I’ll perform the next day, watch her grow and get to know the world around her. I will not be able to take this much time off with any of my future children, so this year will be precious. That’s not to say that I am not sad to be leaving Med22 or that I am not anxious about having a year at home with a baby when I am used to the pace and fervor of medical school, but that’s an essay for another day.
Santo and Hedgehog 