rough day

Today started out pretty great, then I hit choppy waters.  I guess it's just a thing that happens on your rotations and something you just get used to.  I guess it's good that I feel smart more often than I feel dumb though.

Everyone says medicine rotation is fun, but I don't know, I feel like it's hard for it to be fun when you don't really know what to do or how to help sometimes.  One of the hardest things is being sick on a rotation.  I always feel drained or nauseous during the day, and you just suck it up.  I never say anything about feeling like I'm going to be sick or that I'm tired or that I feel really weak or light-headed, you deal with it.  The people above you have so much more responsibility that it's not right to express that anyway.

so far, I don't feel convinced about a career in internal medicine or a subspecialty.  I honestly don't feel excited about numbers, lists of differentials, or managing a patient's entire disease process that often covers 5+ diseases. that's not to say I don't care about people, but I want to "get in there and do something," something palpable and that can really turn things around for a patient.

I don't want to spend my medical career sitting in front of a computer putting in orders, checking and double checking that the people the orders were sent to have been completed, taking care of social things that the social workers are capable of, and so on.

As of right now, I'm more interested in neurology, general surgery, ENT, plastic surgery, radiology, and maybe even pathology.  If I did neurology, I'd want to do outpatient more likely, or work in a hospital I like.  I think it may be the environment that's been getting me down lately, and just being someone who's pretty low in rank and constantly evaluated and judged in different aspects.

that probably only will get worse, but it'll improve again at some point, maybe a few years into residency.  I just wish I were better at what I do, that I said the right things, had the right answers.

seeya.