This past week has been ROUGH! I kicked it up a gear and turned the dial all the way up to “Beast Mode.” I nearly turned green as I hulked my way through countless pages of pathology and pathophysiology. Up every morning at 5:30. Books open and MacBook ready by 7:15. As Friday rolled around, I found myself in state stronger than the word exhaustion could even express. How could I make I make through another week like this? Are the all the weeks of the next two years going to be like this? More importantly, is all this even worth it?
YOLO! You only live once, right? So why am I living the most agile years of my life this way? As I look at some of my friends who have already made it into the workforce, it is clear that life is more than Acid-Base physiology and GI infections. It is more than late nights and early mornings trying to keep pace with the mountain load of material given. It is more than pointless labs and boring teachers. I mean, isn’t it?
After over half of a semester of reflection, a thought on the matter came to me while talking to friend expressing similar concerns. She too had felt that this “med school life” did not fit into our interpretation of YOLO. I had expressed my frustrations until a thought – perhaps a resolution – regarding our problem naturally came to me. “It is not fair to judge the worth of this experience now,” I simply stated. “It is just too early to call it”. Often times, I develop tunnel vision while in the midst of a problem. I can’t see past it, over it, or around it. This only exacerbates my fundamental lack of foresight. I have absolutely no ability to see my future especially through the confusion of school, so my present problem transforms into what I believe will be my future reality.
One of my favorite writers, Paul, explained in 2 Corinthians 4:17, “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” My present troubles cannot outshine my future glory. In other words, though life currently is saturated with seemingly meaningless cycles of lectures and exams, it does not mean that my future experiences cannot make up for it. Better yet, my future experience may even have the ability to make my dreadful past experiences meaningful.
I concluded my conversation with my friend with this statement, “We can only assess if this journey is worth it, not at the low points, but at the most positive peaks of this experience, both present and future.” Then, and only then, can we truly judge if this journey was worth it. And if God has called us to this ministry of healing, I’m betting 10 out of 10 that it will be. We just have to hold on and wait and see.
~KeAndrea “Kiki” Titer
HEALTHOU 