No one, and I mean no one, appreciates a vacation like a medical student. I’m only two days into my first week off since the start of school and I keep catching myself sitting for long periods of time staring at nothing in particular, and I’m not upset about it one bit. In the past, a week off usually involved restless opening and closing of my laptop and insanity producing boredom. But not this time. This time my brain has shut off, packed up its productive neurons, said “Sayonara!” (FYI: my brain speaks Japanese) and gone off to Never Never Land, leaving the rest of me content on my parent’s living room couch staring at walls.
Now you should know my vacation didn’t start that way. Like any self-respecting med school class, the UAB Class of 2016 went out and celebrated the end of our first module in style, trying our best to prove to ourselves and others in the immediate vicinity that we hadn’t forgotten how to have fun, or dance, or drink … mostly drink. But once the mandatory celebrations ended — the details of which will “stay in Vegas” so to speak — all of us nerds and nerdettes scurried off to our respective hometowns or thereabouts to spend some much needed time, well, staring at walls.
As you can infer, I’ve done my part. Walls have been stared at. Adamantly. So adamantly they probably got kind of uncomfortable and asked each other why the creepy kid was staring. “Steve, is my texture showing?” the retaining wall probably asked. “Do I need a tan?” “Am I peeling?” Of course I’m only speculating; it’ll be another few months of med school before I go crazy enough to actually hear the walls. For now, I’m just assuming they’re talking behind my back — but I digress.
Over the next week, I hope to ease the walls’ uncomfortability (uncomfortable-ness? uncomfortablation? Eh, screw it). I may stare at a few books, I’ll definitely stare at a few video games, and I’ll probably stare at the inside of my eye lids extensively. But I tell you what, I sure as heck won’t so much as look at anything remotely related to medicine (with the exception of my mom, and I really can’t help that; she may be a doctor, but the woman is feeding me this week).
So if you’re also on break, I hope your week is off to as eventful or uneventful of a start as it will take to bury the entirety of the last two months deep in the recesses of your brain until you dig it up at the end of second year. And if you’re not on break, well, I’ll stare at a wall or two in your honor. In fact, I’ll start on that right now, just for you.
Columnist, in-Training Staff Member, and Editor Emeritus: Former Medical Student Editor (2012-2013)
University of Alabama School of Medicine
Writer, editor, motorcycle enthusiast and medical student, Dragos almost achieved the impossible early in life by nearly failing fifth grade. Born in Romania, raised in Colorado and somehow now in Alabama, Dragos graduated magna cum laude from Auburn University in 2011 with a degree in biomedical sciences, making his way shortly thereafter to Birmingham and the UAB School of Medicine. Over the next several years he hopes to make a few friends, learn a few things, write a few articles, and just maybe find himself as a physician-journalist in a fulfilling surgical career somewhere down the line.
