Just Keep Pushing: Conversations with the Woman in the Mirror
You already started / your medical school journey / non-traditionally. / Just keep pushing
Tag: imposter syndrome
Contributing Writer
Saint Louis University School of Medicine
Courtney is a second year medical student at Saint Louis University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO class of 2022. In 2015, she graduated from DePauw University with a Bachelor of Arts in history, minor in psychology. She is a jazz music fanatic from Memphis, TN who also enjoys road trips, "good eats," and playing the bass clarinet in her free time. After graduating medical school, Courtney would like to pursue a career in either child and adolescent psychiatry or pediatric rheumatology.
loser
You lose / your pen with / the red and blue and black ink
Rise
So, one way or another / I keep craning my neck / Looking up.
My Mask
We all earn our way here / Paid in hours of studying / and minutes of fun lost.
Impostor or Two Sides of the Same Coin?
“Eager and enthusiastic” / As I drag myself from bed. / “Positive energy” / Do you have an injury to your head?
Conjunction
I am waiting for my coffee when / a middle-aged Turkish man / asks if I am a medical student
They Say, I Say
They say you’re at the top of the class / I say I’m barely able to pass
Forced Perspective
I know better. / I know nothing, and I am useless. / So don’t throw words at me insinuating that / I am knowledgeable.
Everything is a Zebra
As a medical student, I have big shoes to fill. I feel that void in my foot-space at all times. These shoes are expensive, and they are monstrously huge. We’re talking circus clown, Shaquille O’Neal, Andre the Giant shoes.
Damage Report: First Semester Postmortem
I don’t want to admit that medical school is tough for me. I want to be a natural at this. I want to devour my schoolwork and never satisfy my thirst for more.
Fitting My White Coat
I breathed in and out, in and out, in and out, trying to slow my heart rate. Countless hours of preparation had led to this day: the day when I would get the honor of donning the white coat that characterized the profession I was about to enter.
On Happiness in Medical School
I was once asked if medical school is an unhappy place. It is a good question, the kind that it takes someone outside of medicine to ask.
Editor-in-Chief
Brown University Alpert Medical School
Nihaal Mehta is a member of the Class of 2020 at Brown University Alpert School of Medicine. Originally from Lexington, MA, he also attended Brown for college, graduating in 2014 with a degree in Health and Human Biology and subfocus in Global Health.
Nihaal’s interests lie in medicine and its intersections: with health systems, policy, and the humanities. In college, he worked as a Writing Fellow, a Teaching Assistant for biology and public health courses, and assisted in the design of a course that examines controversies in medicine. Before returning to Brown for medical school, he spent a year working in consulting on health care business, strategy, and policy. He plans to specialize in Ophthalmology, and has conducted research focused on optical coherence tomography and retinal disease.