After a long hiatus I am finally back to blogging. The last few months have been quite hectic. It’s been full of questions. Those of you who have been following me on twitter know that I have been on a leave of absence since sometime around March.
But before I went on a leave of absence, I had actually planned to withdraw. Here is an excerpt form a post I was working on:
I’ve been thinking about writing this post for a while. Well at least I’ve been thinking about it shortly after I came to my decision.
My decision: withdraw from medical school.
It’s a weird feeling. It’s also a bit scary. But I’ve concluded that medical school and me are not a good fit — at least not right now.
After writing that post I went to see my dean, fully intent on following through with my decision. At that point I had already skipped two midterm exams because of my decision. But an hour after I walked into my dean’s office, I left with a signature for a leave of absence.
He asked me why I wanted to quit.
My answers were simple. I had been struggling to stay focused and concentrate on what I needed to do. At the suggestion of another dean (we’ll call him Dr. A), I went to see someone who could serve as a coach to get me motivated. That was in November. By March he told me that if I couldn’t get myself focused by now it probably would not happen. Furthermore, he mentioned that maybe it just wasn’t a good fit. He also said that others in my position had benefited from withdrawing and then re-applying in a couple years if they still wanted to. If they got in again, they usually never had any issues staying focused.
A few days later, Dr. A said the same thing.
And so, I strolled into the office of Dr. B to ask for his signature for a withdrawal (Dr. A and Dr. B must both sign the slip). And as I wrote above, I walked away an hour later with a leave of absence.
The leave didn’t guarantee anything. Dr. B said that if I wanted to return I’d have to begin my second year over. I’d also have to go before the Academic Review Committee and make a case that I should be allowed to do so.
Well I saw the committee on Monday (2 days ago). A couple hours later Dr. A called me to let me know that they had decided to allow me back.
Looking back, I am glad that Dr. B stopped me from withdrawing. Between getting my leave and asking the committee for another chance I had to do quite a bit of questioning. I had to examine myself and figure out why I had a problem focusing, concentrating, and staying motivated.
It was never an issue of whether or not I wanted to be a doctor. The problem was the training part. I don’t like studying. I don’t like spending hours with textbooks in a cool, windowless library. But it is a necessary step to reach that goal.
I believe I now know what was wrong… More importantly, I am hopeful that I now have the tools to fix it… (I may write about it some other time… but not now…)
And so the countdown begins. I will have to start my second year over again right after Labor Day (September 8, I believe) and join the Class of 2012.
As far as residency goes, a committee member told me that it would be extremely hard (if not impossible) for me to get into certain residencies as I would have to explain all of this. (And I wonder how wise it is for me to detail these things on a public blog like this. After all, it isn’t exactly anonymous — at least not the way I have done it.) I would have have to do very well on Step 1.
As my journey once again continues, I will continue to write about it here (I no longer write for Medscape’s The Differential blog). I’ve taken a strange path — definitely not the typical medical school path. And maybe that will provide for some interesting perspectives. And in the end I hope to achieve what I set out to do when I applied to come here: tacking on that “MD” onto my name.
P.S.
No, I didn’t apply to medical school just to add a couple initials to the back of my name.
