Nerves, White Coats & Student Doctor Watts
September 6th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
To say that I spent Thursday, August 19th—the day before my first day of medical school—feeling “nervous” would be like saying that the Grand Canyon is a pothole or Facebook is a casual hobby. The point is, it would be a major understatement. The Grand Canyon is a yawning chasm of huge-ness and there is nothing casual about Facebook and it’s obsessive magical capacity to turn even the most normal of Americans (our parents!) into semi-stalkers.
So you get it, right? I was nervous. Like, can’t-eat-or-sleep-or-relax-I-think-I-have-to-puke nervous. The only nutrition I consumed that day was a slew of caffeinated beverages which I realize, in retrospect, was a terrible idea. The espresso only fueled my anxiety and enhanced the realism of the already-bizarre scenarios that I was exploring in my caffeinated, un-fed brain regarding the many ways that my first day could turn into an embarrassment. I will spare you the crazy details, but they mostly involved forgetting to get dressed or discovering that my name wasn’t really on the list or not making any friends on the first day which translated (in my caffeinated, un-fed brain) to missing the one and only chance of my entire medical school career to ever make friends ever. I stayed up until 2am that night watching “Wizards of Waverly Place” on the Disney Channel. I’m telling you, it was pretty rough.
But then morning came, I remembered to get dressed, and as I headed out the door I noticed a card from Seth sitting atop a new notebook and set of pens. At the bottom of the card, he had added: “P.S: Don’t worry, it’s everybody else’s first day of medical school too.” And then my nerves were gone. I arrived at school to find my name on the list, and then I stood and waited next to a girl who has since become a good friend. As it turned out, I couldn’t have picked a better random person to stand next to! By lunchtime, I was finally calm enough to break my unintentional 36-hour fast and eat some food.
The best part of that day, besides being referred to multiple times as a “future doctor,” was coming home to my parents who arrived Friday afternoon to spend the White Coat weekend with us. Although I have no pictures of our other activities from the weekend besides the White Coat Ceremony, we did a lot: relaxed around the house, walked through town, canoed at the state park, and dined at the amazing Pear Tree Restaurant in Bevier, MO (population:750). Despite being situated right next to “Ugo’s Bait and Tackle” (a popular spot that day for overweight men in faded denim overalls wearing, inexplicably, cardboard party hats) we ate the best steak of our lives.
Below is a brief video of me getting “white-coated,” and a few pictures of the family afterward. The most satisfying part of this ceremony occurred during that very first handshake, which happened to be with the physician who terrified me at my interview the previous fall. He had stared me down over his half-glasses and incessantly tapped his pinky ring (shaped like a horseshoe: he bred Arabians) on the side of the table. He had read all of my mediocre grades out loud, skipped the good ones, and then watched my face as he asked casually, “Do you really think you can handle this?” On this morning, with my white coat over my arm, I smiled at him widely, shook his hand firmly, and accepted his warm congratulations.
Student Doctor Kari Watts! I did keep my maiden name legally & professionally, although I am happy to still be called Mrs. Van Heukelom.
My brother Kyle visited the following weekend, and we again failed to capture our fun on film. But we hope he had a good time away from the concrete jungle of metropolitan New York City! We showed him the town, the goat, and our favorite bar. Seth took him fishing, but they didn’t have too much luck. When they got home, I told Seth that he smelled. Seth said, “Smell like what? Fish…or failure?”
Once Kyle was gone, I missed his company. I did not, however, miss the toilet seat being left up. Or the dark, middle-of-the-night bathroom breaks that became a little more…startling…as a result of said toilet seat.
The first two weeks of school have now flown by and I am in love. I have a few great girlfriends in my class, and if we are not busy with our studies, we are entertained by the unique idiosyncrasies of our classmates. While I hesitate to go into detail, let’s just say that it’s pretty hilarious to get 172 random, type-A people into one space. I’ve got some good stories.
Stay tuned!
