Indomitable

When I was younger, I had always prided myself on my steadfastness and my dead resolution to achieve whatever I wanted.

I had a whiteboard and marker where I wrote down potential marks to aim for before every examination in school. And then I would make sure that I topped them all without fail.

This week, I have felt my energy faltering as every single day goes by. It is a dilemma really, between wanting the weekend to come quickly and wishing that it would not do so because I am running out of time to complete my Work Based Assessments. It seems strange that the smallest things can set me off, and today I just reached my maximal threshold. I am dead tired, mentally, from the amount of information I have yet to ingest in this Paediatrics attachment, and how my mind cannot seem to flip easily from dealing with as normal a condition as a respiratory infection in an adult, to dealing with one in a kid.

It is one thing to just continuously say that little children are not my thing, and I would still prefer to manage adults as my patients rather than kids, but at this point I don't think I have a choice of sub-specialising as a student, and I hate it when I underperform by my own standards - although I should have probably become used to that by now being the most mediocre medical student amidst a sea of brilliant others.

But it is just not as easy anymore to excel in my medicine as to achieve 100% in that Math exam.

To be fair, it might just be my sudden dip in mood and hormonal imbalance that is bringing about these swings in emotion.

But it just makes me wonder time and time again if I actually possess the willpower and strength to go as far as I have aspired to be through this lengthy journey of doctoring. Not even to be that world class surgeon in my dreams, but just to get med school over and done with and survive being a junior doctor.

I am not even sure that I have sufficiently transitioned from being a good student who had pretty decent grades in High School into a medical student with the enthusiasm and potential to learning doctoring skills, lest even a junior doctor who can complete the smooth transition between just taking a stab at the right diagnosis to making proper management plans.

It is strange how at most times, I feel that I am able to put on the strongest front just to make sure nothing can bother me in the slightest way, yet there are times like these that make me wonder aloud, when the last time was that I actually felt truly happy and satisfied with my life itself.

But the only way to go now is just to put one foot in front of the other and move forward. And hang on to this new ethos of mine:

'The world breaks everyone, and afterwards, some are strong at the broken places.'

- Ernest Hemingway

And just be....indomitable, as such. After all, whatever doesn't kill you....

Right?