First week as a doctor + a tiny example of what I do

JD from scrub said that a medical resident works 80+ hours a week, is hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and makes as much as a waiter. I don't know if I was planning to go to medical school when I first watched that episode, but somehow it didn't steer me away from the career. And finally, July 1st of 2016, I started my residency. I make much more than a waiter, though I only ever waited tables at run-of-the-mill restaurants that were just a step above fast food. Maybe JD was talking about fancy restaurants.

The first week went well, I think. I didn't make any egregious mistakes that I can remember, though I almost forgot to order a special stain for a case. I was assigned one autopsy, which I did with a chief resident's help. I had a nice mix of routine and esoteric cases on my plate, though I got very little of it, in all honesty. It's a good thing I don't make any real decisions yet. The greatest relief is that I'm loving my job so far. It shouldn't be a surprise since my first consideration when choosing a specialty was "am I going to enjoy doing this for hopefully 30+ years?", but it's still a big weight of my shoulders that I'm not panicking at the thought of spending the rest of my life reading slides and handling autopsies.

That being said, I will have to change how I study if I want to do it effectively. Now that I have a job besides passing the never-ending barrage of standardized tests the NBME throws at me, I can't take as much time studying as I used to. Up until now, I use hard copies or relevant print-outs of textbooks, then take notes and organize them as necessary. Perhaps it's because I didn't have access to computers until the second half of my childhood, unlike the rest of my peers, but I can't seem to absorb PDFs or ebooks. Typing my notes doesn't work either. For example, these are my notes for the normal histology of the cornea:

My art has not improved at all this year

I never gave it much thought before, but since I work from 7:30 AM to 5-8 PM, I wish I could work faster.

Mr. Robot and abyss of social media "connections"

These promotional posters must be seen to be believed

This last couple of weeks, I've been watching Mr. Robot with my friend Chris. It's the first TV show I've re-watched from beginning to end in a long time. Probably the first one ever, actually. I can barely get myself to get through a whole season of TV once (still haven't finished the second season of Daredevil).

I've noticed several things about Mr. Robot the second time around, some of them big and some of them small. Darlene's early behavior doesn't seem so invasive in context, for example. Talking about the show with another person has also changed my mind about certain some of the show's themes. Most significantly, I'm not sure Mr. Robot's central premise about the loneliness of modern life, and the oppressive nature of its false choices, is as shallow and juvenile as I first thought.

Though I still think that Elliot is over the top with his multiple speeches about how the world sucks because everyone is always drowning in pop culture and posturing in social media, I've had time to consider that my reaction might not be so objective. I don't disagree with Elliot's conclusion that getting caught up with presenting a perfect, always-interesting face on social media generates anxiety, loneliness, and isolation, but I also believe that engaging in social media to that degree is a choice. So I couldn't fully sympathize with his anxiety because I felt like he was choosing to judge people sole through what they post on Facebook/Instagram/etc.