An obstacle called "call"

So, if you may have noticed (again), I haven't been posting much.

Being on call is kicking my bootie.

Seriously!

No really, I am not that lame...

Being on call sucks.

Want to know what else sucks? Wanting to get honors in just about everything. It is bad because that means I get super worked up about things when I shouldn't. The result is that I look "stupider" in front of the people that I need to impress because I am trying way too hard.

Example: The first presentation that I gave in front of my current attending was pretty horrible. Partly because I was used to the previous attending who liked things VERY brief and partly because I was nervous. So, now that I am doing my normal level of presentations, I all of a sudden have achieved the "most improved" award for presentations.

Sigh.

What the heck does most improved mean? And really, the attending and the R2 have both said that I have "improved" a lot. In my mind, this means that I pretty much sucked at first. The next step in this interpretation is that did I just go from "horrible" to "okay" or did I go from "okay" to "pretty darn good damn it?"

Argh. I just want to do well! I want to have my choice basically of where I go for residency (which will probably be somewhere in Washington or Oregon). However, even though I know that I can do alright, I feel like I am coming across to my superiors as a "flighty" girlie-girl at first and I am pretty sure that is putting me at a disadvantage at first. I have to work harder to prove that I can handle the hard work.

Anywho...

I have seen some pretty cool things recently. Right now, one of my patients has a gangrenous toe that is going to be amputated tomorrow. My other patient just had a COPD exacerbation but he is still in the hospital because he uses cocaine and we have to rule out heart and other lung problems.

There is now another med school student on my team in addition to moi. I have known him for a while, but my competitiveness is kicking in. Also, a sense of loss. I have noticed that other medical school students are very good at playing smart when they really have no idea about what they are talking about. This skill works well when you have an attending that doesn't really question you all that deeply. I am realizing that I don't have this skill and I think that is working against me.

Some people might not see this as a skill. You would be amazed, however, to see how much this skill comes in handy when you only spend about 2 hours per day with your attending and you need to impress the hell out of her. I always wonder how much my attendings really pick up. Do they know that my classmate is faking it? Do they see that I might not know but I always look up the answer? I hope so.

I also think that I am a little too honest sometimes. If someone asks me how I am doing, or how well I am doing with the current attending, I want to answer the truth. But I am seeing (somewhat at a later stage) that most people around me just say that things are "fine." So that makes me look like I am whining. (Side note... The things that I bring up as "issues" I know are valid because EVERYONE else on my team complains about them in private.)

Well, hopefully I can adapt a little more quickly. I leave for Montana on the 27th or something like that so I only have a little bit more time. I am questioning why I feel like I am behind the ball game all of the time. I get feedback from people who say that I am doing well, but I still have this voice in the back of my mind that says, "They are just saying that so you don't feel horribly."