It Doesn’t Get Easier. We Get Better.
After my first semester of medical school, I visited a friend who is a physical therapist. We reflected on our shared awe of how much our brains are capable of learning and storing (and hopefully integrating).
We both thought we had climbed steep learning curves before professional school.
We both learned that those curves could be much steeper.
At PNWU, our first semester begins with a 10-week course that incorporates basic macro- and microbiology (cells, receptors), organic and biochemistry, a bit of physics, basic embryonic development, basic physiology, and a bit of immunology. In other words, we squeeze essentially all of our undergraduate basic sciences into ten weeks.
And that’s only one course.
My friend said she remembered returning home after her first semester and telling her older sister that she couldn’t do again what she had done that semester. She was too exhausted. At the time, her sister was working full-time as a teacher and moving into administrative roles, raising three kids, and earning her Master’s degree as her husband was in school 1.5 hours away. It’s not hard to imagine that her sister understood feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. With her experience, she shared a piece of wisdom and my friend shared it with me: It doesn’t get easier, we just get better at it.
Now in my second-year of medical school, I can vouch for the truth in those wise words.
I shared the idea with my husband. He laughed and shared a story of his own.
For one of his first exams in veterinary school, he studied and studied and couldn’t imagine learning more. As he spoke, I recalled his behavior leading up to that exam — he was visibly anxious, especially for someone who didn’t normally stress about school. That exam was more challenging than he and many of his peers had expected, and he couldn’t imagine learning a greater volume of material for an exam. As he settled into that thought, his professor chimed in. That first exam had the least amount of material of any exam in the course.
From that point forward the course material only got more challenging. Fortunately, like my friend’s sister said, he got better at learning.
This reminded me of when I taught anatomy lab for an undergraduate course. My worried students — hoping for some future relief — asked me how the first exam compared to the others. Our first exam covered mostly bones and joints (which are named using the names of the bones that make the joint). In other words, it covered the basics of anatomy. My response was honest: In terms of material, the first exam is the easiest.
You should have seen their faces…
“That said,” I continued, “you get better at learning anatomy, so people typically score better as they go through the semester.”
They probably thought I was making it up just to help them feel better. That’s okay; they still learned how to learn anatomy – they got better at it.
A coworker once taught me something she learned from a book on raising children who have anxiety. The process goes like this: Identify the fear, the worst that could happen, and then ask them: If that happened, what would you do, and are you capable of doing that?
The idea seems almost counterintuitive. Asking an anxious person to picture the worst-case scenario seems like the worst thing you could do, right? In reality, it provides a sense of control, and allows them to recognize that they are capable of dealing with things — even if the worst happens.
Life doesn’t always get easier, but we can get better at it. And even when it seems like we don’t, it’s okay. We can accept our situation, accept our feelings, and take our next step.
Kristen P. W. Gavin
Osteopathic Medical Student - 2nd Year (OMS II)
Executive Secretary, Student Government Association (SGA)
Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences