I burned out for the first time in my life about three months after starting medical school. The surprising thing was that nothing out of the ordinary happened, I was doing exactly what they told me to do, pre-reading from lecture notes and recommended textbooks, going to lectures and labs, and trying to study and review what I learned that day in the library.
The problem was, that after a 45-minute commute in Los Angeles traffic each way, a few minutes to grab a sandwich at lunch and heat up a frozen dinner at night, my free time was so minimal that I was lucky if I had 5 hours to sleep, let alone have a life. Without spending time with friends and family, surfing, running, reading for fun, or traveling, it didn’t take long for burnout to arrive.
At the time, I wondered if the ends justify the means? Maybe if I just work really hard now, then it will all pay off in the future? That thought was enough to fuel me through our first “core” block, but after I got my test score back with a C+ grade on it, my hope and optimism deflated. If I had to work this hard and only learned the material well enough for a C+, I wasn’t made for medical school.
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