Arsalan Ali
“I feel very alone.”
After several months of being completely online for medical school due to the pandemic, my life started to feel like a never-ending loop within my one-bedroom apartment. Wake up at the same time, turn on my computer, attend class from a small box, eat lunch, study at the same desk for another few hours, eat dinner, and repeat.
The days of the week began to blur together and the boundary between school and home collapsed. I was on autopilot, and I was just going through each day feeling dissociated from my own body, mind, and emotions. I put on a fake smile around others and hoped they would not intuit how I really felt; alone, trapped, defeated, and frustrated. I created a facade subconsciously to show others that I have what it takes to be in medical school, and I am not easily broken. As a first-generation student, I realized at an early age I have to be grateful for the opportunities presented to me. I have never felt empowered to the right to complain as my parents have sacrificed so much for me to be here. Growing up, my dad continuously reinforced to me, “get an education so that you don’t have to work as hard as me.” My dad was the son of a farmer in India. It was deemed that his future would also make him a farmer, but my dad hoped for a future where he could provide his children with a proper education. When the opportunity came to come to America, my dad seized the chance. He came with no education beyond middle school and little to no English.
For over 15 years, my dad worked multiple jobs at the same time, but his mind was just focused on his children to get an education. Despite our financial situation, my parents ensured that I had school supplies and access to tutoring if needed. As I would moan and groan about school, he constantly insisted that education is the key to a better life. Soon enough, his constant reminders and motivation kept me focused on school and to always try my best under any circumstances. Although my background has helped me get far in life, ironically, it was my biggest pitfall during the pandemic.
When I was accepted a position at TCU and UNTHSC School of Medicine in May 2020, it was a dream come true. The years of studying and countless hours spent on MCAT preparation were finally going to be worth it. Like many students starting a new chapter of their life, I could not help but daydream about medical school. I was excited and anxious to move away from my hometown for the first time and meet my classmates. I heard from many mentors that although medical school is challenging, it was the best time of their lives. It was a place where they felt challenged every day and met their lifelong friends. I know now that it was naive to have this “perfect” vision during COVID-19. I was overly optimistic that the pandemic will vanish by the time I started school in July. November: “The cases are still rising and we are unsure when we will be back in person,” said the official message from the school of medicine. At this point, the zoom fatigue was in full effect, and I was a prisoner in my own apartment. Confined to a small space, making laps around the kitchen counter to stretch my legs, and feeling more alone as time passed. I am an avid believer that you learn medicine in a community, and in a virtual world it becomes easy to dissociate yourself with just a click of a button. I was timid to share this feeling with the rest of my classmates as I did not have a close bond with many of them.
It was not until our school did a class survey which revealed that on average our class does not feel connected to each other, however, 65% of us “extremely” wanted to make this connection. For the first time, I felt like I was not alone, but in fact there were nearly 60 other students who felt just like me. As we began to have more in person interactions, our class bonded over this similar feeling. We all wanted to feel a sense of belonging and develop deep connections. After a year of being restricted to a small video square, our class is finally getting the opportunity to finish our phase 1 curriculum in person. It almost seems surreal that after months I am going to get a glimpse of that “perfect” vision of medical school. The year was relentless, and I had to be the same. It was a ‘year of missing’ in medical school- missing traditions and making memories, missing home, missing the feeling of being surrounded by your classmates, and missing the feeling of wellbeing and joy. All of these are important for student life balance, and as I reflect on this year, I have grown so much as a person and a student. The pandemic has shown me that loneliness is real and human connection is crucial for wellbeing. I am ready to continue being relentless and grateful for everything that comes my way as I begin my second year of medical school with the #strong60.
Benjamin Jacobs
Resilience is defined as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.”
All my life I had to be resilient. When I was growing up, my family moved constantly– so much so that by the time I graduated high school, I had attended eight different schools in multiple states. The longest run I ever had in a single school growing up was three years. The hardest part about being the “new kid” all the time was making friends. Making friends was exhausting because I felt like I was intruding on friend groups that had been formed for years. In the back of my mind, I knew that when I moved to a new school it was only a matter of time before my family would move again. This feeling made me timid and apprehensive to get close to people because I didn’t want to start a friendship, get close to someone, and have to deal with the sadness of leaving them.
When I graduated high school, I knew college would be yet again another test of my resilience. For college, I went to the University of South Dakota (USD) in Vermillion- a small town of 10,000. The four years I spent in Vermillion was the longest consecutive amount of time I had ever spent in one community. There is something special about being in a small community- everyone leans on each other for support. This connection and consistency was something I had always wanted but never had. My experience at USD made me realize that for medical school, I wanted to go to a program with a small class size-where everyone leaned on one another.
When I received my acceptance call from the TCU and UNTHSC School of Medicine on November 1st, 2019, it was the best day of my life, filled with a rush of conflicting emotions: excitement, fear, anxiety. I knew that medical school would be a big transition and perhaps the biggest test of my resilience yet. When the COVID-19 pandemic began shutting everything down in March 2020, I remained optimistic: “Surely everything will be under control by the time I start medical school in July…Right?”
Flash forward: a majority of my first year of medical school was completed remotely from my 15-inch laptop screen at my apartment, guided by a small path through my apartment. Every day I would wake up, walk two feet over to my desk, sit there for hours, and when it was time to go to sleep, I would walk two feet to my bed. Rinse and repeat. My routine was identical regardless of the day of the week; the days began to all blend together.
When my friends and family would ask how medical school was going, I put on a happy face and told them it was going great. I exaggerated how much my classmates and I were interacting despite the pandemic and downright lied at times about our classes being in person. Why? I think this facade I was putting up to my family and friends served as a coping mechanism for me. I would tell them about how my classmates and I went exploring the town (when we really just talked in the parking lot) or how clinical skills in person was nerve-wracking but exciting (when it was actually online). I was living vicariously through the stories I was telling my family and friends.
Being remote made me realize how much I craved physical touch. Something as trivial as a hug, handshake, or even a fist bump between two people just feels human– this was one element that made me feel so disconnected and alone over the past year. Even when we did have class in person and I was finally able to put my hands on a patient, we each had masks, goggles, gloves, and face shields. It felt forced and artificial. Ironically, I realized at some point that the closest I got to putting my hands on a patient my first year were the dozens of prostate exams I was taught to give by my preceptor in clinic. How odd is it that I couldn’t shake a patient’s hand, but had to perform an invasive exam like this one…
But, I wasn’t alone in this feeling. In the clips of speaking with my classmates six feet apart in parking lots or in masks or through screens, we all felt this irony: that some of our most consistent forms of touch have been through our training to perform some invasive and uncomfortable exams on patients.
This past year was not easy, but it taught me that whatever situation you are going through, no matter how difficult it may seem, someone else is going through it too. That is what unites us.