18: Aaaaand Scene

Before you continue, read part one here.

I really shot myself in the leg by splitting this into two parts, but I can’t put this off forever so I guess I am going to get this over and done with.

We had our medicine OSCE exam on a Tuesday, and I waited three hours after my batch finished before I was allowed to go home. Before the exams started, I had really distressing palpitations, which necessitated me taking meds before I went into the examination hall. By the time I was on my way home, I was dealing with the warning signs of hypoglycemia, one of the side effects of the drug I used.

We were sequestrated after our OSCE exam to maintain the objectivity of the examination, and I thoroughly understood them. But what made me bring up this instance and not the panic attack I had at the end of the medicine written examination two weeks prior was the conversation in the car on my way home. We were talking about the emotional toll of the examination process on all of us and how the past six years of our lives led us to this very point. I jokingly quoted a line from HBO’s Game of Thrones, “What is dead may never die” to bolster my emotional response. After College of Medicine…

I want to do something I will be genuinely excited to talk about at the end of the day; something that makes me feel more than just a relief - something that makes me feel alive. Similoluwa Kunle-Oni, I will be happy when I -

I try not to consider how my journey in Medical school would have panned out if I hadn’t made as many mistakes as I did if I had made better decisions, and if I had chosen a different path. But whenever I consider what could have been different, I always circle back to how I related to people and the impact of my friendships on me. Maybe that is my biggest regret of all. In all the time I spent grieving over friendships that would never be fixed, I should have made more human connections and weak links. At the end of the day, it was always friendly faces that came through for me when I needed it the most before Zita or Otonye could show up. I had to start paying attention to what I wanted to do after medical school. It is all my classmates talk about. They are talking about printing induction jotters, joining group chats to discuss where to be posted for their internship year, and making plans to stay together for their internship(house job). All I am looking forward to is leaving Enugu State and this apartment with the leaky ceiling that the plumber seems not to be able to fix. I don’t have that much of an option with where I will be doing my house job because I promised my father that I would return to the Southwest(Yoruba land) of Nigeria. I am not even sure I want to start the house job as soon as I finish medical school, though, but I guess I just have to get it over and done with.* After my house job and NYSC, the next step on my career path is residency. I don’t intend to relocate, so I am going to focus on getting a spot for residency. I intend to write my primaries during my NYSC year. A senior colleague advised me to apply to both the West African College and National College and run the programme concurrently. The speciality at the top of my list remains General surgery. I am not convinced of what the second choice should be, to be honest. Nothing seems to spark any curiosity in me. I also don't want to specialise in medicine. I joke about giving 20 years to medical practice, after which I am going to retire. I have to see where that goes. Bringing it back to the now, I want to return to fashion illustration and improve my sewing. I am looking up the materials and resources that would help me do that more efficiently. I also want to dabble in painting, especially with watercolours. Maybe I should put this up in my induction or Christmas wishlist. I want to dedicate time to this because I am aware of how medicine can take away your life if you aren’t proactive about it. I also want to join a gym and learn how to drive and swim. The gym is because I want to learn to box and I have been told it is good for my health, both physical and mental health. I am looking forward to travelling and documenting my travels. I believe a vacation is long overdue for me. I am also looking forward to starting ÀALỌ. The idea for ÀALỌ started as a sort of club for creatives and settled as a digital media company centred on storytelling. We are going to be focused on stories, community, and humanity. I want to create a company where stories can be told, where anyone can tell their stories and at the same time create a space for people who feel like they don’t belong anywhere. The general idea is just to encourage more people to create and foster a community where resources can be shared and each person can improve on their skills. I have two projects I am working on that will be released under ÀALỌ next year. I can remember the things I wrote down in the dream series, and I think it is time to make those dreams a reality.

Hey, it is a picture of me, en route to my induction

Closing thoughts…

Newton's First Law: Inertia states that every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force.

In the weeks leading up to my final exams and in the space of time it took for the examination to be completed, one of the things I struggled with was overcoming inertia. I struggled with finding a force stronger than the overwhelming feeling of helplessness and the recurrent feeling of being slightly out of place. I was worried about putting in my all, doing my very best, and not still coming up with anything tangible. And regardless of the inertia, I showed up every single day to every single examination with more than enough time to spare. I owe my success to a lot of people, and I will never stop talking about drawing strength from people other than myself. I am proud of myself and how far I have come. I hope to someday be excited to be a doctor. I am not sure when that day will come but I am looking forward to it. Medical school was a journey and looking back, I am happy to be done with it. I could lie and say that I am going to cherish the memories I made here, but let’s be serious, I am pretty forgetful. The thing I want to commit to is nurturing the few important friendships that ended up surviving the madness of medical school. I am anxious about what happens next. I think I am growing cold feet at this point. I can’t bring myself to pack my apartment up, I am not looking forward to the wait before the house job starts because I would be stuck in my parent’s home, forced to figure out what to do in the interim. This is my last blog post and I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to process this yet. Instead, I am fussing about writing my first medium article because if there is one thing I can do well, it is to distract myself long enough to figure out how to handle my problems. Signing out, Dr Oluwaseyi Adelaja, Alias, The Estherian. You can find me here. 

*By the time I came back to this essay, it had become apparent that we missed the portal opening in October, which meant that we had to wait till the portal opening sometime in December or January.