For 20 years, I had a ritual. Every year, the night before the first day of school, I couldn’t sleep.
As I lay in bed the night before the first day of my fourth year of medical school, watching the minutes until I had to report to the hospital tick away, I thought about all of those first days.
I thought about the walk down the hall to my parents’ room, Footie pajamas soft on the carpeted floor, to complain that I couldn’t fall asleep and to ask if I could just watch television with them (Note: This happened every year until I turned nine. After that I was too big for Footie pajamas.). I thought about sitting in my bedroom, looking out the window at the car full of things I had bought for my freshman year of college, reading the Duke admissions brochure, wondering what I had gotten myself into. I thought about the night before the first day of medical school, pacing around my first apartment, wondering if studying to be a doctor was the right choice.
I thought about how, year after year, I had the same questions: Would I be smart enough? Would I make new friends? Is everything going to be different for me?
Except this night before the first day of school was different, and I knew it. It was my last first day of school, unless I can somehow convince my parents and/or self and/or future educational institution that one doctoral degree isn’t enough.
Every year, the first day of school was the first page of a new chapter. This year, it’s the first page of the last chapter of a long and fantastic volume called “School.”
I’m turning 25. My parents were my age when I was born. One of my buddies from college just got married. My girlfriend, who just graduated law school, remarked of the last night before her first day at her new job, “Tomorrow is the first time in 20 years I’ll end the summer by putting on a suit instead of a backpack.”
Next year, that’ll be me. Except to be totally accurate, I haven’t actually had a summer vacation in three years, and next year I’ll be wearing the same thing to my first day of work that I wore to the first day of school this year—a white coat. Also, I’ll probably bring my backpack.
Still, it won’t be the same. It won’t be school. For 24 going on 25 years, I’ve been responsible only to myself, and only for my continued growth and education. I laid awake at night wondering if, in the year ahead, I’d live up to my own expectations.
And, really, that’s a great place to be.
Maybe I’m an idealist. Maybe I’m just a perpetual student, and I like school more than is healthy. Maybe this is some sort of quarter-life crisis and I’m conveniently forgetting all of the things I disliked about school and romanticizing the things I liked because deep down I’m just scared of growing up.
Whatever it is, I feel like giving advice. So sidle up to the old man’s rocking chair and listen up.
Whether you have one year, or four years, or eight years, or 12 years left to be a student, remember the bastion of all knowledge, Wikipedia, says the word student comes from a Latin verb meaning “to direct one’s zeal at.” As a student, your only responsibility is to summon up enough zeal to direct it somewhere.
So be zealous. And wherever the year takes you, don’t forget how lucky you are to be a student.
Alex Fanaroff is a fourth-year medical student. His column runs every Wednesday.
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