Sometimes, when I sit down to write in my journal at the end of the day, I find that jotting down a haiku is easier than recounting a story. In that spirit, I’d like to share a few poems from my first year of residency: stray impressions that, glimpsed together, may paint a picture of my life as an intern:
Twilight, Beacon Hill –
A man stares out the window
Of the cancer building
On the garden bench
I stole the warm spot
From a butterfly
Our senior resident
Lost her voice after an illness –
Now, we are all whispering
Sitting at the harbor
Eating cannoli while a guitar strums –
A rat ran by
A frenzied workday –
A nap at the corner desk –
A clap on the back
I think one of the defining features of any residency experience is how much you get to see and do in any given day. I often find myself wishing I could spend hours just jotting down notes at the end of my shift—trying to catch the tail of an experience that is already slipping away. As medical professionals, we’re privileged to work with people at inflection points of their lives. Whether those be moments of triumph, tragedy, or tedium, they are without fail interesting to observe and, often, deeply rewarding. I’m not sure I could have anticipated just how much life I would encounter in a year of training, and I couldn’t be more grateful to be gaining that experience in a program like the MGH/McLean psychiatry residency.
My work in the hospital over the past year included six months of internal medicine training, where I got to learn side by side with peers in the MGH medicine residency. The workflow on these teams reminds me of watching complex surgeries as a medical student: the way a technician might hand the desired tool to a surgeon without a single word exchanged. We find a flow, relying on one another to accomplish tasks, chat through challenging cases, and reinforce what we’re learning. Before residency, I was apprehensive of long shifts and packed workdays. As it turns out, the density of the day doesn’t make it feel more difficult; if anything, it has made me appreciate how much I can learn and do in a discrete span of hours. On a single call shift last year, my team and I managed multiple patients with active upper GI bleeding, another patient with a bowel obstruction, and admitted five others to fill empty beds on the floor. Because of my teammates, I felt supported dealing with each of these cases as they presented themselves, and what might otherwise have felt like a long shift actually seemed to fly by. For those familiar with “runner’s high” or getting lost in a gripping book, the best workdays on the MGH medicine services can resemble these flow states. You walk away with the sense that you’ve moved the needle on a patient’s care—made a difference—and grown closer with your co-residents along the way.
During our first-year psychiatry training, we lead rounds on the inpatient service, supported by an all-star team of colleagues—attendings, social workers, nurses, co-residents, medical students. Getting to conduct an interview with a patient and then debrief with one’s colleagues afterwards feels like a huge privilege, and a fantastic learning opportunity. The staff across the board here are so good at their jobs—and so invested in patient care. I have memories of our all-staff rounds on the psychiatry floor where we go deep on a case, and while it’s gratifying to know that my voice carries weight, it’s equally thrilling to watch my colleagues jump in with their observations and suggestions. I recall a day where my attending got up at the white board and started diagramming evidence for one case like it was a forensic mystery, connecting key items with red lines and crossing off disproven hypotheses. Moments like these, where I feel like I am thinking through a complex problem with the best minds in the business, are profoundly rewarding.
Outside the hospital—and, despite my fears prior to residency, I have in fact had loads of time outside the hospital!—I’ve enjoyed maintaining longstanding hobbies and adopting new ones. I have read around a dozen novels this year, including some ambitious ones (Buddenbrooks, Crime and Punishment), and fell in love with attending late-night movie screenings at the Harvard Film Archive. I hang out at art museums after work, where the free admission means I can drop in even just to see a painting or two. I’ve ridden my bicycle over to the Arnold Arboretum enough times to catch the blooming cycles of the cherry blossom trees, the world-class lilac collection, and the one-of-a-kind Franklinia tree. I have friends over for ambitious dinners or take-out, depending on the mood. And I’ve had time left over to pursue academic projects, including research in the medical humanities, which is one of my passions, as well as writing fiction and—as evidenced above—the occasional poem.
If I could go back and speak to myself as a medical student, I’d say: residency rocks. There’s no feeling quite like actually doing the work that you’ve been training for all these years. Getting to do that work in an environment like the MGH/McLean program, where my colleagues are some of the smartest and most interesting people I’ve ever met and the patients receive outstanding care across every modality, has been a real privilege. The worst day of residency was the day before it started, when I was nervous about everything ahead of me. While there’s no question that any career in medicine has its challenges, one thing I can say about this program is that each challenge—whether one I face myself or one I’ve observed on the journey of a patient or their loved ones—is also an opportunity for growth, connection, and insight.
A haiku by the poet Ryokan:
The thief
Left it behind –
The moon at the window.
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