On this day four years ago, I wrote the following words to myself. I ended up posting it on Facebook. I was supposed to mirror it on this blog, but I apparently forgot.

Then the memories function of social media kicked in, dragging this post back to my feed. Sometimes technology has its uses.

Things that seem so big and overwhelming at present can become small and even forgettable in hindsight. Tonight I’m realizing that while our thoughts and emotions may fade over time, our hard-earned insights are here to stay.

Cheers again to the reader who is myself… and to everyone else who might be stumbling across this log.

I have a blog but I can’t be bothered to post there just yet—-

A note to the reader who is myself:

Flipping through these digital notes in preparation for the comprehensive exams was an adventure in recollection. YL6 in a single space; it has its own humor. At the start of each module and semester is a meticulous collection fuelled by renewed passion. As the days and weeks go by, so do my will, and the personally annotated lectures are replaced by class transcriptions and shameless book excerpts. 

You can tell the likes and dislikes of the author. There’s a deep love of stories as the events in pathogenesis play out, with whole sections of Robbins carefully editorialized. And look, there, whole sections of pharmacology, either red-marked or untouched. 

I am writing this now near the end of this chapter, two days and some change until the year-end revalida and OSCE. This week before has probably been the longest in recent memory. I started out with the kind of daring passion I rarely possess, ready to take the exams with the encouragement of what feels like the entire ASMPH community. Now it has trickled down to a mix of resignation and exhaustion. As always. One last exam to go. 

Until next week. On one hand I pray that the entirety of these books jump out of their digital pages and become engraved onto my brain. On the other I know that I need not pray. With effort, I can trust in my lecturers, preceptors and patients; my own failures and successes and words. 

Bar a catastrophe, I know I’ll end YL6 well. Perhaps my reserves will only become more sustainable and more passionate over the summer. Perhaps I’ll even review these notes in preparation of more to come. Perhaps not. 

Ending notes of certainty to my dear reader who is myself: be thankful of the struggle, the support and the story. Even in your dénouement, you are still beginning. 

Log: 25/May/2018
A note to the reader who is myself:
Originally posted privately on Facebook