Let’s get serious about life…sort of. Posting intermittently on this blog about the humor I found in life over the last few years has helped me get through our journey as medical students. (My husband was the student, I was the substitute teacher/mom, THANK GOODNESS. He must love what he does, that’s all there is to say about that.) But, as evidenced by the infrequency of posts lately, times got tough. Away rotations were hard, applications were expensive, and The Match was, well, The Match. But here we are, on the other side of things, done. We have arrived. We are…

Residents.

Ha! No. We are far from done. Rhett matched at Loma Linda University in Redlands, CA, as an orthopedic surgeon in training. This means we will be here for at least five years. I say “at least” because uncertainty is the name of the game these days. But in this journey, even within the last year, my true passion project has been born. Indulge me for a minute?

If I’m reaching any significant others of medical students, residents, fellowship-ers, or even attendings, you might agree that there is a lot of crappy advice out there as to how to get through this journey.

Can I get an amen?

That is primarily why I spent a huge amount of effort avoiding a lot of forums and people who like to give advice. Almost everyone is very well intentioned, but the truth is that everyone’s experience is different, and advice to “expect your husband to always be gone, that way you’re never disappointed,” was not helping me thrive.

But what DID help, was the community I stepped into when we landed in Hershey, PA for medical school. Man, that four years flew by. Through the support of a “Book Club” group (how many books did we actually read…four? Maybe five?) I found an incredible group of friends to cry with, laugh with, and lose my filter with.

The takeaway: community is everything.

No man is an island

Entire of itself

Every man is a piece of the continent

A part of the main.

~John Donne

And therein an idea was born.

What was it, down to the roots, that made my time in Hershey so completely magical? Was it unique to this group of friends? Could it have been achieved had we gone to medical school somewhere else? Could I recreate it in residency? Did I even want to recreate, or was it an adventure best left in a shadow box while the next adventure commenced?

A shadow box, no. But a novel…

And so it came to life! I’m now waist deep in a novel that makes me more excited than any I have ever attempted before. It is a fantasy story focused on five women who entered the medical journey together and found out medical school would be the least of their problems. While its setting draws from my personal experience in medical school, I’m excited for its themes that will reach well beyond medical life!

Who’s with me?

I can’t be the only one who needs reminding that we take ourselves far too seriously sometimes! With the resurrection and renaming of this blog, now called “Your Resident Writer,” I want to emphasize humor and lightheartedness.

From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere. ~Dr. Seuss

Please follow my residency and book writing journey! Don’t come for advice, come for laughs. We all need a little more magic in our lives, right?

Life comes at you fast. How do you keep it real fun?