"Chasing with Passions" by MSIH first year blogger Aerin Philip


Sunset run into the desert to the HaNegev monument, overlooking the city of Beer-Sheva

The greatest piece of advice I received before beginning medical school was to stay devoted to your passions. No matter how derailed you may feel by the rigor of deadlines or almost-infinite amount of knowledge required to retain, you have to remember those fuels that keep you motivated and grounded. Finding time and space to allow these passions to prosper alongside your journey through medicine will help you better acclimate and focus within the expectations set for you as a student. At least for me, it is my key to survival.

It is beneficial, not imperative, to begin this list with a passion for medicine. Whether it may be identifying musical therapy for neurocognitive pathologies, establishing medical systems in under resourced areas, or committing to exceptional patient care, there is some burning desire/force that guides you to this career. No passion will be easy nor exciting in every moment. I see complexities in medicine that still await my attention – in such a quick change of perspective I can make myself believe that all (the good and the bad) along the way bring light to those mysterious complexities that surround my attraction to medicine.

Thanks to a program set up by a student, I have the pleasure of calling a gastroenterologist (GI) physician my mentor. Our warm relationship has allowed me to not only explore the GI system past a mere interest and now into a passion, but also included even dinner invitations to his home. The close-knit community we are in fosters the environment for these tight-knit relationships, through which you will find a potentially astounding, new support system waiting for you through the struggles of medical school.

Some of my favorite students at Um Batin
Beyond medicine, there are other passions I still hold dearly. Many of my classmates can tell you about the instantaneous joy they find in me when I am mentoring adolescents. MSIH’s student led volunteering program with Um Batin allows me to continue engaging adolescents, in which I have the ability to help students augment their English skills. We have already developed friendships where I learn much more beyond English or Arabic grammar – we have exchanged bakery recipes and favorite artists, watched FIFA 2018 matches and discussed new Bollywood film trailers together. This coordinated extracurricular classroom provides a space for creativity to these students – and I am very proud to spend my time there.

Another space where I can assist is with asylum seeker status in Israel – a very trying, complicated situation that has reminded me of the gentlest nature of humanity in the most difficult times. I am at a loss of words when describing the horrors these young men and families face when their will is challenged daily and their identities are lost as they flee farther away from their deteriorating homes. Restoring damaged identities takes time, but I want to help make steps forward in portraying the importance of their travesty.

And of course, traveling. Let’s not forget to mention that Israel is surrounded by a truly unique area, riddled with beauty, culture, and traditions. Flights to & from Israel are relatively cheap (especially for a medical school budget) to almost every continent, and it makes each school break something worth pushing for. You cannot help but giving your best throughout school when a weekend getaway is on the horizon! My love for traveling and meeting people everywhere is not hindered by my decision to become a medical student, rather it has become an even bigger opportunity from my current residence.

My New Year’s resolutions this year also stem from passions I have shy-ed away from in my life. After being inspired by various artists who have photographed humanity in environments across the world, I am finally pursuing portrait photography. I look forward to showcasing personal stories through my eyes. I have decided to read more – to read for leisure and not for school. I dedicate a mental relaxation period after 10 PM every day entirely to reading, hoping that it will alleviate any stress I have accumulated throughout the day. As I sleep more peacefully I am whisked off into the fictional worlds I enjoy – those worlds of Oscar Wilde, Orson Scott Card, and Erin Morgenstern (authors I give with the highest recommendation)! And to name one last passion, I am kicking up my love for running one notch higher this year. In February, I will be running the Tel Aviv Marathon with a few of my classmates. This short-term goal ensures that I spend even a little time every day to myself and my passions.

On route to the top of Mount Olympus in Cyprus
If we are all chasing our passions, we are all striving toward becoming the exceptional humans we mentally train for in our grade school years. Think on it for a second. Take in that first statement deeply and really reflect on what those words mean to you. At our hands, we have now the ability to be a step closer to a conglomerate of powerhouse figures in society, fulfilling a pivotal niche for our surrounding community. You are not lacking anything, but giving your best with everything you put your mind to because you sincerely enjoy it. You are especially shining with infectious passion for what drives you to be you. This is what MSIH asks of us. To find your core, and shine – chase after your passions and become the admirable physician we, MSIH, believe you to be.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"A World Outside of MSIH" by rising second year student Chelsea Powell

Image
You may have heard that all medical students do is study.   It certainly seems that way at times.   There are, however, opportunities to fit in some other experiences. Here are a few of the things I have done this year:      I’ve always liked to run, and the endless desert trails in Beer Sheva provide great places to train.   In November my roommate and I decided it would be great fun to run the Tel Aviv Half Marathon , scheduled for February.   What seemed like such a good idea when we registered in November, however, became a source of stress as the February date approached, because we realized that the race fell on the day before a pharmacology quiz.   Fortunately, we were able to come up with a creative solution to our loss of study time.   While other runners wrote split times on their arms, our arms sported names of the drugs we needed to memorize.   I suspect we were the only runners in the race who quizzed each other about COX ...
Read more

"Loving the Alien" by MSIH first year blogger Flear Vaknin

Image
In recent years, the practice of referring to someone as an ‘alien’ has been contested by articles in the New York Times (“Time to Retire the Term ‘Alien ’ ”), Salon (“Stop Calling People Aliens”), and Immigration Impact, to name a few sources.  One of the definitions of the term, from the Oxford English Dictionary includes “unfamiliar and disturbing or distasteful,” so it is not surprising that many are calling for the abolishment of this term when referencing people. But then there is the pregnant alien of Bialik street in Beer Sheva: cartoonish, endearing, and a little odd, but more inviting than off-putting. Before seeing her for myself, I heard others refer to this pregnant alien and believed her to be a sculpture that was merely reminiscent of what was being described (something more abstract perhaps). When I happened upon her on a walk, I was thrilled to find out that, first, I am living in a city with a sense of humor, and that maybe this is the sort of place where being ...
Read more

"Think" by MSIH first year blogger Ayal Levi

Image
This little statue is called "The Thinking Man."  My (future) mother-in-law bought it in Uganda, then passed it over to me as a present, before I joined the rest of this inimitable group here in the Desert. Now, he sits on my desk, eyes half-shut, staring at me. He never stops staring, this “Thinking Man.”  He certainly is consistent; I’ll give him that. As we spend considerable hours together, trying to find our way through a waterfall of information, he has become a constant reminder to stop and think. To pause, shake my head, and work through the intricacies of acid-base metabolism, the autonomic nervous system drugs, and what feels like a black-hole of microbiology “Slow it down there sparky, and use your head.” Or something to that effect. A classmate of mine, a sort of philosopher-king, quoted me a short line from a letter Oscar Wilde wrote to Lord Alfred Douglas (complicated relationship). “Education is  the ability to play gracefully with ideas.”  What a grea...
Read more