AC and Lessons

I came home from a very long and quite stressful day of work yesterday evening to a house with no air conditioning. Just broken for no reason. It was working fine when I left home that morning, but was not working at all when I returned. It was literally cooler outside than it was in my house. Now I’ve stayed in Ghana for months at a time in the Summer with no air conditioning, but this was different. One, it’s Summertime in Alabama- this heat isn’t the same as West African heat. It’s going to be in the 90s this weekend and it’s been raining for the past several days, so it’s miserably humid outside. And two, this just was not the plan. MY air was not supposed to go out! And worse, it was almost dark when I got home! The one day I decide to stay at work late so I could finish all my charts! And all I could think about on the ride home was getting to my house, grabbing a shower, eating my Chipotle, watching Top Chef, and not doing anything productive or requiring brainpower for the rest of the evening until I went to bed. Didn’t happen.

So what does my misfortune have to do with you? Maybe not much, but thanks for reading, I needed to vent!…Or maybe, there are some lessons for your pre-med journey in my AC troubles…

1. If you don’t like where you are, fix it.

I don’t like being hot. I’m hot-natured in general, like everyone else in my family, and in the last year, my hormones have just gone crazy, making it even worse! Basically, if there’s an option for cool, I’m trying to be in it. So there was no way that going to bed with no working AC was an option last night for me. So I only let myself be frustrated for about 5 minutes before I decided I had to do something about my hot house in a hurry. 

Lesson 1: Make the adjustments. 

If your pre-med journey isn’t looking like it should at this point, fix it. If your GPA isn’t where it needs to be, fix it. We know bringing a GPA up is much harder than letting it drop, so this fix doesn’t happen quickly. It may even require a post-bac year to show you can get the grades you need to be competitive. That’s okay! If your application isn’t complete, don’t submit it. Fix it. Have someone you trust read through it and give you suggestions on how to make it stronger and ready for submission. If you know you don’t have the medical exposure or service that you need at this point, get it! There are opportunities available but they’re not likely going to come find you; you have to go find them. And even if you get some no’s to shadowing, scribing, or volunteering, keep asking. Make the necessary adjustments to get what you need. 

2. If you need help, ask for it.

With about 20 minutes of daylight left outside, I decided I was going to go fix the HVAC unit outside my house. Why not? I’m smart. I can take a baby out of a woman’s uterus, I can manage an ICU ventilator, I can run a successful code, and I can calculate an amoxicillin dose in my head (that really is impressive, you’ll appreciate how much of a skill mental math is when you get to your pediatrics rotation in medical school.) But what I cannot do, friends, is fix an air conditioner unit. Pushing all the buttons on the panel in the hallway and lifting the hood off the unit and blowing on it like it was an old Nintendo game was all I had. And that didn’t work. So what did I do? I called somebody who knew what the heck they were doing to really come fix it. 

Lesson 2: You don’t have to know everything about everything.

We’re foolish if we don’t ask for help when we need it. Especially if not getting that help is going to also mean not getting that white coat. So if you need help to get As in your BCPM classes, ask for it! There are real live people out there who, crazy as it sounds, love physics, anatomy, and chemistry. Let them help you! And, often, tutoring is free through your school. The school pays the tutor, it’s free to you. Even if you understand the material but having extra help is the difference between a B and an A, it’s so worth it! The guy who used to tutor me in physics in college randomly found me on LinkedIn a few months ago. And I almost cried when his name and face appeared on my phone. I have legit put him on this year’s Christmas list because I definitely wouldn’t have gotten through that class with an A without him. If you need help, get it. Don’t let pride keep you from your destiny!

3. Don’t jump ship.

Listen, 4 minutes into being frustrated after I realized the air wasn’t working, I almost packed a bag and just left for the night. But that would’ve meant leaving my dog by herself in the sweltering jungle that was our house…and that wouldn’t have been fair. She’s huge and a bit of a psyhcho, so I couldn’t have taken her to anyone’s house or a hotel. Plus, she doesn’t like to be hot either. She may be even worse than me. I wish you could’ve seen the look she gave me when I walked in the house—as if there was some air conditioning bill that I forgot to pay and it was my fault she’d been hot for who knows how many hours…She’s so bougie, it’s ridiculous. And I allow it, so I can’t even blame her. I could’ve left her to fend for herself and stayed at the new, shiny hotel in town but I would’ve spent most of the night feeling guilty. I would’ve been cool, but I still would’ve felt guilty.

Lesson 3: Don’t walk away just because there’s an easier path in sight. 

There are a lot of jobs out there. Ones that you could, honestly, withdraw from school right now and do for the rest of your life and make good money, not have so much student loan debt, etc. Trust me, we all have those days as a pre-med when we think about doing just that. But would you always replay in your mind that you should have been a physician? That you were so close to getting your white coat but walked away because it got hard? Well listen, it’s gonna get hard—newsflash! But if being a physician is what you want to do—then you have to stick with it! 

4. Sometimes you have to put in extra.

I’m going on vacation in 2 weeks. Thank God for effective COVID-19 vaccines so your girl can get away! I saw a post the other day that said: I’m vaxed, waxed, and ready to relax! and Lord if that ain’t me! In preparation, I’ve been saving a little cash stash specifically for the trip–money that I wouldn’t feel guilty spending and not putting towards student loans! But after-hours air condition servicing calls are not cheap! I think when the serviceman told me the fee just to come out, that the rate would be time + ½, and that I may not be under warranty still, he thought I would change my mind. Um, sir, that’s fine. I’m trying to sleep under the covers tonight. What time will you be here? He seriously made more in the 30 minutes it took him to fix the unit than I do in an hour. But…I gladly paid it to be able to sleep in a cool house. 

Lesson 4: You may have to pay more for that white coat. 

And in your case, I don’t mean money. (But we did talk about how medical school isn’t cheap, right?) You may pay more than your non-pre-med friends. You may pay in hours in the library or volunteering at the hospital when they’re out kicking it. You may pay on the receiving end of eye-rolls because you have to miss weddings, parties, trips, etc because you have pre-med responsibilities. You may even pay more than your pre-med friends. You may have to put in more time in the library or the lab to get grades like theirs. You may have to ask five times as many physicians to shadow than they did. But don’t sweat that. At the end of the day, if you can afford it (and I know you can), you can get it. 

5. Face your issues now!

Now we could’ve slept with the ceiling fans on last night and not paid the after-hours fee to have the serviceman come out at 9:00pm on a Thursday night. But I won’t get home until late this Friday evening either. And then it’s the weekend, so the after-hour fees are still there. And then I have to work on Monday and have a meeting after work. So, basically, I don’t have any daytime off hours for the next 5 days. Was I willing to wait 5 days to sleep in a cool house? Nope. It had to be fixed, no sense in putting it off.

Lesson 5: Some things just have to be addressed right now. Putting them off until later will only put you behind and make your journey harder. I’m going to leave that one right there. Read into it what you will…

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Like my broken AC unit, what do you need to address right now? What adjustments do you need to make? In what areas do you need to ask for help? Do you need to be putting in more than you are currently? What are your plans to address these things? Feel free to share comments below or send me an email if you have specific thoughts or questions. 

If you’re not at your dorm, apartment, or house right now, I really hope your AC is working when you get back there!