Fangirling and Writer-Nerd Chaos

Hi Molly ^^ so I've been in a relationship for almost two years now, but um... not anymore. My heart hurts and I was just wondering if you could tell us a story? For old time's sake?

you sent me this three months ago, and i’m sorry that i’m only just getting to it! i’m sorry your relationship ended. that’s hard and sad. i hope you’re doing better. 

i haven’t told y’all a story in a long time!! so i thought, as a special treat, because you’re sad, i will tell you about The Time My Forgettable Lawyer Saved Me By Having Blood On His Teeth.

so the thing you have to know about me, which i will admit straight up, is that i am not a good driver. 

to be clear, i like driving. cars are the perfect place for me to live out my very elaborate fantasy life, in which i get invited to be on late night talk shows and can sing as loud as i want along with my radio without worrying that my neighbors are like, blogging about the girl in 1120 that never stops singing hayley kiyoko. 

a n y w a y, on my twentieth birthday, my friends casper and teriyaki’s (who you may remember from the first time i threw a party) car broke down on their way to my house. this was when my folks were still living on the ranch, which means everything was at MINIMUM twenty minutes away, and casper and teriyaki lived about 40 minutes away. 

what i decided to do was go get them.

so my pal grizz hopped into the front seat of my volkswagen bug convertible and we jetted off to pick the boys up. i was very conscious at this point that everyone was at home waiting for us, so it is possible that i was going slightly* too fast.

in virginia, going more than 20mph over the speed limit can actually mean jailtime, which i did not know until a policeman pulled me over and said, “did you know that i can take you directly to jail, right now?”

“i ….. did not know that,” i said, which was true. “please …. don’t.”

he looked into the car. we’d made casper and teriyaki sit in the back, which was very unkind because, i don’t know if you’ve ever been in the back of a volkswagen bug convertible, but it is barely big enough to fit ONE twenty-year-old human male in, much less two of them. 

as he walked back to the cop car to do whatever mysterious things cops do when they go sit in their car for like, FORTY-FIVE FUCKING MINUTES when they’re giving you a ticket–

–teriyaki leaned up from the backseat like a tiny dog on a roadtrip to be like, “i totally saw him before we passed.”

“WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY ANYTHING?” i hissed.

“i thought you saw him!”

“you should try crying when he comes back,” grizz said. 

this would have been a great idea, except that i’m so scared of getting in trouble that any time an authority figure yells at me i just shut down completely. remember that weird keira knightley movie domino where she plays a bounty hunter who has a cool head in a crisis? i’m exactly like domino except instead of reacting with complete calm when motorcycle gangs pull their guns on me, i turn into a dead fish when i’m getting yelled at.

anyway, what happened was …….. he charged me with reckless endangerment.

when i got back to my house, now solidly an hour late, i decided to get in front of what was definitely going to be a whole Conversation by announcing to the kitchen, “okay. so. i have good news and bad news.”

“…..what?” my mother asked, sounding very skeptical.

because my mom is who my mom is, and my hometown was what my hometown was, she hired the like, only lawyer. his name was sam. sam was like ….. fine. you know? i can’t tell you what he looked like. i kind of forgot what he looked like the SECOND he wasn’t in my sightline.

anyway, the day of my court date, i show up at the County Courthouse, with my mom, and like … sam is not there. 

we wait out front. he doesn’t show. my summons time gets closer. he doesn’t show. we ask the nice lady at the desk if maybe he came in already? he had not. 

we go into the courtroom, and i’m thinking, like, i’m going to jail. like i am literally going to go to prison. i cannot believe i threw my whole life away on casper and teriyaki, who i love, but not enough to do HARD TIME just so they can come to my birthday party!!!!!

the judge calls my name. i walk up the aisle like it is the green fucking mile, y’all. every step brings me closer to my destiny, which is to be one of those sad stories they tell in drivers’ ed to scare Teens into driving carefully and always checking their rearview mirror before backing up.

when i got to the front, the judge looked down at his … uhh…. whatever it is they have on their bench???

and was like, “molls ofgeo? isn’t sam supposed to be your lawyer?”

“he’s …. not here,” i said. “i don’t know where he is. i called like seventeen times. i’m kind of worried something happened.”

at that moment, behind me, the doors of the court opened.

it was sam.

sam’s whole head was wrapped in gauze.

the left side of his mouth was slanted down.

“i’m here,” sam said.

it turns out, sam had gotten an EMERGENCY DENTAL PROCEDURE that morning. there was LITERALLY bloody cotton balls in his mouth, but that forgettable son of a gun showed up anyway. 

sam turned to the …. prosecutor? idk, the guy the town paid to be like, “i’m the lawyer for the Other Team,” when the other team was, like, the state, and said, “listen. how about we make this ticket be for just A Lot Speeding?”

the other lawyer, clearly deeply horrified at sam’s BLOOD FILLED MOUTH, was like, “honestly, i will say or do literally anything to not have to look at you anymore.”

and so it was. i paid a preposterous amount of money to the state of virginia and that was that.

although!!!!! the cop who pulled me over came up to me on my way out and was like, “you should have told me it was your birthday.”

MY DUDE, I WAS GOING NINETY MILES AN HOUR. WOULD THAT HAVE WORKED?

I'm a first year med student and I'm so scared that I'm likely at the bottom of my class. So scared the admins look down on me for doing below average on the exams. So afraid to speak up out of low confidence in the knowledge I'm learning. Have you felt this fear before? How'd you get through it? My therapist says to put myself in the confident mindset but I don't think I know what that looks like. I value your blog and would love to hear anything you have to say. Thank you.

Hi there anon!

Oh yeah, I’ve totally felt that fear. I’d say probably most of us, if not all of us, have had that moment. Moments, to be honest. 

I would say that first and foremost, it’s okay to have doubts and unease about the confidence you have in your knowledge. Medicine is a profession of lifelong learning, which makes it interesting, overwhelming, fascinating, bewildering, and MASSIVE. That’s why we learn the same things over and over and over, on clerkships, in residency, as fellows and attendings. That’s why we get re-certified every few years. You’re not gonna learn too many new things after med school. You’re going to refine and relearn things you only started to grasp in med school when you are in residency. That does a LOT for confidence, let me tell you. 

You are not alone. For example, check out a question from another person here! Confidence is something we cultivate throughout our life, and we do it in our own ways. Maybe it’s just telling yourself in the morning you’re going to be okay. Maybe it’s a sudden realization when you’re teaching a med student a subject that, only three years ago, you barely understood and had you crying in public (yeah, that oddly specific example is about me. I’m the crying one. The subject was hyponatremia, if I recall.). Maybe it’s faking it til you make it. Surround yourself with people who are gonna support you. Your med school classmates know what you’re going through. Support each other through it, applaud each other for your successes great and small! Regardless of the way you do it, confidence is grown slowly, cultivated in small batches daily (or not), and sometimes you gotta scrap it and restart. And there’s nothing wrong with that. 

In regards to being the bottom of your class, the person at the bottom of the class who passes still gets an MD. Not to make light of your situation. But to just reframe the situation. Bottom of the barrel in med school is still something. Being a physician is more than grades, and (perhaps one of the biggest struggles in med school) your progress and growth should be measured against your former self, not compared to others. Either said than done. It took me a long time to learn that lesson, and sometimes I have to remind myself of it. 

In regards to admins, they are not really looking at the micro level of each and every test. This is very different from high school and undergrad where a lot of little details count. Med school is about big picture, grabbing key points, getting the gestalt of things. That’s one thing that really helped me relax and learn for the sake of learning. 

Hope that is a starting point!

md-a