Bucket Listings

On St. Patrick's day, I saw an article on Huffington, a letter a grandfather had written to his grandchildren.  It was advice for life and I am a sucker for these sorts of things.  I linked to the original, but here are 3 pieces of advice that really spoke to me: 

• Make a Life List of all those things you want to do: travel to places; learn a skill; master a language; meet someone special. Make it long and do some things from it every year. Don't say "I'll do it tomorrow" (or next month or next year). That is the surest way to fail to do something. There is no tomorrow, and there is no "right" time to begin something except now.

• Travel: always but especially when you are young. Don't wait until you have "enough" money or until everything is "just right." That never happens. Get your passport today.

• Pick your job or profession because you love to do it. Sure, there will be some things hard about it, but a job must be a joy. Beware of taking a job for money alone -- it will cripple your soul.

I love the last one.  It's advice someone gave me once, and I feel so very grateful to be able to pursue a career I'm just crazy about.  I fall in love with medicine every day, and even when I hate it, I still love it.  As for the first two, I've added a bucket list tab.  I started my bucket list after I graduated from college, I've crossed some things out and I've added some new things (particularly from a this article from Huffington on the most underrated cities in Europe).  I loved that that grandfather said "Make it long".  Be ambitious with your bucket list, why not?  

Overheard

On the elevator at my job the other day, I overheard the following advice dispensed from a 4th year med student (who is going on to a fabulous residency) to a 3rd year med student:

I'd say don't do your residency where you study medical school because if you're interested in let's say internal medicine, chances are, you've been spending your free rotations there and you already know how the system works.  You already know how they do things and you don't get a different viewpoint or any diversity in your training.  Go somewhere else.  Get out of your hometown/where you did college/where you did medical school.

I thought it was pretty sound advice so I thought I'd post.  I don't think it's applicable to just residency, but to everything.  Go somewhere else!  After high school, I wanted to go out of state for college because I just never wanted to see anyone from high school; I wanted to start fresh.  It was really a good decision because I ended up at a school where everyone was different from anyone in my high school.  Now for med school/my masters I want to go somewhere different from college because the majority of people I hung out with in college were similar to each other.  I changed a lot in college just being exposed to a different type of person.  Diversity in med school/residency sounds delightful.  I want to experience different things/people/ways of practicing medicine.  I get that its not always easy to just pick up and leave (i.e. people who are married/with children/other obligations), but if you can, why not do it?