Psyched Up

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about specialties.  I know taking it seriously this early is the cute-yet-eye-roll-y equivalent of my 6th grade self “thinking a lot about whether I’d rather marry Lance Bass or Nick Carter”* , but it turns out that I’m actually not very good at essentially working 12 hour days without a concrete goal.

(Previously, my “concrete goal” was to simply become a doctor who Knows Things.  Without thinking about specialties, the most specific I could get was picturing myself as a doctor who Knows Things and wears high heels all day because she’s just that awesome (or has developed some extreme peripheral neuropathy and is immune to the pain).**

But now I want a temporary label for my future goals, just to get me through these 12 hour days.  And then in two years I can change my mind 10 times and have a dramatic identity crisis about it like a normal person.

So as a way of making me feel like I’m working towards something concrete, I’ve started paying a lot more attention to psychiatry (both my research gig and the class), and anesthesiology (by, somewhat less impressively, reading up on anesthesiology blogs and trying to find somebody to shadow.)

So because of all that, last week I volunteered to interview a psych patient for our small group session – tomorrow.  I remembered this only about 4 hours ago – along with how the psych resident had told me I should read up on how to conduct a psychiatric interview beforehand.

It took me at least a solid half hour of internet research, plus twenty minutes of talking to Boyfriend (currently on his 3rd year psych rotation)  to determine that there actually isn’t one specific structure to the psych interview, and that was apparently our resident’s idea of a practical joke.

So.. there’s that.  But what I lack in foresight, I think I make up in my ability to improvise.  And honestly, now that we’re done with the “Can you hold a conversation with another human being?  Let’s learn!” patient class we had last semester, any patient experience that doesn’t involve purposefully steering the conversation away from a diagnosis sounds great to me.

*  Cause, you know, who knows?  One of the two specialties I like now may, in two years, turn out to only be interested in other specialties.  (And the other one might star in a terrible reality show.  And not the so-bad-it’s-good kind of terrible, like My Super-Sweet 16 or I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant.)

**  Future painful orthopedic problems aside, this potential future died for good once I remembered that 1) I only own 1 pair of heels because I’d rather spend the money on boots or books, and 2) I learned how to walk in high heels by watching a youtube “how to” made for newbie cross-dressers, because it was the only thing I could find at my knowledge level.  Neither of these boded well.