The Balance

I think one of the most important characteristics of being a doctor is the ability to recognise your own faults, and I'll admit that this year I got the work-life balance completely wrong.
Applying to medicine has become increasingly competitive, and so the need for good grades has become more important than ever before. Although I don't regret the amount of work I've done this year, in reflection I approached the challenge in an incredibly unsustainable and almost obsessive way.

At the start of the school year I quit netball, rowing and started to run less often, thinking it would give me more time to revise, more time to mould myself into what I believed to be the perfect medical student, but in reality I had removed all outlets of stress. From September onwards I was revising for 5 to 6 hours after school each night and for 11 hours each day on the weekend. In hindsight, typing it now, it sounds absolutely ridiculous. Yes, as I doctor you need to work hard, but at the end of the day we're humans, not robots.

The stress began to increase steadily, not that I would admit it at the time. Any sign of weakness would be supressed and hidden away. I put so much pressure on myself to do well that I lost sight of what's really important in life. As a result, I ended up having a panic attack in my first exam for maths. However, in some ways, it was almost a rather positive experience, it was the wake up call I needed to show me that I couldn't keep up the intensity of work forever, or else I would just burn out. After the experience, I was able to reflect on what I had done and what I needed to do to improve my work-life balance. My exams have finished and  I've made it my goal to try and get that 'work-life balance' which is so essentiel when perusing a naturally stressful and high pressure career.