exactly four years ago, i was curled up in the couch of the condo’s lobby, filling my head with a-waves and oxygen dissociation curves when a group of medical graduates ran past me screaming in delight. the medical board results had just been released, and they’d found out via cellphone (ah, technology) that they passed. i can still remember the pang of jealousy i felt as i quietly observed their merry-making . there i was, barely into med school, when these three people had already officially become licensed doctors. the end of med school seemed so far away.

now, four years later, it’s here. i’m in their place, jumping nonstop for 30 minutes while screaming myself hoarse (in the privacy of our unit, of course). after bathing myself in that pungent mixture of formaldehyde and rotting flesh, after slaving away at my desk to make sense of (in vain) hundreds of chapters of textbooks, after not flunking endless exams, after inserting a million intravenous lines, after (im)patiently interviewing and examining every pgh patient assigned to me, after going on duty every freakin’ 3 days (unless i’m forced to slide, or, gulp, go on 48-hr duty), after every stumble, every misadventure, every mistake, it’s over. i graduated. i passed. i'm finally, finally, finally a doctor.

and i’ve never been more terrified in my life.