Medicine
Lectures, anatomy, placements, patients, exams and the gradual realisation that knowing facts is not the same as knowing how to care.
The medical school journal · 2015–2020
Memoir of a Med Student
Five years of lectures, placements, exams, adventures, doubt and growth — told from the perspective of someone trying to become a doctor without completely losing himself along the way.
Before the white coat fit
Medical school was only half the story.
This is not a guide on how to survive medical school. It is the story of what medical school does to you.
I started writing these entries in 2015, long before I understood what becoming a doctor would demand. The journal follows the academic pressure, clinical placements and first encounters with patients, but it also follows everything that happened beyond the lecture theatre.
Across five years, medicine collides with love, loss, travel, identity, ambition and a fair amount of questionable decision-making. The result is less a polished success story and more an honest record of becoming.
5
Years of medical school
2015
The journal begins
2020
A doctor emerges
1
Very long coming-of-age story
Read chronologically
Five years of becoming.
Begin with the first nervous entry, move through each year of medical school and finish where the title of “doctor” finally becomes real.
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Before it all
Foreword
Why I began writing, why vulnerability matters and why a private journal eventually became something I wanted to share with the world.
Open the foreword I 2015–2016First Year
The first lectures, the first identity crises and the naïve beginning of a journey that still felt more theoretical than real.
Enter Year One II 2016–2017Second Year
Medicine becomes heavier as life beyond university grows louder — bringing love, entropy, escape and a life-changing journey through Colombia.
Enter Year Two III 2017–2018Third Year
Change, Nepal, medical volunteering, rock bottom and the slow, imperfect work of rebuilding a life with more intention.
Enter Year Three IV 2018–2019Fourth Year
Vulnerability, relationships, reason and the increasingly complicated attempt to balance a medical career with an actual human life.
Enter Year Four V 2019–2020Fifth Year
Final placements, mounting pressure and the last stretch between feeling like a student and being expected to function as a doctor.
Enter Year Five ∞ The end of the beginningAfterword
A final look back at the person who entered medical school, the person who left it and everything that changed in between.
Read the afterword
Inside the memoir
More than lecture notes.
The journal follows medicine closely, but the moments that shape a doctor rarely stay neatly inside hospital walls.
Life
Love, friendship, mental health, identity, ambition and the messy human experiences that continue regardless of the next exam date.
Elsewhere
Colombia, Nepal, Hungary and other departures from the familiar — journeys that taught lessons no lecture theatre ever could.
Becoming a doctor was never only about learning medicine. It was about discovering what the process would strip away, build back and leave behind.
The complete journal
Take the memoir with you.
Read the full medical-school journey as a single eBook — from the earliest doubts and discoveries to the final transition from student to doctor.
Every purchase also helps support the continued maintenance of The Roving Doctor and the stories still waiting to be written.
$1.99
Digital journal
Medical school ended. The real learning was about to begin.
Continue into foundation training, first shifts, growing responsibility and the difficult transition from medical student to practising doctor.
Continue with Journal of a Junior Doctor.The views expressed throughout this journal are personal and reflective. Patient details should remain anonymised in accordance with professional standards.