Memoir of a Med Student · Year I · 2015–2016

First Year

The first lectures, the first identity crises and the naïve beginning of a journey that still felt more theoretical than real.

Before medicine felt real

An awakening in more ways than one.

First year began with anatomy, biochemistry and a timetable full of subjects. The more important lessons were about identity, belonging and deciding what kind of person I wanted to become.

These entries capture the strange gap between entering medical school and actually feeling like a medical student. There is ambition and excitement, but also doubt, reinvention and the gradual dismantling of ideas I had carried into university.

I First year of the memoir
2015 The story begins
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The first chapter unfolds.

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Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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The complete medical-school journal

Continue beyond Year I.

First Year is the opening movement of a five-year coming-of-age story through medical school, relationships, travel, failure and growth.

The first year ended. The certainty did not last.

Continue into a heavier year where medicine grows louder and life beyond university begins to pull the story in unexpected directions.

Continue with Second Year.
Read the next year

These entries are personal reflections written at particular moments during medical school. Medical information and professional perspectives may have changed since publication.