Ode to my Intern

My intern is a terrible person*, but all in all, I think he's taught me a lot about how to deal with your intern year without completely losing your mind.

1) TAKE A LOT OF NAPS
You have a call day on the weekend and you're waiting to round with your attending in like five hours? Take a nap! Any surface you can lay down on is a surface where you can fall asleep. Direct quote from my intern: "Remember in preschool when you had those roll out sleeping pads and you had a twenty minute nap? They should make all the residents do that after morning report.

2) FIND HUMOR IN EVERY SITUATION... as long as you're standing far enough away from the patient's room.
Not going to lie, a lot of the cases we get in internal medicine are incredibly depressing. Any humor--even if it's dark--can be beneficial to one's (read: my) psyche. I am most impressed by the fact that my intern can make fun of any patient or any patient's situation, and then be incredibly, and sincerely nice to them when he goes to see them.

3) INDIANS PRONOUNCE THE WORD POTASSIUM WEIRD
Seriously weird. PO-TA-SHE-UM. Similarly they mispronounce Calcium and Magnesium. He was raised in America but still pronounces important elements like he was speaking... not Amuuurican.

4) BE A HUMAN BEING... and be humble
One of the things I was most worried about was how I would deal with being an intern. You don't know how to do everything yet, so sometimes you may feel incompetent, and you just finished your M4 year, so you may not remember everything that was on Step 1 or Step 2. But my intern just kind of rolls with the punches. I know he's learning a lot because he doesn't look anxious when he gets a question wrong, he just checks uptodate.com for an answer and proceeds to help out a patient. Also, my intern (and actually a lot of residents) goes out and/or spends time with friends. Not a lot of time, but he spends his off time having fun or sleeping (the two most important free time activities).

I am incredibly sad that I will have to leave this rotation. It's been great: learned a lot, laughed a lot, slept enough, I could not have asked for a better rotation.

Figure 1: Intern and I passing out during our post-prandial states

*His ideal patient is between the ages of 15 and 35, who is educated, and who has insurance. Good luck finding them!