The End of Training

This week was my week of work for the next six months. The last time I had a break that long was before kindergarten.

It felt strange, driving away from Hopkins for the last time. Actually, the part where I signed my last electronic note and turned in my pager felt great. But otherwise the whole thing felt anticlimactic. I feel ready to be really on my own, but there isn’t that sense of relief I felt when finishing residency last year. For the most part, I’ve been ready to leave Baltimore for a long time. And I’m ready to leave Hopkins. I’ve gone through being enamored by the prestige and history of the place as an applicant, being overworked and disillusioned in early residency, struggling with the clash of the culture with the kind of person and mother I wanted to be in later residency. I’ve appreciated the kind of mentorship and teaching you can have if you find the right person as a fellow, and learned about money and politics as an attending.

Thinking back on who I was four years ago, it was probably inevitable that I’d go through an experience like this before realizing the academic high life isn’t always worth the cost, at least at this stage of life. It’s taken more introspection to figure out what I do want than to continue down the path I’d been traveling up till then. In that sense I couldn’t have gone anywhere better; I feel well-trained, and I feel ready to move on.

I’m proud of D for making a decision in the next few years for our family, of being willing to put his career on the line, though he ended up finding essentially a dream job. He wanted to work in public health, and he’ll be doing it managing a hundred employees and a budget in the millions, which isn’t bad. I’ll get to foray into the world of private practice. I’m looking forward to the independence and efficiency, while hopefully still being able to practice the way I’d like and work with residents. We’ll see. One era of life ending and another beginning.