Graduation tam

This week was my medical school's graduation so my social media is blowing up with peeps celebrating their accomplishments. I'm happy for them and all that jazz, but it brings back hard memories from my graduation last year.

You'd think I'd be upset about the fact that I was the only one of my friends without a defined career track or that I'd be sad to see my prelim year permanently documented in our graduation publications.

Nope. The thing that bothers me the MOST is the way I wore my stupid graduation tam. Seriously.

The proper way to wear it like this, with the hat parallel to the floor:



My millennial classmates convinced me to wear it similarly to the woman in this picture*, except even more angled and sitting even more at the back of my head. It looked like I had a freaking black starfish perched atop my cranium.



I regrettably obliged. Partly because I thought I'd look stupid wearing it the regular way (hindsight is 20/20), and partly because it seemed "cooler" at the time because the stylish people were doing it. Now, 1 year later, I'm still regretting it.

This is such a stupid thing to be upset about considering everything I've gone through in the last year and a half, but for some reason I just can't let it go.

Luckily, there are a few pictures before I changed my tam around and also others after I had realized my mistake and changed it back. But the pictures where I get my diploma immortalize my stylish "mistake".

I'm hoping some day I'll get over this because it is so. Damn. Silly.

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* BTW, I can't even find the way I wore it on Google images. Shows you how unpopular this way of wearing actually is. But I wasn't in the right state of mind to Google how to wear my graduation regalia prior to the ceremony. My only goal that day was to not break out in tears in front of everyone. 

ETA:
After I wrote this post, I found a picture that had almost the same tam positioning as mine (the woman on the far right). See, it looks ridiculous!

Progress

This whole year has been incredibly stressful not only because I've been worried about my future, but also because I've put an incredible amount of pressure on myself.

I've felt the need to be perfect in order to impress people at this program so they could advocate for me during the match. Every time I messed up that perfection (usually, only in my eyes), I would beat myself up about it mercilessly thinking I had blown my chance and the world was coming to an end.

Now that I haven't matched and I know I'm not staying here after the year is done, I've let all of that pressure go. It's been so freeing to not worry so much about the little things that really don't matter in the end.

For example, for the first time in my entire professional life, I overslept work. I woke up 10 minutes before our entire team (upper level, fellow, and attending) was supposed to start rounding. Obviously, I was going to be late, but I didn't rush in getting ready, I didn't speed, and I didn't jog from my parking space to rounds. I figured there wasn't much difference between being 10 minutes late as compared to 20. So, I took the usual amount of time and strolled in as we were talking about our 3rd ICU patient. With the exception of the PGY3 who had to hold the pager for those extra 20 minutes and unluckily got a consult in that time, no one seemed to notice. And I only apologized once, let it go, and went about my day as if nothing had happened

I'm not saying I didn't feel bad about being late, because I did and obviously wish I hadn't slept through the 4 alarms I set every morning*. But it was freeing to not feel guilty, angry, and awful about myself all day. When I'm at work, I kick ass and I think that speaks more to my character and work ethic than the one morning I overslept. It took me a while to realize that and it's been awesome.

This more Zen-like approach to my year has been so refreshing and I'm so happy I've finally reached this point. It makes my life less stressful and less angry at myself, which I sorely need right now.

I guess when you have bigger things to worry about, such as what I'm doing "next year" when really it's next month, the little things really don't matter.

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* I stagger my alarms for situations like this. They go in the following order:
Alarm #1 - It would be really nice to get up right now
Alarm #2 - I should get up if I don't want to rush
Alarm #3 - I really need to get up if I want enough time to grab things
Alarm #4 - OH SHIT, I'm going to late!