How to best support your MD?

[Sheherezade]

In Philly (when I was a grad student at the med school) they had a saying about intern year: if you make it to the Flower Show, you'll make it. The Flower Show is in February. Tell her to keep her head down and slog through; it's this way for everyone. If you are living through the grey of winter, I'd also try improving your lighting or grabbing one of those sun lights. That SAD is no joke. Takes some adjustment time.


Oh, and welcome!

If you are living through the grey of winter, I'd also try improving your lighting or grabbing one of those sun lights. That SAD is no joke. Takes some adjustment time.

Seriously, SAD is no joke. I've got a predisposition for depression as well, and I definitely agree that SAD can be just as debilitating. We got the sunlight when we were in Cleveland, so luckily we already have one. She's benefiting from the fact that I've already played this game back during undergrad. Her mood is better today, and I think once she starts medication she'll get balanced out. It's just nice to hear that this is expected behavior. Thanks all!

[diggitydot]

SAD is definitely nothing to mess around with

[niener]

Just wanted to add my voice to the "this is totally normal" choir. I don't know many, if any, interns that didn't give quitting some consideration. Anything beyond eating, sleeping and peeing right now is extraneous. I'm guessing she'll get some sort of holiday break in the next couple of months (short though it may be) where she should be able to rest for a couple of days and reset, maybe for now just encourage her to look forward to that. It's great you're looking for ways to help her; she may not be able to articulate it right now but I'm sure she appreciates it immensely.

[reciprocity]

You need to be STUDYING FOR FINALS. If you blow your 1L exams, you really screw up your chances at law review, class rank, job prospects, etc. Whatever she's going through (short of clinical, debilitating depression), you're going through worse. And the pressures are different. She'll still be a doctor when the intern year is over; how you perform on 1L exams majorly influences what opportunities you are going to have.

Truth.

Truth.

It's true, but giving it more prominence than it needs is just feeding demon. I don't have time to worry about how important my grades are, it'll just impact them in a negative way. My classmates were full of that attitude at midterms, I wasn't. I got the As, they didn't. Law school is more about confidence then knowledge, more about knowing the format of the exam and how to organize the information in a coherent way than actually knowing the law. You need to know the law, yes, but that's the easy part.