"Don't let them numb you. Don't let them anesthetize you to the miracle of life.

Always live in
the awe of the glorious mechanisms of the human body. Let that be the focus of your studies
and not a quest for grades... which will give you no idea what kind of doctor you will become.
Don't wait till you're on the ward to get your humanity back."

As medical students we feel like it's monday morning everyday: we are constantly tired,
unhappy and not to forget: with high blood caffeine levels. And still, look at us, clinging to each
day like maybe it will be all worth it someday. "The tears will dry, you can sleep all summer long
and you are too young to get sick so easily" you tell yourself every day on your way to classes.
And then, you arrive there and you hear just " You are not enough!", "You won't become a
good doctor because of your grades!", "How are you even in this school?", "You aren't studying
enough!" and so on, trying not to have a mental breakdown in front of your class and thinking
that maybe 4 hours of sleep per night is too much, maybe you can survive with 2 hours and
another coffee... Maybe your classmates are studying harder than you, maybe they don't even
sleep, who knows? Maybe you could be more motivated or maybe you could just give up on
your dream and become something else, like a trapper or an influencer who asks for money
from their parents. But no, you tell yourself "I can do better. I am enough. I am strong." and
keep going every day, forgetting about the fact that you are sleep deprived and that you are
alive. Yes, you are young, restless and free, like in those songs you hear on the radio when it's
summer. And guess what, there is life after medical school. There is love, and mountains to
climb. And there are lives to be saved. Yeah, true that, but you tell yourself "Ok, but nothing I
do now reminds me that I'll be a doctor someday. I don't see patients, I can't do much to help
anyone who's in need, everyone told us we are not prepared to <<do>> things, we must first
study hard in order to be able to go in the hospital."

From my point of you, the fact that medical students have to study for almost 18 hours a
day and still can't be trusted to work with patients and prepare for the real career they're
training is more than just a problem, is a fissure in a system that is old and narrowed. They
expect us to learn from outdated books because they learned from them too, we get it, but the
fact we are not encouraged to learn practical things and instead of that, we must memorize
hundreds of pages, will not prepare us for the day we'll lose a patient, or for the day we will sit
in front of a child who's got unbearable pain and we don't know why. Those are the days we
must prepare for. Those are the real "test". As Patch beautifully said "Don't wait until you're on
the ward to get your humanity back." I strongly belive that medical students need more clinical
experience, since they are in the first year, because only seeing and doing things you can learn
and develop your skills. After all, isn't everything we do just a learnt behaviour? Not to mention
that the empathy for the patient is not something you study for 3 years and than miraculously
receive. It's about the love, something that can't be measured or assessed.

Firstly, I believe that, as a medical student you must take the chance you have to be
around medical staff most of the time and ask them to teach you as much as you can learn,
because at the end of this six years all that matters is if you undrestood how to help the
patients. You can ask the nurses how to give an intravenous injection, or you can ask your older
colleagues how to read an ECG, or how to make a radiographic interpretation instead of trying
to score 100 at every exam. Why? Because I do think that a good doctor is someone who did a
lot of things instead of someone who just know how to do them and never tried. Anyone will
tell you that you can't do or understand a lot of things because you are in your years of
preclinical study. But guess what? You can go to a patient's bed and check his blood pressure
for example because that's not quantum physics and you will get used to do this. There are a lot
of things that medical students can do in their first three years of medical school, apart from
memorizing pages and not being able to deal with a patient.

Furthermore, I think that being able to remind yourself everyday the reason you're studying
it's going to help you not only to motivate yourself to learn more, but also to actually
understand the information you must memorize. If you learn because you want to know how
does the body work and not just for an exam, you are closer to become a good doctor. The
reason for our studies must be the desire to know, because only then we will be able to
practice what we learned. When you need to make a quick decision, you won't be able to
search for the answer on the internet and your only chance will be yourself. Learn everything
like a patient's life depends on you today.
 On the other hand, I know a lot of people say that you can do harm to a patient if you don't
know what are you doing and you must learn first and only then practice, but I truly disagree
with this type of thinking, because I do believe that there are a lot of practical things any first
year student can do and understand, without harming anyone, if they are teached and
supervised by a doctor. For example, you can try to take the patient's history just by asking
some specific questions.

To sum up, I feel like medical students should have the chance to see patients since their first
year and they should be able to to basic things after their first three years of preclinical study,
because only then they can understand what being a doctor means and they can get used to be
around people in need. Without further ado, I would like to finish with the following words
"Always live in the awe of the glorious mechanisms of the human body. Let that be the focus of
your studies (...)".