S7 Extra: Finding Your Community in Medical School—Live from Second Look Day

Lilly: Before we kind of kick into the episode for today, I just wanted to introduce all of our listeners at home to this episode of "Bundles." This is Lilly and Austen, your hosts, and we're actually in a live studio today, which is very exciting. I don't think we've said that since pre-COVID maybe. Chloe's nodding. So she would know. She's our producer.

We're actually at Second Look Day here at the University of Utah. We're joined with a bunch of up-and-coming rising MS1s who are trying to decide if The U is the place for them. And so we wanted to have a conversation today with them and with you all at home about fostering community while you're in medical school and what that looks like being a first-year trying to decide where you all go.

And I really think that there's a lot to be said about community and how you find that in medicine. What I really love about "Bundles" is that it's become my community, and even when I'm working in free clinics and stuff, I will meet people who volunteer there who will recognize my voice.

Shout out to Fatima. She's really sweet, and she works in the Maliheh Free Clinic. And she recognized me from my voice and came up to me and was like, "Are you on 'Bundles'?" Then we had this whole conversation. Then afterwards, we grabbed coffee, and we became friends. And we want to go climbing together. I just was able to foster community out of just talking about our own experiences and what it's like going through medical school. And that was something I was able to get here in Utah.

I think it's important that wherever you all end up, you're able to foster that community, because medical school is hard, as I'm sure a million people will say in the next day or two and as you're going through all your Second Looks.

And it really does depend on what does your life look like outside of medicine, outside of the hospital walls? Do you feel like you have things that you can do outside of the hospital that really fill your cup, and do you have people who will support you and fill your cup when it's running low?

Austen, why do you think that this conversation is important in seeking and fostering community?

Austen: We kind of discussed this a little bit earlier, but I feel like at the base of medicine is this need to build and strengthen our communities. Yes, as future physicians, we'll be dealing with individual patients, but our end goal is to make sure that our communities, our societies are healthier because of the interaction that we've had with them.

And so I feel like on a professional level, a sense of community and developing community is really important. But then also, just like Lilly talked about, you can only do so much as an individual. And if you try to navigate med school and the medical profession alone, it will be so, so hard.

Med school, again, is hard, but it's not impossible, especially if you're not approaching it as an individual alone. I think it's so crucial to find your team and to really rely on each other.

First year, I felt like my community was pretty small, and I think that was mainly self-imposed. I was stressed. I was constantly comparing myself to the people around me, thinking, "Well, they're way smarter, way cooler. They don't want anything to do with me." And so I think that I kind of lost out on the opportunity to have a strong community that could support me when things got hard. Because things inevitably will get hard. That's life. That's this wonderful marathon that we're on called medical education.

But when I was able to really establish my community and expand my community, I feel like second-year Austen is so different than first-year Austen. I feel like I have way more balance in my life. I feel like, yes, I'm studying, I'm putting in hard work, but I am well supported. I'm having fun. I have serious time and giggle time. It's the best of both worlds.

And so I feel like developing community is just so important because that really grounds you when things are difficult. And also, your community can bolster you and encourage you when things are good. So I think we only ever benefit when we really make our communities the foundation of our practice and our studies.

What are your thoughts?

Lilly: I love that. I think you kind of hit on something that I wanted to talk about in seeking community. As I was going through my Second Looks and all of the different programs I had interviewed at for medical school, one thing that stood out to me from The U, at least, is that they're a pass-fail curriculum, which I really feel like fostered community within my class and my cohort.

My cousin is in law school, and from her perspective, it's graded on a curve. So it is a little bit more intense. It's a little bit more cutthroat in the sense that if I help this person, they might score higher than me, which will drop me down in the rank list, and in turn actually hurts my future to get internships or whatever it is that she's pursuing.

And I definitely interviewed at programs where they were a graded ranked system, and I kind of got that sense. So I feel like as you're going through your interviews and your Second Looks and you're talking to students who are currently here, it's important to recognize, "What's the environment like that I'm around? Do these people actually get along? Are they actually friends? Do they say hi to each other? Do they hug? Do they high five? Are they supportive?"

That's the environment you're going to be in every single day, whether you're sitting in the classroom or you're listening to recordings at home. You want to be around people who want to lift you up and build you up as well, and I definitely feel like that was something I got at The U.

One, I'm not competing with my classmates. We're all just trying to get through it together. We always say, "Ps get MDs." That's all we need.

I know that at the end of the day, I'm going to be a very competent and proficient provider, but more importantly, healthcare as a whole is really focused around team building. And so you want to go to an institution that really fosters that so that when you're on the provider side of things and you're caring for patients, you're able to find that.

And I feel like that's a really good representation of what kinds of students they accept into their programs. I felt like at my Second Look Day, and also talking to people who I knew that were in the school of medicine, they didn't feel that tension and that stress.

And it depends cohort to cohort every year, but I feel like in my cohort, I never felt like we were competing, especially because we were this awkward, weird Zoom COVID class. We were on camera staring at each other all day. We didn't really know how to make friends. We're the really weird iPad kids, I guess. I don't know.

But for me, seeking out community was really freaking hard because I couldn't. We couldn't hang out and stuff. And slowly as things with COVID started to transition, I have actually studied in the room that we're sitting in with people that I didn't know at all, and we would social distance and wear our masks. We would just message each other on Slack and be like, "Hey, like, do you want to study today?"

It's kind of awkward, and you feel like you're in kindergarten again trying to make a friend on the playground, but we all feel that way whether you are an in-state student or an out-of-state student, and you just want to build that community.

One thing I want to emphasize is that you don't have to feel this pressure to meet your best friend in the first month of med school. If that happens to you, that's awesome. Did not happen for me.

I think the first year of med school was super isolating for me because it was COVID, and I'm sure if we all think back to that, we all felt a little bit isolated. But I was still able to reach out to people like Jenna, who was just in this session right before us, who was one of the first friends I made. And we would walk our dogs in the park and we would start studying together before we had class.

We realized we probably weren't the best study buddies because we just talked the whole time, but that was okay. We figured that out, and then we just decided to just be friends, and we started going to workout classes together. And you just slowly start to really transition your friendships from classmate to a friend. And I felt like that was really important.

Then other things I feel like I did to seek out community was joining different committees through the school of medicine with students who had similar interests as me, whether that was working with the curriculum, working with students, working in advocacy work, whatever that was. I felt like as I started to see other students that would show up in those same spaces, I was like, "Okay, you're my people. I can have real conversations with you."

And as we go through our curriculum, which will continue for this accelerated curriculum that they have, you're going to be placed into different teams where you study together and you do cases together, and you spend . . . I can't remember how many weeks it is, but you're in that group. And then in the next couple of weeks, you'll switch to a new group. In those groups, you start to meet people who you will click with, and you'll feel like, "Oh, we are on the same kind of mindset, and we can have good conversations."

It is a little bit of going out of your comfort zone to reach out to them. But I feel like for the most part, especially people at our school, they're very open to wanting to make friends.

And you're going to constantly feel this awkward transition of having to foster community because when you go into clinical settings, suddenly you have residents and attendings, and all of these people that you're like, "Do I click with you? Do I not click with you? I feel like I'm on the outside again."

Fast forward to me as an MS4, I have residents who texted me on Match Day, and they were like, "Oh my gosh. I'm so excited that you're staying." And it was this sense of community that made me feel like, "Okay, I'm going to do well here because the people around me want me to do well, and they're rooting for me." And I feel like that's what you really want.

Austen: Yeah. I feel like listening to your experience was interesting because we had such different experiences first year. You guys were all on Zoom?

Lilly: All on Zoom.

Austen: Everything was Zoom, right?

Lilly: Yeah.

Austen: I started in person. And so I feel like I had probably more opportunities to interact with my classmates, but I don't know if I was in the right headspace to build community, at least at the beginning of first-year.

This is a plug for wellness and a vulnerable moment. Whoa. But I have social anxiety, and then I suffer from depression. And so I was just in such a weird spot, and I would look around and all of my classmates seemed okay. I was like, "Well, I'm the only one struggling. What am I doing?"

And so I think it was hard for me to feel like I wanted to foster a real connection just because I was so stressed and sad. But I think that once I reached out to Wellness, I got a therapist. I met with him. He's awesome. Shout out to Alex. But I feel like he helped me kind of reevaluate how I was thinking about myself, how I was thinking about my peers.

One of the great pitfalls, I think, of all medical students is that we suffer from imposter syndrome. So we look at the people around us and think, "Wow, look at Michael. Michael has got it together. He is doing his thing. Who am I compared to Michael?" And so I think that makes it hard sometimes to really genuinely connect with people.

And so a lot of what I did with Wellness was just kind of reevaluate and retrain myself to be like, "You know what? Yeah, Michael's doing something different than I am, but that doesn't mean that we couldn't get along. That doesn't mean that he thinks that I'm a fool. Let me try to reach out. Let me try to build my community so I have more people in my corner cheering for me, and I can be in Michael's corner cheering for him."

And so I feel like that was Step 1 for me, was really kind of changing how I was thinking about myself so that I could be open to forming genuine, deep connections with other people. So that was Step 1.

And then I feel like there are just so many opportunities to kind of get to know your classmates, whether it's in school in one of the various different groups that we have. We have a lot of different small groups, which is fun because you get to interact with different classmates in different ways, which is really cool. And then there are student interest groups, community clinics.

And so I feel like the school does a really good job of providing students with the opportunity to interact with a lot of different students, which has been fun. But then also just socially, I feel like my class did a really good job of hosting game nights and people would go out to bars and people would go to The Westerner, which is such an interesting experience. But it's so fun.

I feel like there was a good mix of the school providing us opportunities and then kind of our classmates just generating those opportunities by themselves to really get to know one another.

And through all of those things, I feel like I was able to find my people. I was able to see, "Okay, we think really similarly. I think we click. Let's hang out." Or even people that I don't really think very similarly with, I feel like especially in those more relaxed, casual opportunities, I was like, "Well, I like to hang out with you. You're a fun time even if we have wildly different opinions about X, Y, or Z."

Growth is never quite comfortable, and I think that applies to any facet of our life, whether it's personal growth or growing our community, developing our community. And so I think just trying new things, meeting new people, putting yourself out there, in my opinion, has always paid off. It's been helpful for me.

Lilly: I appreciate you being so vulnerable, because I think you'd be surprised with just how many people, myself included, have felt the way that Austen describes feeling.

I honestly would be surprised with any school that you go to if you don't have one bout of feeling like you don't belong, or having imposter syndrome, or feeling very alienated or isolated regardless of where you go. I would be very, very surprised if we didn't experience that even once.

We're human, and as wild as it is when you're in this bubble of medicine, the world continues to move even though we're standing still in school. And people continue to go through life and all of the ups and downs that come with life, even though we're expected to be full-time students.

And so one thing I love to find out about schools as I'm trying to determine where I want to go, and this was something I thought about when I was applying to residency as well, is how will they support us through those processes and how will they ensure that they treat us like humans and that we're not just gears in the system that have to keep the hospital running?

And I remember during my first year of medical school, I had a loved one who was very, very sick, and I was strongly considering taking a leave of absence so that I could take care of this person. I remember going through all the different websites and all the manuals and seeing what would be the most cost-efficient way of doing this so I don't owe all of this tuition and all these things.

It was like a time where I really didn't think that I would end up becoming a doctor and I wouldn't get through medical school.

And I remember meeting with one population below we haven't talked about yet, which is all the advisors that you have. Wellness is definitely involved in that as well, but I started with meeting with Dr. Baumann, who's actually one of the advisors for Academic Success. Academic advisor? I don't even know what his office is called.

Austen: Yeah, he's amazing. Angel on this earth. Literally amazing.

Lilly: We love and stan Dr. Baumann. He's amazing. I hope you all get to meet him. But he's this older white man that I would think I would have nothing in common with, honestly. Just like every other advisor you'd have in college or something.

One of my friends, Mariam, who's a cohost on "Bundles," became one of my close friends, and she was like, "You need to reach out to Dr. Baumann. You need to talk to Dr. Baumann. Just get connected with him." And I was like, "Oh, man. When I was in undergrad, I feel like I didn't have the best experience with pre-med advisors and trying to get support from them. I really am hesitant to talk to this old white man. Maybe not."

So then I kind of waited a bit, and then I was like, "I'm really struggling." And as a medical student, we're so used to just getting through things. We're so used to just chugging through, pulling all-nighters studying, figuring it out, just pushing until we can crash at the end of the semester. But in medical school, like Austen said, it's a marathon, and you really need that support and you need those breaks.

And so I remember being like, "Okay. Fine. I'll talk to Dr. Baumann." And I remember emailing him. My first meeting with him, I was like, "Oh my gosh. This man is too good for us." He was so honest, so real, so open to just talking about all of the goods and bads of medicine, and school, and the curriculum. I mean, he really sat there and was like, "Okay. Well, if this doesn't click with you, let's figure out a different method of studying. If flashcards are not the thing for you, what is the thing for you?" We spent weeks.

And it got to the point where, even all of third-year, as I was going through my clinical rotations and I was studying for my shelf exams, every week without fail, like therapy, I had a meeting with Dr. Baumann. Whether it was 10 minutes of me being like, "Hey. I'm good. You good?" and that was literally it, or if it was 40 minutes of me just full-on panicking about taking my first boards exam.

Even the night before my boards exam, I remember texting him, and I was like, "Dr. Baumann, I'm not ready. I can't take it. I can't go to the testing center tomorrow. I cannot take this test. It is way too much stress. I'm not ready."

And he called me. This man called me at 10:00 p.m., and he was like, "Lilly, go to sleep. You're taking the test tomorrow. You're going to be fine. Text Ha. Text whoever you need to, but go to sleep. You're taking the test." I took it and I passed, and I went on a trip to Seattle, and it was amazing. All I had to do was just be appreciative to have a Dr. Baumann.

So whatever school you guys go to, you better have a Dr. Baumann.

Austen: Yeah, truly.

Lilly: You really need people like that. And he was the one who really walked me through getting back on my feet and getting through the curriculum so that when I went back into studying, I was like, "You know what? I don't think I need to take a leave of absence. I think I can continue going through my education and still be supportive of my loved one."

I'm able to now graduate on time with all of my classmates, and I matched into a residency program. And I feel like I'm stable and I'm on the ground, and I really think it was because of the mentors that we have at our school that were kind of hiding in these places I didn't expect them to.

Austen: First of all, again, I cannot say this enough. Dr. Baumann, big sweetie pie energy. So adorable. But I love how you talked about your experience and how you talked about your hesitancy to reach out for help. And I think that's not unique to you. I think that's so pervasive throughout the medical community.

And especially for pre-med/med students, we've got to be honest. There are a lot of Type A people up in here. There are a lot of us who are like, "No, I can do it on my own. I'll just put my shoulder down, put my head down, move forward, whatever. It's going to work out." And I think it's a surprise to a lot of people that, no, that's not necessarily going to get you through med school the way that it might have gotten you through undergrad or whatever else you've been through.

We have at The U this program called the RealMD program, which maybe you guys have heard about. Tom Hurtado, shout out to him, and Brittany Wonsor. She's amazing.

Lilly: I love Brittany.

Austen: But we had a lunch session a couple of weeks ago where we had a speaker come and talk to us through the RealMD program. And he talked about how so often people are either afraid to reach out for help or they're hesitant to because they don't want to seem weak or they don't want to seem like that they're unreliable or whatever it might be.

And he said something that I loved so much that I took out my phone, opened up my notes app, and wrote it down. That, again, sounds kind of corny. But he was like, "It is not a failure to admit that you need help. One of the biggest privileges we have is to be there for our patients and their families. The medical profession is about building community, and that's something we get to practice with our classmates."

So often we are worried about how it's going to look if we reach out for help, when in reality it provides people the opportunity to step up and be good friends. It helps you strengthen your relationships that you have with other people. It helps you pass Step. It helps ground you so you can take Step the next day.

And so I feel like there is only ever good that can come from us being vulnerable with the people around us and us allowing them the opportunity to support us when we need that help.

Lilly: And then as we're kind of starting to wind down, because I definitely want to make time for you all to ask us questions as well, it's talking a little bit about fostering community long-term in medicine, and then how this all ties into healthcare, which we kind of chatted a little bit about already.

But one thing I definitely wanted to talk about was it's okay to have different types of community for different times in your life. So I think it's important to have community outside of medicine. That's your family, your loved ones, people who are your friends from undergrad or high school. You will be able to make time for them, I promise.

It might not be as often as it is during a gap year or during vacation times, but as someone who was so fearful of never leaving my room and never being able to stop studying, you will get there.

And so having those people keeps you grounded because you're able to celebrate baby showers and bridal showers and engagements and all these new changes that happen in their lives. You might not make it to everything, but you'll be able to make it to some things.

And most importantly, you'll still be connected to those people. I feel like those are the friendships that pull me out of medicine and remind me there's a life to live outside of the hospital, which is really, really important to me.

I want being a medical student to be the least interesting thing about me. I want to have this full identity outside of that, and I felt like I was able to do that here. And I'm hopeful you all will be able to do that here or anywhere else that you go.

But that's one type of community that you'll want to have, and then there's a community of people that you study with. They might not be the people that you hang out with every day, but they are people that you feel like you do well with, you have a similar study style, and you guys just meet up after class and you whiteboard or you go through questions together. Those are the people who really get you feeling more prepared for when you're taking quizzes and things like that.

And then you have people like Jenna and stuff who we don't study the best together because we just chat a lot, but they're the people that I like walking my dog with, or taking a spin class with, or going on a hike with. And those are the things that fill your cup outside of the hospital that you can reward yourself with. It's like, "Okay, I'm studying all week. I have this quiz on Friday. And then on the weekend, I'm going to go on a hike with my classmates, who have now become my friends."

And then having community and mentors, for me, that really brought me into "Bundles," was getting connected with students that were in the grades above me. For me, I always felt like I needed some type of mentorship, and I was fortunate enough to connect with Harjit and Margaux, and even Mariam, who's my classmate, but people who I was able to ask questions to and say, "How did you get through this when you were in medical school? And how did you figure this out? And how did you prepare for Step 1, and how did you get through clinicals?"

Harjit is amazing, and I don't know if there's anyone else who's kind of like her in the world, but we can all try to aspire to be that way. But she answered every single text, every single phone call, prepped me for every single interview, was so welcoming to me when I came on to "Bundles."

She really embodies what I view community as in medicine because she cares about you and your career. But more importantly, she's like, "Are you happy? How can I best support you? Let's talk through this. Let's figure it out."

She's a doer, and I felt like that was something I really needed diving into medicine where I knew nothing and felt like I was swimming in the depths of the sea, and no one could hear me screaming. She really pulled me back in and really grounded me.

And so I think it's important to have students that you feel like are in the classes above you that are going to loop you in. And I felt like at Utah, going through clinicals, every resident I met wanted to do that for me. They wanted me to be successful. They wanted me to do well. They wanted to support me. And they also were like, "Go home when you're done with your work. I know you have to study." They were just homies, and that's what you need. And I felt like I was able to get that here.

Austen: Perfect. I feel like the only thing that I would add is that . . . and I'm sure other schools are like this as well, but I feel like at Utah, we have faculty members who are also so eager and willing to support us, which is nice, whether it be in the classroom or outside of the classroom. And that applies to both clinical faculty members and didactic faculty members, which has been so cool.

My class, we take our last final of didactic learning in a week. And our old course directors emailed us seeing if we wanted to go on a hike. And so we have a hiking trip down in Coyote Gulch planned for the week after our final because they just, I guess, want to hang out. I don't know.

Lilly: That's so cute.

Austen: Which is fun. It's like we have people who are willing to teach us and show us what we need to do to be successful in this profession, but then also remind us like, "No, you can still be a human being outside of medicine," which is nice.

I've also had a mentor, who is a physician. She's an OB/GYN. Shout out to Dr. Kaiser. She has been such a great mentor, not only saying, "Well, this is something that I would suggest you do if you're interested in this," or welcoming me into her practice to come and shadow, or whatever it may be.

But at the beginning of the school year, my class, we lost a classmate. She passed away. And Dr. Kaiser took time out of her schedule after receiving the email that my classmate had passed away and she texted me just to check in and see how I was doing.

I feel like it's one thing to feel like you have friends who understand what's going on and your classmates are aware of you, but I think it takes it to a whole other level when you feel like, "No, I have faculty members and mentors, real adults who are invested in me as a person and invested in my well-being."

And so, yeah, I feel like community is something that we could talk about for literally an eternity.

Lilly: Yeah. Very passionate about this.

Austen: But I feel like it's so fundamental, and it really can influence your medical experience as a whole.

Lilly: And tying it back to healthcare and medicine, which is what you all will be a part of sooner than you think, which is scary but exciting, you want to go somewhere where you feel like they instill those values in you. Like I said earlier, you're going to be a part of a team. You want to be able to work with others who are actually excited to be on that team and to care for patients.

There's no individual person who gets sole responsibility of a patient. Although you are the doctor, you have a team of nurses and NPs and PAs and pharmacists, just everyone who is taking care of the patient together. And it's important that you all know how to communicate, how to foster that community, and you want to go into work and be excited to be there, and you want the people around you to be excited to be there.

I feel like the experience you get in your medical school will hopefully shape how you work in those teams in the future. And I really felt like that was something that I was able to get going to school here, and I was able to see in the hospital system that really made me feel like I would be successful on a team here.

I think it says a lot that as two BIPOC women in medicine that we continue to engage with The U and continue to have our education here, and possibly thinking of doing fellowship here or doing my practice in Utah.

That's something I probably would have never thought 16-year-old Lilly would say, but it just, I think, speaks volumes to how we've been able to foster community here and feel like we belong. I'm hoping that that's something you all will feel here as well, or wherever you end up going.

With that all being said, we just wanted to thank all of our listeners at home and all the people here in our live audience today for joining us for this episode of "Bundles." We're so excited to chat with you all about community.

Let us know your thoughts or how you build community on our Instagram page, or share with us anywhere that you listen.

And in the meantime, we will see you all in our next episode. So make sure to subscribe and follow along with our podcast. Bye.

Austen: Bye.