LOCKDOWN WITH MY FUTURE

My foot nervously vibrates under the glass kitchen table. My roommate would surely tell me to stop if she were here – it makes her uneasy when I do that – but she currently isn’t home. She hasn’t been home for about a month now, or at least not at her Ann Arbor college apartment. She’s been with her parents, her sister, and her two cats, tucked in the depths of the Chicago suburbs and concealed from the looming treachery of the pandemic. Her situation is typical of all of my campus friends, and during one of the most ubiquitously isolating periods, I found myself living entirely alone for two months. As many would agree that just ‘living’ resembled a heroic act these days, studying for one of the biggest exams of my career didn’t lighten the mood. I encapsulate a day from the most challenging and uncertain period of my life - studying for the Medical College Admission Test, better known as the MCAT, in quarantine.

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The day begins at 8:30 a.m. Though the MCAT is months away, I’m committed to mimicking my exam day sleep schedule until that time arrives. Maybe this is actually helpful – it is advised to standardize all outside circumstances when studying – but maybe I’ve realized this is one of the few aspects of my routine I still have control over. While my eyes are only softly open, everything feels normal for a few blissful moments. Before I’m able to lift my head from my pillow, however, waves of uneasiness oscillate through my body. I know that coffee is probably married to the devilish anxiety that sometimes consumes me, however my morning cup, like my sleep schedule, is a rare consistency I’m not willing to sacrifice. By the time I swallow my watered-down lifeline and scrap up a breakfast from my scarce groceries, it’s well past when I aimed to begin studying.

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I open my Kaplan Biochemistry prep book. “The Synthesis of Nucleic Acids” is allowed two seconds to stare back at me before I hear my cell phone vibrate. Instantly regretting not leaving it in the other room, I cautiously raise it from my bed. I check the dangerous notification that just may suck at the remainder of this hour – “Public Safety Alert. From the Executive Office of the Governor: …extended the Stay Home Stay Safe Order until…” – I stop reading. It didn’t matter until when the stay-at-home order was extended – the finish line to this dystopia is still too far for anyone to cross.

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I make my way through a few paragraphs of content before I realize my brain failed to process any of them. My next step is to re-read those same words to no avail before searching online for memorization short cuts. I pull out some practice problems, and it soon hits me that I’m doomed. This revelation comes to me on the daily, though there’s no obvious reason I should be fully prepared at my two week point of studying. I know I have to take this in bitesize pieces and be patient with myself, but it seems that the news is perfectly comfortable taking mouthfuls of my spirit. Nevertheless, I can’t remember the last time studying felt so impossible? Was my motivation not there, or was it really just a matter of circumstance? I grappled with how I could confidently take an exam that would decide my future, when the world in which that future exists has no idea what’s coming for it.

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I remember my friends currently struggling through the same situation and remind myself that I’m not as alone as I feel. I check in regularly with these peers, knowing at least a group of seven others who are studying simultaneously as me – if they can pull this off, there’s no reason I can’t. I should be totally fine? Maybe not – comparing myself to how my peers are doing is one of the detrimental things I could do right now. It isn’t fair romanticize someone’s situation about which I know nothing, and it certainly isn’t fair to belittle my own experience.

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Some of my strongest points of growth as a pre-medical student at the University of Michigan were through advice-filled reflections and conversations with older students and alumni. I considered what mental reprieves they had suggested with regards to MCAT studying: go to the library with friends also studying so that you can count on one another to stay motivated; plan fun events every week or two so that you can break up the monotony; get a job so that you can balance your time between responsibilities and stay energized when your time to study comes. None of these ideas – currently sounding like a dream to me – are options in my situation. Every library is locked shut, every friend is designated ‘unsafe’ to see, and my job is on a four-month pause to mitigate the spreading of cases. The only responsibility I could balance my time studying with is waking up at 2 and 3 a.m. each night in case a slot for grocery delivery becomes available.

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         Despite this fast-paced sense of nothingness filling my life, there are quite a few things that keep me with my books until August 14th hits. I hold onto gratitude and how lucky I am to have all of the luxuries and comforts my circumstances afford me. While my family is experiencing our share of health scares and panicked nights, I am safely protected with a roof over my head, I don’t worry about struggling to find my next meals, and I have a constant stream of digital access to loving and supporting faces. I have a strong community who believes in me and my dream, and a pandemic does not have to power to exhaust fuel so potent.