Who We Admire

One thing we discussed in today’s session is how we define ourselves. At this time if someone asked me to describe myself to them the first thing I would say, after what my name was, would be that I am a medical student because sometimes it seems like medicine dominates my life!. In fact, I am not only a medical student – but a person who studies medicine and also has other interests! So I don’t want to be just a medical student as I am lots of other things too and I need to try and remember this and ensure I allocate time for the non-medic time in my life - having fun is a great tonic!.

Another topic which we discussed was people who we admire and which attributes we admire them for. There was a wide range of people chosen by the group. Mine was my mum, shown in the picute on the right. When asked as to the reasons why we admire these people, a wide array of characteristics and qualities were described. These included things such as kind, caring, generous, hardworking and morale. When thinking why I chose my mum as a person I admire I decided the main reason was because she was nice!. She does things for other people, gives up her time and puts effort into helping others for no other reason than because she is nice. It is easy to think that when people do things for others its because they are benefiting themselves, however, maybe this is just a way of reacting to make people feel better about the fact that they haven’t done that particular nice thing and feel guilty. Therefore, I found it useful to go through this exercise as I think it shows us what characteristics we would like to have ourselves. I believe that just being aware of this and how we would like to improve can make it more likely to happen. It is also good to know that there are nice people in the world!

Feeling of health: 7/10
What I learned: I am not just a medical student
What I will change: Bear in mind my other roles in life in times of stress