Yesterday morning I was able to go to an outpatient child psychiatry clinic to see, as my attending put it, "the happier side of child psychiatry." Seriously, 99.9% of practicing child psychiatrists aren't putting in eleven-hour days, mostly in critical care units. The patients I saw Monday morning had things like mood disorders, ADHD, and OCD. That's very different from acute stress disorder and delirium due to non-accidental burns.

In the afternoon, I went over to ob/gyn clinic to talk to a faculty advisor about my residency application. It went well overall. She's going to read my personal statement (which finally got written!) and give me some feedback on that. She also gave me lots of advice about things to look for in a residency program. She also asked me just what about ob/gyn gets me so excited. The problem is, I am so burnt out right now that it's hard for me to describe what I like about medicine, in general. I know that I want to be an ob/gyn, but the overwhelming thought in my head right now is that I just want to have a decent chunk of time during which I don't hate my life. Is that so much to ask?