Transformation

As salaam alaikum,

I was just on facebook, looking at the profile of a friend and classmate who graduated with me this last year. His profile picture is the same as it was when we were in school together...with that cool/hard pose going on. And I thought, as I looked at the picture, that he would have to change that picture soon. And I said aloud, "You're gonna have to change that picture. You're gonna be a urologist. That doesn't work anymore."

And it just made me think, in that moment, how many things won't work anymore now that we're really going to be professionals soon? Granted, his residency is longer than medical school was. My residency is three years long. In less than those three short years, I'm going to be someone's attending. There's already a doctor in front of my name and an MD behind it and I'm not yet taking it for granted. How will I have changed? How will I be different from the girl who smiles back at me in my facebook profile picture?

I don't think it's so much the doctoring part that will change me. It's everything that is happening with it and around it. The having a job and being able to completely support myself part. The relationship part, the someday getting married part. The new friends, new location part. The finding my own way...thing. The being responsible and learning what I need to know part. It all goes together.

When I graduate this place, I'm probably going to look much the same, insha'Allah, but insha'Allah my aspirations will be more organized. It is a transformation, a transformation that I've downplayed and in other aspects of my life fully denied, but it's real, and it's here, and someday I won't be the fresh-faced young doctor that I started out being.

And I'll grow up and through life.

And what a different place that'll be.