There are days like today, when I find myself amazed by my reality. I am going to graduate this year. I'm almost a doctor. Although I have been exhausted, drained, and jaded for much of the past two years, I believe that I am accomplishing something wonderful. I've learned so many life lessons from the hospital I have been rotating at for much of the last year and a half. This place is a rough city hospital with some of the most apathetic and burnt out staff you can imagine encountering, which can make your job so frustrating when all you want to do is help a patient and yet you are met with so much resistance and ignorance. Through this hellish experience, I have learned to value the angels who do care. Believe me, I have been surprised. There were a fair share of catty nurses, but there were also nurses who took the time to guide me through putting in IV lines when my residents wanted me to put them in patients even though I'd never done it before. And then there was Ms. J and Ms. L who are the most amazing Pediatric Hematology/Oncology nurses. They are probably the best nurses I've seen in this hospital so far, which is probably why they were given such an important job. It was fantastic working with them this month, especially because they understood my frustrations. But, on Friday, when I was chatting with Ms. J, she helped me realize the beauty of going to medical school at university whose patient population is underserved. Our system is overwhelmed and for that reason, students get the opportunity to behave as physicians. And, since there is so much apathy and burn-out amongst the physicians and nurses, I was able to help my patients much more by advocating for them and cutting through the dysfunctional system to get things done for them. This was the cause of much of my stress and burn-out and loss of faith in humanity at the time, but now I am so proud of myself. I know I helped very sick underserved patients and provided them with much better care than what they otherwise would have recieved had I not been there. That is the best reward I can think of. <3