When I was a trainee, I focused on making it through residency. Sure, I wanted to learn as much as I could, but I felt the often hectic environs of training tyrannized many aspects of my life, including thinking about how my life would shape up after training. Thinking about life after residency often felt like a luxury. There was a vague belief in my head that, somehow, because I had put in so much effort and time into my education that the future would work itself out – well, that things had to work out.
Also, transitioning from being a trainee to the real world was not something I learned in residency; there was no curriculum for it. You are more or less left to figure it out through random encounters and on-the-job experience once you start your job in the real world.
While I don’t have a solution,...
