Now optimistic

So today in Intro to Clinical Medicine, I tried a new approach to Thursday: the worse day of my week. Today, I came to school today expecting to get mentally beaten up, expecting to fail horribly at my interviewing and basically expecting (but not hoping!) for the worse. Not only were my expectations not met, but I was really surprised by how much better the whole experience was by just not setting the bar too high. Perhaps part of the reason for my pleasant experience was the fact that we did interviewing at the brand new and shiny County Hospital. It was clean, it was spacious, there were no strange smells and the rooms were full of bright lights and hope. It was quite inspiring, and suddenly ICM for that day wasn't so bad after all. I got to share my patient with Pop, who is by the most gifted interviewer out of my group. I was so relieved to have split the labor with someone who has, hands down, the best bedside manner I've ever seen for a medical student. Again, another reason to be happy with ICM experience. I learned an important lesson today. Don't expect life and your world around you to cater to your likes and dislikes. In fact, it helps to expect the worse in every situation. But not have such a negative expectation that it makes you a pessismist. Being positive is a great thing, but being realistic is even better. So I'll try this new strategy for situations that I know will make me irritable, try and expect the worse because by expecting the worse, I know I'll be pleasantly surprised. And in the process, be happy with my pleasant surprise. Let's see how far this new strategy will get me.