My frustration from yesterday’s post wasn’t with the college student who quit.
What was disheartening was the fact that she felt she couldn’t devote 1.7% of her waking hours to something as life-changing, useful, and important as exercise.
…My frustration was with Med School.
My frustration was/is that there isn’t more of an emphasis on mental health and exercise from the department heads/teachers/colleges themselves.
…How can they train people to be doctors when they’re literally training people to build such unhealthy and debilitating habits? …I can only imagine how much caffeine, crappy food, and unmentionable things med students feel like they need to consume just to keep up with the workload.
And then after 4-8 years of consuming ungodly amounts of said items, not exercising, disregarding their mental health… they’re supposed to what? …All of a sudden start exercising, eating healthy, and prioritizing their inner world?
…Because being busy is going to all of a sudden stop?
…Yeah, right.
There should never be a time when you’re too busy to eat right, exercise, and prioritize your mental health. Except maybe for extenuating circumstances when you have to care for / prioritize dependents.
But, even so… we can only give to others what we have. We can only build in those around us what we’ve built in ourselves. And if what we’re building in our doctors—the people who are literally supposed to be the epitome of health and wellness—is a disregard for healthy eating and exercise when busy and dependency on caffeine and other drugs to get by…
…What are they going to (continue to) build into us?