Yes I do know there are starving children in Africa. No that doesn't make me feel better

Medical students understand that really, we are very blessed. We are given an opportunity that many people would love to have, and we are in a position to really help other people. It's a great place to be. We see that in other places in the world people are truly suffering, and that other people are dealing with worse things than hard classes. We see cancer, amputations, sickness, and really horrible things every day that we don't have to deal with except as healers or learners. We (sometimes) watch the news and see earthquakes and people starving and ethnic cleansing and political warfare and everything else that goes on in this world.
Unfortunately that doesn't make me feel better when I'm having a bad day. Someone saying "well, remember there are starving people in Africa, count your blessings," does not make all my problems disappear. It may help put them a little bit into prespective, but it definitely doesn't solve them. And the fact of the matter is, medical students have problems. And they maybe make no sense to anyone else, and maybe you can't understand what those problems are, but we have them. And knowing that other people have problems doesn't make it better. In fact, lately it has made it worse. Someone saying to me "well at least you don't have cancer" now fills me with anxiety over the fact that you are right, I don't have cancer, not yet at least. Maybe I will have cancer. Then I'll hate my life as a medical student and have cancer on top of it.
Here's the thing. Everyone has bad days, and that is okay, and no one should say that you can't have a bad day because you are better off than someone else. We're not all Job here.
What are the problems medical students have, you might ask. Well, I'll tell you about them. First off is that we are our own worst enemies. We have gotten so used to being the best at everything, or at least at something, and then we find ourselves in a group of people that are all the best at what we used to be the best at, and now we are barely functioning and we don't know what to do about it. Medical school is hard, all in and of itself. Just the studying itself is hard. But then add to that the continuous stresses of life to the mix and you have a disaster. I have to study, which I used to be really good at and actually enjoy. But now I don't understand anything, I can't remember anything, I can't answer any questions, and I'm surrounded by people who can. I feel like I'm drowning and there is no one to save me. Put on top of that that I need to fit in time to cook dinner, see my family, catch up with friends, go to the grocery store, pay my bills, and maybe I got in a fender bender and now have to take my car to the shop and what am I supposed to do without a car? I can't take a day off because then I'll fall so far behind I'll never catch up. And there is always something more that I could be studying or doing so I can't possibly relax. On top of that I may be having relationship issues or pet issues or family issues and that just adds to the stress.
But the real stress is waking up every day and realizing that I am not the superstar I used to be. I'm not the smartest person around. I barely know what is going on. I study all day and the next day feel like I know nothing. People are asking me questions and I can't answer them. Everyone around me seems to know everything about everything while I don't feel like I know something about anything. It's a feeling that most of us aren't used to. Sure, we all worked hard in college and high school, but for most of us the hard work paid off. We studied hard and then we understood things and got good grades and felt smart. Now, we study hard and have no clue what is going on and there is still so much more to learn and we think we aced that test but really we barely passed it. And everything matters. Every little factoid is going to come back and haunt us in some way. Every bit of information has the potential to save lives. And every time we don't honor a class we worry about not getting a residency. We wake up every morning doubting ourselves and our abilities to be good doctors and wonder if we made the right decision or if this is the world trying to tell us that we should just quit. Adn the worst of it is, the only people who understand what I am going through are the ones not willing to admit it to anyone. We all put on these masks so that everyone thinks we are perfect. We try to show we are perfet even though we are not. WE aren't willing to admit to each other that we are struggling, and because of that it makes it look like no one is struggling and we just feel more alone and depressed and out of our depths.
But you are right. I'm not starving. I don't have cancer. An earthquake didn't just destroy my home. I am truly blessed by all that God has given me, so why am I complaining? Because while I thank God for all the things he has given me, and while I recognize that my problems aren't as big as everyone else's, they are still problems, problems that most people can't understand. I am still going to wake up in the morning crying and want to throw in the towel, even if I'm not starving. It doesn't make my problems less relevant or less real to know that there are other problems out there. You're right, it could be worse. It most likely will get worse. And the fact that no one seems to understand just makes it all the worse. So do me a favor, and don't ever ever again say "you know, there are starving children in Africa." Because honestly, that just makes me feel worse. There are starving children in Africa, I'm not one of them, but I still hate my life even with all its blessings, and now I feel like an even bigger douche for doing so. Thanks for that. So what is the solution? I'd have to say being more honest. I don't feel better when someone tells me that there are people in Africa without food. I do feel better when a classmate tells me how much they hate school right now, and how stressed out they are, and how they've never felt so unable to function before. And it doesn't make me feel better because I like to see other people suffering (maybe I do, I haven't worked that out with my shrink yet), it makes me feel better because I don't feel so damn alone in all of this. Knowing that other people are wondering how they ever got into medical school and how they are going to continue going on and whether they even want to or when they became so damned inadequate makes me realize that this is part of the process. And if we could just all admit it to each other, I think we'd move a long way towards feeling more confident in our abilities to become great doctors, and then we can work towards doing good things like working in clinics around the world for those poor people who don't have access to health care. We do care about them, we just can't feel for them right now, because we are so busy being miserable for ourselves.
For all the medical students out there, I've said it before and I'll say it again. I feel your pain. You are not alone. And you are going to make an excellent doctor one day. You just have to get through this. We're all going to get through this.