Things I wish I knew before medical school

1. The learning NEVER stops. I spent 12 years in medschool, residency, fellowship. Now, I'm still trying to keep up with CMEs and journals.
2. Medical school is only the first, baby step. There's a long way to go after that (if someone had told me that training would take 12 years, I'd tell them to go straight to hell, and went into male prostitution).
3. Medicine will forever, irreversibly, mess up your sleep. I thought of this Sunday when I woke up, wide awake, at 6.30 am and started my day.
4. Despite what mom says, being a doctor don't mean a long line of women waiting for you (unless you're an OB/GYN) (Luckily for me, I found one, and what a woman she is)
5. The more you subspecialize, the less you know.
6. Being a naive first year medstudent in 1996, I thought someday I'd look like Dr. Doug Ross, with his white coat flapping behind him like some superhero cape. To the present and reality: I neither look, walk, talk like, and am nowhere as successful as George Clooney. And that thing flapping behind me is probably a piece of toilet paper stuck to my shoe.
7. There is absolutely nothing cool about wearing a pager and being on call. The adrenaline rush is over-rated.
8. The number of strands of hair remaining on your head will be inversely proportional to the number of years of training you undergo (tip: don't specialize).