Are you a doctor?

The kid sitting next to me in the computer lounge of my uncomfortably fancy apartment building asked me this the other day. I hesitated only for a second, "Yes, what gave me away?"

"Everyone here is. A resident, right?"

"Exactly."

"You don't really look old enough to be a full fledged doctor."

"I'm 27."

"Really? You look my age," he said. "And I'm 21."

Perhaps it's the gym shorts and the college tee-shirt. And the fact that we're both the most frequent fliers of the semi-public computer lounge, which means that we are probably the only two tennants in the building who aren't paying for our own internet. I'm holding out until Mike gets here for TV, internet, etc. I figure it will make me less likely to find my somewhat lonely yet invaluable free evenings washed away by crappy TV and facebook stalking.

It has occurred to me several times this week that I have no idea what is in store for me. One of the attendings who lectured us ended with, "Residency changes everyone. Make sure it changes you for the better.

"There are some people," she continued, "who pass through these three years looking like the wind has been knocked out of them, depressed, the spark is gone. And others who just seem to shine, literally -- something has clicked. My advice to you -- find those people who are shining and cling onto them, take notes from them, do what they do, make sure you become one of them."

I don't know how my five years in medical school passed by so fast. The amount of stuff scheduled to happen to me over the next three years is mind boggling. Right now I can't imagine getting up in two days, putting on scrubs, driving myself to the hospital, and entering the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit). I don't even know where the NICU is. I cannot fathom running into a delivery room. Holding a premature several ounce baby. And the idea that I will know what to do with said baby, one day, though heartening is totally unbelievable to me. Sometime, frighteningly soon, I will have to witness a child die -- and I have no idea how that will affect me. I wonder how it's possible to be more or less the same person after all this. How Mike will be able to stay with me, whether he'll look at me one day and not recognize me or understand me. Will it be my undoing? Will it force me to grow up?

I keep waiting to wake up one day and feel like an adult. I thought maybe it would happen when I started driving, went to college, graduated college, entered med school, had a serious boyfriend, graduated med school, and then maybe when I start residency. I'm beginnging to think that may never happen - I may go on to graduate residency, oversee other doctors, get married, have kids, even have grandchildren, and still not feel like an adult.

We had a picnic today with the seniors - only two years ahead of us. Two years is really not that long. They all talk about working at the hospital with a sense of confidence and comfort, the NICU? you have nothing to worry about. It will be ok. The majority of them are married, there were five toddlers and one four-year old roaming around.

No one in my class has kids yet, but some of us are already taking bets at the number of pregnancies to sprout up over our three years. I'm one of 7 unmarried/ unengaged interns in a class of 26. The medicine class is just as skewed. At a mixer last Thursday night I had an awkward conversation with a well-meaning medicine intern who came up to talk to me and two other peds interns. "I wasn't sure I was going to come tonight, but when I heard there were only two guys in your class, I decided I had to come."

"You know... the class is pretty much all married women."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"You think you could point out who's single so I don't get myself into trouble hitting on unavailable girls."

"Well, let's see... uh, no one here is, actually."His face fell. "That's what my class is like, too - lots of married folk or engaged. And then the rest are in the two-to-three year relationships. Which I may or may not have been in before coming here."I felt terrible and sad. "Yeah, it's strange, I had a lot of single friends in med school."

"All my friends back in the midwest are married. I thought I would be escaping that by coming here."

I feel very much in limbo right now. With Mike here only on the weekends, the apartment feels like it is mine and not ours. He walked into the room last week, surveyed the walk in closet lined with my clothing and shoes, walked past my dresser to his, opened the first drawer of his dresser, the second, the third, the fourth, the last. "Tamar, will there eventually be space for me to put my stuff in this appartment?"

Being in orientation also feels like purgatory. I am not free and not yet in hell. Everything is very cheerful and there's "free" time that's filled up with lots of formal and informal meet-and-greet sessions. But July 1st looms ahead. Large, ominous, horrifying, and exciting.