Juggling Pro Football and Med School
This is where my slight insanity comes into play. From January to March, I was driving two and a half hours down and back to practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And then Saturday practices were about an hour and 15 down and back. Once we got outside of March, it was consistently about an hour or an hour and a half to get down to practice. Games were always on Saturdays. Once we got into our playing season, which started in mid-April, we had six consecutive weekends of games (three home and three away), and then playoffs after that. It definitely put about 20,000 miles on my car throughout the course of the spring. But it was totally worth all of the travel, show up for my teammates, and be able to contribute to the product put out on the field.
The only way it was made possible was being in my fellowship year, having more or less a consistent schedule, and having my boards out of the way so it wasn't as hefty of a study regimen. All of these things kind of lined up perfectly to be able to accommodate the travel. Growing up playing softball, I lived a “go go go” lifestyle: school, practice, game or tournaments on the weekend. In some ways, it's kind of cool getting back to that busy schedule. You have a time period to do a thing and if you can’t make it, then you're not going to be able to do it. It feels like going back to my roots and the kind of life that I grew up in. And it has been so fun making it happen.
Time management has been key and is key in medical school, regardless of football or not. I feel like the skills that I acquired along the way, such as figuring out how to build my schedule and being able to build in what I need to do along the way, certainly came into play during the season
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