Four days ago, I took one last look at my beloved third-year apartment, put the keys in the lock, and turned it for the last time. The beginning of the week consisted of a 14-hour drive from Minnesota to my apartment and two days of packing and unpacking my belongings into a storage unit nearby my old apartment. In all the rush, I forgot to take the time to reminiscence about my very first solo apartment. I’ve moved four times in the last three years but this move was the hardest because I will be living housing-to-housing for the next ten months. Instead of having a place to return to after away rotations, I will only have the things I pack in my car. This is both equally frightening and exciting to me. You’re probably asking, “Why am I doing this?” After the first two years of medical school at my school, we are sent to a rotation “base site” to do rotations for all of third-year. During fourth-year in the osteopathic world, students are expected to rotate and do “audition rotations” at prospective residency sites all over the country. Luckily, you have a choice in where you go but in my case, I plan on applying to programs that aren’t close to home (Minnesota) due to a lack of DO-friendly programs. Since I will be spending 3-4 months out of the year in other states, it wasn’t plausible for me to pay for a solo apartment–thus the nomad life. I think we all love having a place to come home to after a long day at work. It’s a sense of familiarity and comfort but when that gets taken away from you and you are placed in a new environment every four weeks, it becomes nerve-wracking. But there’s also an excitement to it, in that I get to see what it’s like to live with the (almost) bare minimum. It also forces me to explore cities more and I’m stoked to find more inspiration for my photography, find cute coffee shops, and meet new people. So, although I’m living out of my car for the next year, I think I will take advantage of it because when will I ever get to do this again? Source
