It may be snotty of me, but it sure made me feel better...

I just ran into a MD/PhD student who I haven't seen in a long time. At Duke these students do their first couple years in the MD program and then they enter a PhD program, complete that program, and then re-enter the MD program to finish up their medical training. This student entered the PhD part with my class in the Biochemistry Department. She is defending her thesis next week. I'm not going to say anything about how it feels to watch people who came into the program with me graduate when I have no idea when that will happen for me--you can figure out that one yourselves. The thing that made me feel good is that she said the PhD part is harder than the MD part. She said the fact that we pretty much have to figure things out ourselves, with very little structure, have no idea when we will be finished, and have very few daily rewarding activities, makes the PhD part more difficult than the MD part. Since she is doing both, and is nearly done with both, I believe her. And it makes me feel good. Is that snotty or what?!