There are moments during residency when the feeling sneaks up on you quietly. Sometimes it’s while scrolling through social media, watching friends share updates about milestones that seem worlds away from where you are. Other times, it shows up during conversations with people who don’t quite understand residency training timelines, or late at night when your to-do list feels endless and the future feels overwhelming to plan. In these moments, when everything on your plate feels heavy and you pause long enough to breathe, your thoughts tend to drift. For me, it often shows up during rare pockets of downtime, absentmindedly scrolling through my phone. Engagement photos. New babies. Promotions. House closings. Captions about finally settling down or starting the next chapter.

Without meaning to, I start comparing. They’re my age or even younger. There’s no way I could be at that stage of life currently. How did they get there so quickly? How are they able to afford that? Somewhere between realizing I’m almost done with PGY2 yet still feeling like I’m just getting started, a quiet but persistent thought creeps in: Am I behind in life?

Residency has a way of warping your sense of time. Years are no longer measured by birthdays or holidays, but by application cycles, rotations, and deadlines. Life feels divided into “before residency” and “after residency,” with everything else on hold in between. While others seem to move through adulthood in visible, milestone-filled ways, we as residents exist in a prolonged stage of preparation where we are always training and working toward what comes next. Professionally, you might be advancing quickly, but personally it can feel like you’re standing still.

What’s easy to forget in these moments is that we’re comparing fundamentally different timelines. The pace and structure of professional training in health care is not meant to align with the rhythms of everyday life. Residency compresses growth, sacrifice, and uncertainty into a narrow window while much of the rest of life unfolds more gradually. Comparing your stage of training with someone else’s life is like comparing 2 clocks set to different time zones, both moving forward, just not in sync.

And yet, the feeling lingers.

It’s complicated further by the fact that residency is also a choice, one you made for a reason. You chose to pursue advanced training because you cared deeply about becoming better, pushing yourself, and creating a future that aligned with your values. Although it is all of these things, it can also come with a strange sense of emotional lag. You grow rapidly as a clinician, whereas other parts of life feel paused or postponed, waiting for a future version of you with more time, more stability, more certainty. On harder days, it’s easy to lose sight of the “why” and focus only on what feels delayed or missing until it begins to feel like life is happening around you rather than with you.

I’ve noticed the feeling intensifies during transitions such as the end of a rotation, Match season, stepping into PGY2, or hearing about job offers. Moments that are meant to feel exciting or affirming somehow become moments of comparison. What those moments don’t show, though, is the internal work behind them: the long days, the quiet resilience built over time, and the uncomfortable growth that doesn’t photograph well or fit neatly into an announcement post.

Everyone moves through life in stages, but not everyone moves through the same stages at the same time or even in the same order. A slower or less traditional path doesn’t mean a lesser one. Who you are cannot be reduced to a timeline, a title, or a list of accomplishments. Residency is something you are doing, not something that defines who you are.

And maybe the most grounding reminder is this: the moment you’re in right now is one you once dreamed about. There was a version of you who hoped for this opportunity, who worked for it, who wondered if they’d ever make it here. Somewhere along the way, however, it became so normal and routine that it stopped feeling like an achievement.

When these thoughts of feeling behind start to circulate, I try to pause and reflect on how much growth has already happened. The confidence that’s been built quietly over time. The skills that now feel automatic. The perspective gained through discomfort and challenge. None of that is erased just because it isn’t immediately visible to others.

Residency is not a detour from life; it is part of it. The skills we build, the resilience we gain, the relationships we form—these aren’t placeholders until real life begins. They are real life, even if the progress doesn’t always look linear or like marking off checkboxes in life.

If there’s one thing residency continues to teach me, it’s this: you are not late, lost, or behind. You are simply becoming. Becoming the person, learner, and pharmacist you desire to be. And that, in itself, is something to be proud of. You are exactly where you need to be and where you once dreamed of being. If you find yourself feeling behind, take a step back and breathe. Remember the younger you who once dreamt of this, all that you’ve accomplished, and the opportunities that lie ahead. Residency is a stepping stone in becoming who you want to be, and you are right on track.