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As you might have been able to tell from my absence, I've been swamped with stuff in the past month. So what's new? I survived what was probably the most difficult week of my life -- and finally crossed. So yep, Sophelia here is now a member of a sorority. Cue the horrified gasps.

It's funny though, because I can already see how much I've changed. Being involved with the process has already forced me to become a more sociable person. As tedious and pointless as some aspects of the process might have seemed to me at the time, I cannot deny that I have changed as a person -- and I think it's been for the better. Though it might not be the case for a lot of girls who go through the same process, I think I've become even more grounded than I ever was before.

Having said that, I seemed to hit another writing dry spell in the last two weeks. I had been trying to write a short story inspired by the lyrics to the song Cafe by Big Bang. I had the general theme and key scenes all figured out, but I just couldn't put it into words on a screen. In the end, I think it might have been the lack of spark. I think back to when I used to churn out vignette after vignette for weeks -- this blog acted as a conduit for my own emotional turbulence. Now, I actually feel rather empty of emotion. I remember how I used to be constantly plagued by warring emotions of love and hatred, but that kind of struggle doesn't exist within me anymore. Nowadays, I might harbor drifting interests in certain figures who pass into my life, but there isn't that one person who consumes me the way you did all those years ago.

The lack of writing scared me. Before, my absence was a matter of not having enough time and energy to sit down on Blogger. I was sleep deprived and emotionally drained. But the week after I crossed, I was still unable to find any words to say. I would recall my dream and wonder at just how far away I now seemed from it. This became especially clear to me when Kat Zhang, a blogger at Letthewordsflow.com, announced last week that her trilogy, HYBRID, had been sold in a major three-book deal to Harper's Children. What struck me was just how similar Kat and I are -- we are both nearly-twenty-year-old pre-med students working towards an English major. I had always given myself the excuse that as a pre-med at Duke working towards a double major in Biology and English, I had no choice but to defer my dream. Yet here we are -- I find out that somebody in my boat had actually gone ahead and achieved what had always been a pipe dream to me. You have no idea how much respect I have for her -- it's almost unfathomable to me how Kat managed to do it.

Yesterday, I heard the words I needed to hear. I attended TAASCON yesterday, at which Yul Kwon, who has been somewhat of a hometown hero to me, spoke to the attendees at the closing ceremony. I am sure he's given the same speech to countless numbers of college students around the country, but his advice I probably already knew deep down -- I just needed to hear them from somebody who had gotten so far with those same words. You would never have guessed from the way he spoke that as a child, he was terrified of public speaking. At some point, he had made up his mind that whenever there was something he dreaded to do, he would force himself to do it. Little by little, that was how he overcame his problems. It reminded me of myself, and how far I've come since I was like Charlotte -- crippled by self-hate at my own weaknesses.

Yul Kwon told us, if you are serious about making a difference, find your passion and think outside of the box. Don't become a doctor or lawyer or engineer just because it's the path of least resistance. Our community needs more musicians, directors, politicians, public service figures, actors, and writers. We need people who can give our community a voice.

Part of me actually does believe that I can leave a bigger impact on the world as a writer than I can as a doctor. If anything, I think the path to becoming a writer powerful enough to change the landscape of Asian-Americanism (think what Yul Kwon, Wong Fu, Far East Movement, Youtube stars Ryan Higa and Kevin Wu have done) is actually much more difficult than going through the prescribed path of taking MCATs, applying to medical school, and going through medical school and residency to become a doctor. That path is well-worn and paved. To be a trail-blazer quite literally means that you're setting the path for others following behind you. If anything, going to medical school might even be taking the easy way out, as crazy as that sounds.