A lot weighing on my mind these days.
1) I was a hot mess this last Wednesday. Rank lists for residency were due that night. The realization that my future career has now been determined by the match algorithm mowed me over like a train. Instead of going out to our class's rank list submission party, I felt physically ill at the thought of having to chat with my classmates about the match and instead stayed home and played the new Zelda game until my eyes were gonna melt in their sockets. A friend of mine texted me to ask why I skipped the party, and I simply left the response at: "I am mentally indisposed."
2) I received my first query rejection last night while I was at a friend's chocolate fondue party. In hindsight, I was not ready to query, and I was half-expecting a rejection at that point. It was a sort of curiosity-provoked act of impulse while I was waiting for residency interviews, because the agent in question was closing for queries around that time and I was all, 'Oh no, what if they never come back?' Still, not gonna lie -- it stung. I am already feeling very much in doubt about everything, and the letter was like another swing at my kneecaps.
3) Serious question I have been pondering... has my temper been shortening with age? Or is it the cumulative stresses of this political climate/medical life that is short-circuiting my ability to clamp down on my ire? I embarrassingly lost my cool at the Person when we were at Krewe of Muses over something really stupid. I snapped at a friend when he kept talking in pseudo-African accent after watching Black Panther.
4) Along a more serious line though, a friend of mine (Skillet) and I were talking last night about how our medical schools need to do more in teaching us how to handle situations when patients say things that are offensive or inappropriate. The one time I almost really lost it with a patient was right around when Charlottesville happened. As a caveat, this patient may have had some sort of hypomania, as he had very pressurized speech. I saw him in clinic with the intent of asking him to enroll in my research study, and so I listened politely as he talked on and on. That is, until he went on to say that "Some people are asking to be run over" in reference to the girl who was killed when a car rammed into the counter-protestors. I was absolutely livid, and after telling him I didn't agree with him, I said I didn't think he was suitable for my study and left the room.
Skillet, who's very openly gay, told me that he had a patient--an older woman who was very sweet and conversational until she found out that he was from Miami. "Miami... all those immigrants... and Cubans," she said with disgust. When the attending came in, she requested that my friend not see her anymore.
These are only some of the more atrocious incidents I have encountered since living in Louisiana. Last night, I shared the story again of how I had a residency interviewer tell me, "I don't speak Chinese, hope English is okay!" While my friends responded in aghast, a classmate's husband interjected, "Oh, I'm sure she was just being friendly."
"Yeah, I'm sure she was trying to be nice, but that doesn't mean it's okay to say that."
"Well you know, our society is so reactionary these days..."
We changed the subject before he could elaborate further. Which was for the best, because let me tell you, I was not in the mood to drop a truth bomb on his head.
This dude does not understand how insulting it is to be told, "Wow you speak really good English," when you have a fucking English major from Duke. This dude has never had to politely field questions about Chinese food from curious patients, until they tell you, "Oh you have to understand, we just don't get a lot of foreigners around these parts." In short, he does not understand what it's like to be constantly seen as a foreigner in the country you were born in.
And all of that's just from my own experiences. My friend, who is of Korean descent, was asked about her opinion of Kim Jong Un at an interview. When we were on our surgery rotation together, an anesthesiologist asked her if she has eaten dog before.
Yes, I am well aware that in all these instances, these were well-meaning people who genuinely were trying to be friendly. And maybe you can call me "reactionary," or whatever that term is supposed to signify. And yes, I know this dude does not understand what it's like for an Asian-American in this country. Maybe I would have done all of us a favor by gently educating him last night.
But is that my responsibility? This is what Skillet and I were talking about last night, before the rest of our classmates arrived. If we stayed in Louisiana to train and practice medicine, perhaps we'd make a difference in helping educate these communities or break their stereotyped ideas of what it means to be a gay man or an Asian-American woman. But for the two of us, at a certain point we just don't want to bear this burden.
Showing posts with label Med School. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Med School. Show all posts
February 24, 2018
July 19, 2017
coda
"I believed all of your dreams are duration.
You took my heart and my keys and my patience.
You took my heart off my sleeve a decoration."
You took my heart and my keys and my patience.
You took my heart off my sleeve a decoration."
-- "Work" by Rihanna ft. Drake
I think back to that last day, when I looked at her. Really looked at her. Barely lucid. Cachexic. She reminded me of a sleeping animal, limbs curled up in a ball to contain warmth. I wondered, if we could see the time we had remaining imprinted on our chests like the boxy red numbers of a digital clock, whether her time would show days, weeks, or perhaps even another month. An emergency room doctor once told us we would all learn to hone and rely our "Spidey Senses" in the way that she just knew by looking at someone whether they would crash on her in any minute. I knew the girl was dying, but still it came as a surprise when I pulled up her record on Monday morning and discovered she was already gone.
If you can look at a girl like her and see that she is on the brink of death... could you do the same with someone dying from within?
I barely knew him. I knew his name and his face, but I couldn't remember which classes we had shared or if we had ever spoken to each other. I only found out he had taken his own life because a girl I knew had written about her memories of him in high school, and the post had appeared on my newsfeed this morning. Beautiful and aching. A kaleidoscope, pieces shifting into new patterns and sides of a person I never truly knew.
July 15, 2017
Sickness Sonata
Mvt. I
I always glance at my notes before I knock, but you never know what you will encounter when you open that door for the first time. Those clinical words won't tell you if her smile will warm you like a candle as you enter, or if she will barely spare you a glance as she writhes in pain.
She smiles cautiously when I greet her by name. Immediately, I notice two things: 1) her head is bald, as expected in the aftermath of chemotherapy, and 2) Wimbledon is playing on the television screen. I pull up a chair next to her bed and introduce myself. She tells me the story of her illness, but I can see the clues in the canvas laid out before me. The way she spits into a cup by her bed, unable to swallow her own saliva. The thin frailness of her arm as she reaches for the remote attached to her bed. After I finish my exam, I glance at the clock, and decide to ask her about tennis. She lights up when she talks about watching tennis and soccer. She's a huge fan of Nadal. She tells me about her childhood in Colombia, where she was teased for being "male" because she liked playing sports. I tell her about my own childhood as a competitive tournament player, training every day and missing out on school dances and birthday parties. We watch Azarenka serve an ace. When I stand up to leave, I promise to visit her again on Monday. Before I go, I help her open the window blinds. The room becomes soaked with morning light, and I wonder what is the Spanish word for sunflower.
Mvt. II
I ask her how she's feeling today. It's the same question I ask every patient, but there is a smidge of guilt when I realize I care about her answer on a more personal level, more so than the man I visited before her. She smiles but her shoulders are slumped. The scope on Friday came back normal. I saw it for myself on the screen that day, almost wishing there was an ulcer or something we could point to as the definitive cause of her pain. I tell her we're still waiting for the biopsy, but she tells me she is trying to accept that this may be the new normal. This inability to eat. This pain that roils her stomach. The bareness of her bones. She tried to force down the bites of too-salty chicken for dinner last night, but it all came right back up.
Today, she is rooting for the Spaniard, the 14th seed Muguruza, up against the number one seed, Kerber. It's a close match, 4-4 in the third set. I haven't followed professional tennis in years, so she tells me about the girl's tendency to succumb to nerves and choke on the big points. My mouth twists when I tell her I had the exact same problem. As the camera pans to Conchita Martinez in the stands, she mentions her sixteen-year-old son to me for the first time. She is worried about his health, too. She used to be overweight, until the cancer ravaged her body. She says a boy his age shouldn't already have elevated lipids. The clinician within me is automatically listing all the risks with childhood obesity, but I know this isn't the time. She tells me she tries so hard to force down those queasy bites of hospital food, because she wants to live long enough to see him graduate from high school.
Muguruza pulls ahead to a double match point. In that moment, we forget that we are a medical student and a patient in a hospital ward. Throwing up our hands, we groan when the Spaniard loses the next two points in quick succession. Deuce. We wonder if history will repeat itself, if Kerber will hold serve and Muguruza will fall to her pattern of slipping focus the closer she gets to victory. But instead of falling, she rises. Ad Out. Muguruza returns the serve with precision, and Kerber's shot sinks into the net. We erupt into whooping cheers and high-five each other as the Spaniard roars in victory. When I say goodbye, she smiles as she thanks me for taking care of her. She tells me she hopes I won't see her again. Because we both know that only bad things will cause our paths to cross once more.
Five days later, Garbine Muguruza defeats Venus Williams 7-5, 6-0 in an upset to win the Wimbledon championship.
Mvt. III
Sometimes the chart is an excavation, an expedition through layers and layers of time. I pull up the new consult's patient record and click through the pages in bewilderment until I realize she's been here since April. I trawl through the notes, trying to follow the medical narrative that reads like a downward spiral. Every procedure attempting to correct one problem has been followed by a litany of new problems.
When I visit her in the ICU, she is curled up in bed with her eyes closed. Her head is also bald and her body just as frail, but this girl is in her early 20's. When I gently ask the patient if I can examine her belly, her eyes barely flutter open as she lifts up the edge of her hospital gown. I observe the line of staples like a railroad track across her skin, the tube that goes straight to her stomach, the bandage around her surgical wound wet with blood.
My fellow and I both agree that the cause of her blood loss is from her surgical wounds, and we decide that there is no reason to put her through an upper GI scope when the cause is obvious. But the other teams are insistent. The surgeons say she's too high risk for them to operate on her again. They are fixated on the possibility of an ulcer, even going so far as to document a history of peptic ulcers that is readily refuted by the patient's mother. We finally agree to scope her on Friday, partly out of the desire to finally put this matter to rest.
Goosebumps raise across my skin when I see the inside of her stomach. Everything looks horribly wrong. The pool of bloodied gastric fluid is almost black. The lining of her stomach is covered with pale raised speckles, a trypophobe's nightmare. The camera swerves up to look at the tube that passes through her skin. A giant bulging blood clot hangs on the end, and as we attempt to pull it off, fresh blood trickles down the tube from the source: her surgical wound.
The atmosphere is grave when our team reconvenes in the call room after the case. One of the third-year medical students observes aloud, "That's the worst scope I've seen so far." The third-year fellow who assisted with the case has seen much worse in her 6 years of post-graduate training, but acknowledges the direness of the patient's condition.
"Poor thing," she says. "She's not going to make it out of this hospital alive."
I always glance at my notes before I knock, but you never know what you will encounter when you open that door for the first time. Those clinical words won't tell you if her smile will warm you like a candle as you enter, or if she will barely spare you a glance as she writhes in pain.
She smiles cautiously when I greet her by name. Immediately, I notice two things: 1) her head is bald, as expected in the aftermath of chemotherapy, and 2) Wimbledon is playing on the television screen. I pull up a chair next to her bed and introduce myself. She tells me the story of her illness, but I can see the clues in the canvas laid out before me. The way she spits into a cup by her bed, unable to swallow her own saliva. The thin frailness of her arm as she reaches for the remote attached to her bed. After I finish my exam, I glance at the clock, and decide to ask her about tennis. She lights up when she talks about watching tennis and soccer. She's a huge fan of Nadal. She tells me about her childhood in Colombia, where she was teased for being "male" because she liked playing sports. I tell her about my own childhood as a competitive tournament player, training every day and missing out on school dances and birthday parties. We watch Azarenka serve an ace. When I stand up to leave, I promise to visit her again on Monday. Before I go, I help her open the window blinds. The room becomes soaked with morning light, and I wonder what is the Spanish word for sunflower.
Mvt. II
I ask her how she's feeling today. It's the same question I ask every patient, but there is a smidge of guilt when I realize I care about her answer on a more personal level, more so than the man I visited before her. She smiles but her shoulders are slumped. The scope on Friday came back normal. I saw it for myself on the screen that day, almost wishing there was an ulcer or something we could point to as the definitive cause of her pain. I tell her we're still waiting for the biopsy, but she tells me she is trying to accept that this may be the new normal. This inability to eat. This pain that roils her stomach. The bareness of her bones. She tried to force down the bites of too-salty chicken for dinner last night, but it all came right back up.
Today, she is rooting for the Spaniard, the 14th seed Muguruza, up against the number one seed, Kerber. It's a close match, 4-4 in the third set. I haven't followed professional tennis in years, so she tells me about the girl's tendency to succumb to nerves and choke on the big points. My mouth twists when I tell her I had the exact same problem. As the camera pans to Conchita Martinez in the stands, she mentions her sixteen-year-old son to me for the first time. She is worried about his health, too. She used to be overweight, until the cancer ravaged her body. She says a boy his age shouldn't already have elevated lipids. The clinician within me is automatically listing all the risks with childhood obesity, but I know this isn't the time. She tells me she tries so hard to force down those queasy bites of hospital food, because she wants to live long enough to see him graduate from high school.
Muguruza pulls ahead to a double match point. In that moment, we forget that we are a medical student and a patient in a hospital ward. Throwing up our hands, we groan when the Spaniard loses the next two points in quick succession. Deuce. We wonder if history will repeat itself, if Kerber will hold serve and Muguruza will fall to her pattern of slipping focus the closer she gets to victory. But instead of falling, she rises. Ad Out. Muguruza returns the serve with precision, and Kerber's shot sinks into the net. We erupt into whooping cheers and high-five each other as the Spaniard roars in victory. When I say goodbye, she smiles as she thanks me for taking care of her. She tells me she hopes I won't see her again. Because we both know that only bad things will cause our paths to cross once more.
Five days later, Garbine Muguruza defeats Venus Williams 7-5, 6-0 in an upset to win the Wimbledon championship.
Mvt. III
Sometimes the chart is an excavation, an expedition through layers and layers of time. I pull up the new consult's patient record and click through the pages in bewilderment until I realize she's been here since April. I trawl through the notes, trying to follow the medical narrative that reads like a downward spiral. Every procedure attempting to correct one problem has been followed by a litany of new problems.
When I visit her in the ICU, she is curled up in bed with her eyes closed. Her head is also bald and her body just as frail, but this girl is in her early 20's. When I gently ask the patient if I can examine her belly, her eyes barely flutter open as she lifts up the edge of her hospital gown. I observe the line of staples like a railroad track across her skin, the tube that goes straight to her stomach, the bandage around her surgical wound wet with blood.
My fellow and I both agree that the cause of her blood loss is from her surgical wounds, and we decide that there is no reason to put her through an upper GI scope when the cause is obvious. But the other teams are insistent. The surgeons say she's too high risk for them to operate on her again. They are fixated on the possibility of an ulcer, even going so far as to document a history of peptic ulcers that is readily refuted by the patient's mother. We finally agree to scope her on Friday, partly out of the desire to finally put this matter to rest.
Goosebumps raise across my skin when I see the inside of her stomach. Everything looks horribly wrong. The pool of bloodied gastric fluid is almost black. The lining of her stomach is covered with pale raised speckles, a trypophobe's nightmare. The camera swerves up to look at the tube that passes through her skin. A giant bulging blood clot hangs on the end, and as we attempt to pull it off, fresh blood trickles down the tube from the source: her surgical wound.
The atmosphere is grave when our team reconvenes in the call room after the case. One of the third-year medical students observes aloud, "That's the worst scope I've seen so far." The third-year fellow who assisted with the case has seen much worse in her 6 years of post-graduate training, but acknowledges the direness of the patient's condition.
"Poor thing," she says. "She's not going to make it out of this hospital alive."
August 23, 2015
Progress Report No. 12
Blogging's been sparse, as you may have noticed. Classes started back up the first week of August, and it's been a whirlwind of infectious diseases ever since.
More than ever, I've become acutely aware of how limited my free time is. To be honest, it's made me rather antisocial these days. We had our first exam since coming back from summer on Friday, and there have been quite a few social events I'd felt obligated to attend until I thought to myself, "Are there other things I'd rather be doing during that time?" The answer would always be "yes." And so I'd stay home, go to bed early, and get up early to write.
Well, at least I have something to show for it. Chapter 25 is DONE. Five more to go.
Our next block starts back up on Monday, so it'll likely take more than a month for me to churn out Chapter 26. Hopefully I get as much done in these spare moments as possible, because once January rolls around, I will be studying non-stop until I take my board exam, presumably in mid-March.
Sigh.
More than ever, I've become acutely aware of how limited my free time is. To be honest, it's made me rather antisocial these days. We had our first exam since coming back from summer on Friday, and there have been quite a few social events I'd felt obligated to attend until I thought to myself, "Are there other things I'd rather be doing during that time?" The answer would always be "yes." And so I'd stay home, go to bed early, and get up early to write.
Well, at least I have something to show for it. Chapter 25 is DONE. Five more to go.
Our next block starts back up on Monday, so it'll likely take more than a month for me to churn out Chapter 26. Hopefully I get as much done in these spare moments as possible, because once January rolls around, I will be studying non-stop until I take my board exam, presumably in mid-March.
Sigh.
June 29, 2015
Materialize
These days, sometimes it feels like my life has collided with a script of fiction. I've lived inside my head for the majority of my life, envisioning entire dialogues and acts that I never expected to materialize from these fermented daydreams into some iteration of reality.
We sit across the table from each other in the living room. He never cooks unless I'm visiting. This time, there is a dish of baked panko-breaded chicken and a bowl of quinoa and kale. We drink red wine from Starbucks mugs because we're too lazy to look for the glasses. The conversation jumps from topic to topic without feeling forced, and somehow we end up talking about our classmates. He tells me that it's funny to reflect on how much he misjudged certain people, and I ask him if he misjudged me. He says yes at first, and then pauses. He covers his eyes and lets out a breath that sounds like a laugh, until I suddenly realize that he's trying not to cry.
I walk to his side as he covers his face in embarrassment. He is still seated as I stand beside him and gently pull him towards me. When he finally manages to speak, he says he feels like I deserve someone better. That he can't believe his luck in how he managed to end up with someone like me. I stroke his back, his shoulders, and I tell him that I find myself thinking the same thing from time to time. That I've been waiting all my life for someone like him. You deserve this. You deserve all of this. My voice comes out in a low murmur, but the words aren't just for him. The words are just as much for me.
We sit across the table from each other in the living room. He never cooks unless I'm visiting. This time, there is a dish of baked panko-breaded chicken and a bowl of quinoa and kale. We drink red wine from Starbucks mugs because we're too lazy to look for the glasses. The conversation jumps from topic to topic without feeling forced, and somehow we end up talking about our classmates. He tells me that it's funny to reflect on how much he misjudged certain people, and I ask him if he misjudged me. He says yes at first, and then pauses. He covers his eyes and lets out a breath that sounds like a laugh, until I suddenly realize that he's trying not to cry.
I walk to his side as he covers his face in embarrassment. He is still seated as I stand beside him and gently pull him towards me. When he finally manages to speak, he says he feels like I deserve someone better. That he can't believe his luck in how he managed to end up with someone like me. I stroke his back, his shoulders, and I tell him that I find myself thinking the same thing from time to time. That I've been waiting all my life for someone like him. You deserve this. You deserve all of this. My voice comes out in a low murmur, but the words aren't just for him. The words are just as much for me.
May 16, 2015
stethoscope
A classmate of mine writes a blog about her medical school experiences. I don't know if her blog receives heavy traffic. I don't feel inclined to link it here, because I would rather not connect myself in any matter that my classmates in real life may discover me here. But J sent me a text about this girl's newest blog post, and I felt inclined to take a look.
In short--it was a bit surprising for me to read. As a bit of context (from my point of view), this girl, whom I shall refer to as Emeraude, is one of those girls that everyone knew almost immediately. Truth be told, I was almost scared of her at first because of how much power she seemingly wielded. In the beginning of the year, when everyone still went to class for anatomy lab and the class dynamics were still a novelty, gossip and secrets were abound. Allegedly, Emeraude knew them all. She was hardly a Regina George in terms of deviousness (in fact, she was generally nice in person, to me at least), but she imposed an intimidating figure precisely because you didn't know what she thought of you, and how she chose to deploy such info could easily influence how the rest of the class thought about you as well.
That, in part, was a big reason behind why my goal in the beginning of med school was to stay under the radar as much as possible. Regarding Emeraude, I tried to be cordial to her whenever we crossed paths. But she and I didn't make much of an effort to become more than friendly acquaintances, and I was at peace with this. On a surface level, she struck me as my complete opposite--extroverted, in the spotlight, etc. And I did not exactly see eye-to-eye regarding her enthusiasm for keeping up with the gossip on others.
Back to the topic at hand. The bulk of her blog post was about loneliness. Specifically, that she felt lonely in medical school, and that she felt as if it were incredibly easy to amass social friends but that she was amiss to name even five people whom she felt would be there for her if she needed someone. She speculated if we professional students were too selfish to invest in more legitimate relationships, as opposed to her close friendships during her undergraduate years.
I was a bit startled by her admission of loneliness--after all, she is someone who takes immense pride in having gone out of her way to meet every single person in our class. But I have to admit that I found myself disagreeing with a lot of the conjectures she was making, which is why I felt compelled to write my own post.
Sure, I've been lonely here too. I've written about it before on this blog as well. But her experiences of loneliness do not strike me as something unique to our medical school--or any medical school in general. It'll happen anytime you move to a new place and have to rebuild your social niche brick by brick. Friends of mine who found jobs in new locations post-graduation had to deal with the same loneliness as well. To me, it's part of the greater scheme of transitioning into full-fledged adulthood. You quickly learn that if you're feeling lonely, the simplest thing to do is simply reach out to others first. Because more often than not, someone out there is also lonely, but they're just sitting on their haunches waiting for someone to find them first, either out of fear or out of pride.
There's no shame in texting a friend, "I miss you. Can we hang out soon?"
On my end, I would have to admit that I may not have amassed a huge cohort of social friends here. But I can definitely think of five friends I would immediately call if I had an emergency. Granted, this has always been my nature--to have a few really close friends as opposed to a large social circle. But it's not impossible to do this here, and I don't think it's as difficult as my classmate makes it out to be. I didn't build these friendships by going out to all our class block parties and class social events. These were cultivated from all the little, quiet moments--studying together at a coffee shop, sitting on the pier and relaxing after an exam, inviting someone over for dinner while we study biochem, making a quick Costco trip together.
It's true -- friendships take work to cultivate, and it can be especially challenging when we feel compelled to study during all of our waking hours. But if there's anything I learned at Duke that has stuck with me even now, it's this: You don't have time to do things. You make time for them.
In short--it was a bit surprising for me to read. As a bit of context (from my point of view), this girl, whom I shall refer to as Emeraude, is one of those girls that everyone knew almost immediately. Truth be told, I was almost scared of her at first because of how much power she seemingly wielded. In the beginning of the year, when everyone still went to class for anatomy lab and the class dynamics were still a novelty, gossip and secrets were abound. Allegedly, Emeraude knew them all. She was hardly a Regina George in terms of deviousness (in fact, she was generally nice in person, to me at least), but she imposed an intimidating figure precisely because you didn't know what she thought of you, and how she chose to deploy such info could easily influence how the rest of the class thought about you as well.
That, in part, was a big reason behind why my goal in the beginning of med school was to stay under the radar as much as possible. Regarding Emeraude, I tried to be cordial to her whenever we crossed paths. But she and I didn't make much of an effort to become more than friendly acquaintances, and I was at peace with this. On a surface level, she struck me as my complete opposite--extroverted, in the spotlight, etc. And I did not exactly see eye-to-eye regarding her enthusiasm for keeping up with the gossip on others.
Back to the topic at hand. The bulk of her blog post was about loneliness. Specifically, that she felt lonely in medical school, and that she felt as if it were incredibly easy to amass social friends but that she was amiss to name even five people whom she felt would be there for her if she needed someone. She speculated if we professional students were too selfish to invest in more legitimate relationships, as opposed to her close friendships during her undergraduate years.
I was a bit startled by her admission of loneliness--after all, she is someone who takes immense pride in having gone out of her way to meet every single person in our class. But I have to admit that I found myself disagreeing with a lot of the conjectures she was making, which is why I felt compelled to write my own post.
Sure, I've been lonely here too. I've written about it before on this blog as well. But her experiences of loneliness do not strike me as something unique to our medical school--or any medical school in general. It'll happen anytime you move to a new place and have to rebuild your social niche brick by brick. Friends of mine who found jobs in new locations post-graduation had to deal with the same loneliness as well. To me, it's part of the greater scheme of transitioning into full-fledged adulthood. You quickly learn that if you're feeling lonely, the simplest thing to do is simply reach out to others first. Because more often than not, someone out there is also lonely, but they're just sitting on their haunches waiting for someone to find them first, either out of fear or out of pride.
There's no shame in texting a friend, "I miss you. Can we hang out soon?"
On my end, I would have to admit that I may not have amassed a huge cohort of social friends here. But I can definitely think of five friends I would immediately call if I had an emergency. Granted, this has always been my nature--to have a few really close friends as opposed to a large social circle. But it's not impossible to do this here, and I don't think it's as difficult as my classmate makes it out to be. I didn't build these friendships by going out to all our class block parties and class social events. These were cultivated from all the little, quiet moments--studying together at a coffee shop, sitting on the pier and relaxing after an exam, inviting someone over for dinner while we study biochem, making a quick Costco trip together.
It's true -- friendships take work to cultivate, and it can be especially challenging when we feel compelled to study during all of our waking hours. But if there's anything I learned at Duke that has stuck with me even now, it's this: You don't have time to do things. You make time for them.
May 10, 2015
Before I Die
On the side of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in downtown New Orleans, there is a long black wall with orderly repetitive lines in white print:
Fragments of colored chalk are scattered all around the concrete. People pass by, perusing through the completed sentences on the board. Some bend down to pick up a piece of chalk and contribute their own entries.
He and I sit on the parking lot curb by the Before I Die wall. The mid-afternoon May sun is warm on our backs. A trio of guys nearby laugh at the entry about wanting to "swim in a pool of beer." We can't leave this place without writing something, I say exasperatedly. Then what are you going to write? he asks.
It's not a matter of having nothing to write, but of having too many. They all sound so cliched in my head. Before I die I want to publish a novel. Before I die want to graduate from medical school. Before I die I want to become a mother. And then, there are other things that come to mind, that I don't to share with him because I am still too self-conscious.
But it occurs to me as we sit before that expansive board of scrawled hopes and dreams, just how much things have changed since our orbits collided. The paralyzing anxiety has been melting over time, and I come to the realization that the thought of checking off the "Before I Die's" with this person beside me isn't such a terrifying idea anymore.
Less than a week later, I sit in my car with my finger on the ignition button of my Prius. He has already gone back into his apartment complex, and I can feel sleepiness already ensnaring my brain. But in that moment, I pause. For months I'd been waiting, listening for that intuition and gut instinct to speak to me, and suddenly, it's there. Clear and crystal as a bell.
Oh fuck it.
I ask him to come back outside. And I take the plunge.
Before I die I want to _______________________________.
Fragments of colored chalk are scattered all around the concrete. People pass by, perusing through the completed sentences on the board. Some bend down to pick up a piece of chalk and contribute their own entries.
He and I sit on the parking lot curb by the Before I Die wall. The mid-afternoon May sun is warm on our backs. A trio of guys nearby laugh at the entry about wanting to "swim in a pool of beer." We can't leave this place without writing something, I say exasperatedly. Then what are you going to write? he asks.
It's not a matter of having nothing to write, but of having too many. They all sound so cliched in my head. Before I die I want to publish a novel. Before I die want to graduate from medical school. Before I die I want to become a mother. And then, there are other things that come to mind, that I don't to share with him because I am still too self-conscious.
But it occurs to me as we sit before that expansive board of scrawled hopes and dreams, just how much things have changed since our orbits collided. The paralyzing anxiety has been melting over time, and I come to the realization that the thought of checking off the "Before I Die's" with this person beside me isn't such a terrifying idea anymore.
Less than a week later, I sit in my car with my finger on the ignition button of my Prius. He has already gone back into his apartment complex, and I can feel sleepiness already ensnaring my brain. But in that moment, I pause. For months I'd been waiting, listening for that intuition and gut instinct to speak to me, and suddenly, it's there. Clear and crystal as a bell.
Oh fuck it.
I ask him to come back outside. And I take the plunge.
April 21, 2015
420
My two halves are at war. I am a scientist and dramatist. My nature is to document every little moment, to sculpt a narrative from chaos, to distill logic from the noise of the world, to commit those moments into words before my memories turn gray. And yet since February, the recluse in me has hoarded it all inside, as if these treasures that stay in my brain will forever remain mine and mine alone.
He and I sit at the Carousel Bar in the French Quarter. The carousel spins round, one revolution every fifteen minutes, as the bartender serves two sazeracs on the counter. The canopy above is dotted with fairy lights, and I watch my reflection in the mirrored panels floating overhead, twisting like a kaleidoscope. I can't recall any of the conversation with clarity, but I remember the overwhelming hyperawareness of one's proximity--a hand on the back of my chair, a brush against my shoulder.
When we make it to the House of Blues, the smell of pot pervades in a haze. The stage is larger than I imagined, glowing blue in the darkness. Fifteen minutes until show starts, but the bouncer shrugs."It's 4/20 -- might take another 50 minutes before anything happens." I'd expected to see more gutter punks, with their grunge-punk tattered chic, like at the FKA Twigs show, but it's easy to forget that the tickets for this show were fifty bucks--especially when I won the pair of tickets for free.
I don't know any of Tyler the Creator's tracks, other than "Yonkers" and "She" from a cursory search on Youtube, but my bones move to the beat as the bodies bounce in sync all around me. I don't know the words coming out of the rapper's mouth, save the f-bombs littered indiscriminately here and there. I become one of a myriad, a myriad becoming one dark entity of limbs slinking entranced like a cobra before a spitting snake-charmer.
We talk in the car as he drives me home. I have sat here many times since that first time in February, but I feel on edge--more so than usual. Days away from the eve of my twenty-fourth year, and I remain a thirteen-year-old, watching the string of firsts play out half in terror and half in thrill. After that evening at Bacchanal when the revelations spilled out one by one, he has dealt with me as if I am a deer--slowly and patiently, no sudden movements. I have grown less anxious in his presence in the past two months, but there is something different this evening. Subtle gestures, ghost touches here and there, and I can feel it in the stilted air as we stand on the porch an hour before midnight. When I pull away from an embrace, I feel it, hear it, before I register that flutter of movement against my cheek and realize what he's done. Eighteen hours later, and I am still frozen in that moment on the porch--dazed, feverish, restless, and terrified of the uncharted territory before me.
He and I sit at the Carousel Bar in the French Quarter. The carousel spins round, one revolution every fifteen minutes, as the bartender serves two sazeracs on the counter. The canopy above is dotted with fairy lights, and I watch my reflection in the mirrored panels floating overhead, twisting like a kaleidoscope. I can't recall any of the conversation with clarity, but I remember the overwhelming hyperawareness of one's proximity--a hand on the back of my chair, a brush against my shoulder.
When we make it to the House of Blues, the smell of pot pervades in a haze. The stage is larger than I imagined, glowing blue in the darkness. Fifteen minutes until show starts, but the bouncer shrugs."It's 4/20 -- might take another 50 minutes before anything happens." I'd expected to see more gutter punks, with their grunge-punk tattered chic, like at the FKA Twigs show, but it's easy to forget that the tickets for this show were fifty bucks--especially when I won the pair of tickets for free.
I don't know any of Tyler the Creator's tracks, other than "Yonkers" and "She" from a cursory search on Youtube, but my bones move to the beat as the bodies bounce in sync all around me. I don't know the words coming out of the rapper's mouth, save the f-bombs littered indiscriminately here and there. I become one of a myriad, a myriad becoming one dark entity of limbs slinking entranced like a cobra before a spitting snake-charmer.
We talk in the car as he drives me home. I have sat here many times since that first time in February, but I feel on edge--more so than usual. Days away from the eve of my twenty-fourth year, and I remain a thirteen-year-old, watching the string of firsts play out half in terror and half in thrill. After that evening at Bacchanal when the revelations spilled out one by one, he has dealt with me as if I am a deer--slowly and patiently, no sudden movements. I have grown less anxious in his presence in the past two months, but there is something different this evening. Subtle gestures, ghost touches here and there, and I can feel it in the stilted air as we stand on the porch an hour before midnight. When I pull away from an embrace, I feel it, hear it, before I register that flutter of movement against my cheek and realize what he's done. Eighteen hours later, and I am still frozen in that moment on the porch--dazed, feverish, restless, and terrified of the uncharted territory before me.
March 1, 2015
Flurries
1. It seems to be a common occurrence in my life that I will find some fandom-related item on the Internet that cracks me up, but I have no one to share it with because none of my friends are part of the fandom. Previous instances have included articles on The Toast about Legend of Zelda and memes related to Avatar the Last Airbender (and the only person who shares my interest in both is, sadly, my brother). Most recently, this morning I stumbled upon this post on Maggie Stiefvater's blog that literally had me laughing out loud, but none of my friends have read The Raven Boys, and so I had to laugh alone.
2. Update on writing progress: I finished Chapter 22 over the Mardi Gras break, clocking in at an overall total of around 76,000 words in this first draft so far. Current estimate for total length is thirty chapters, so I guess we're about 70 percent through with the first draft? I already foresee a lot of major edits needed for Chapter 19 and 21--as always, Rory's narrative is always giving me the most trouble--but per my rule, I will NOT go back and make these changes until after I finish the entire first draft.
3. In related news, after some mild stress about trying to figure out summer plans, I was rejected from this summer program to volunteer with a health clinic in Nepal, which I think is the first rejection in awhile that I've been taking remarkably well. I was literally over it as soon as I finished reading the e-mail. Currently I'm planning to stay in NOLA for the summer to do research, which I am really excited about--not really because of the research, but because if it's anything like my gap year, I will have plenty of free time in the evenings and weekends when I'm not working. Plus, April should be a relatively light month in terms of schoolwork, which will give me a good opportunity to write. Which means--I'm being very realistic here--there is a VERY GOOD CHANCE that the first draft of EP will be complete by the end of July.
Guys, you don't understand how much the prospect of this excites me. I published the first chapter of EP on Fictionpress when I was 15, and I was daydreaming about the characters even before then. I've been dreaming of this completed draft for over eight freaking years, and anyone who knows me will tell you that I am a realist. The fact that I can now realistically give a timeline for a finished first draft is HUGE FOR ME. Yeah, I'm kind of jumping the gun a bit, but it doesn't hurt to feel pumped up about this, right?
Okay, it's not really helping me focus on endocrine physiology right now, but bahhhhhhh.
4. For the past week, I've been thinking about writing a detailed post about my current situation with the, um, Romantic Quandary. There's actually a very good story that came out of what happened--and when I say a very good story, you know that I mean I have a good story to tell. I might save it for later, or maybe I'll choose to keep this story to myself. But in any case, I am feeling much more relaxed and calmer about the Quandary than I did during that entire Mardi Gras break. And as long as it stays this way, who knows what the future has in store for the two of us.
2. Update on writing progress: I finished Chapter 22 over the Mardi Gras break, clocking in at an overall total of around 76,000 words in this first draft so far. Current estimate for total length is thirty chapters, so I guess we're about 70 percent through with the first draft? I already foresee a lot of major edits needed for Chapter 19 and 21--as always, Rory's narrative is always giving me the most trouble--but per my rule, I will NOT go back and make these changes until after I finish the entire first draft.
3. In related news, after some mild stress about trying to figure out summer plans, I was rejected from this summer program to volunteer with a health clinic in Nepal, which I think is the first rejection in awhile that I've been taking remarkably well. I was literally over it as soon as I finished reading the e-mail. Currently I'm planning to stay in NOLA for the summer to do research, which I am really excited about--not really because of the research, but because if it's anything like my gap year, I will have plenty of free time in the evenings and weekends when I'm not working. Plus, April should be a relatively light month in terms of schoolwork, which will give me a good opportunity to write. Which means--I'm being very realistic here--there is a VERY GOOD CHANCE that the first draft of EP will be complete by the end of July.
Guys, you don't understand how much the prospect of this excites me. I published the first chapter of EP on Fictionpress when I was 15, and I was daydreaming about the characters even before then. I've been dreaming of this completed draft for over eight freaking years, and anyone who knows me will tell you that I am a realist. The fact that I can now realistically give a timeline for a finished first draft is HUGE FOR ME. Yeah, I'm kind of jumping the gun a bit, but it doesn't hurt to feel pumped up about this, right?
Okay, it's not really helping me focus on endocrine physiology right now, but bahhhhhhh.
4. For the past week, I've been thinking about writing a detailed post about my current situation with the, um, Romantic Quandary. There's actually a very good story that came out of what happened--and when I say a very good story, you know that I mean I have a good story to tell. I might save it for later, or maybe I'll choose to keep this story to myself. But in any case, I am feeling much more relaxed and calmer about the Quandary than I did during that entire Mardi Gras break. And as long as it stays this way, who knows what the future has in store for the two of us.
February 16, 2015
Five of Cups
Three years ago, on the night of the harvest moon, I pulled the Five of Cups from the witch's deck of tarot cards. She told me what I already knew.
G and I were in the French Quarter on Valentine's Day to see the parades. She wanted to see the fortune tellers with their crystals and cards, lined up at folding tables in front of the cathedral. I was blonde again that day, loose Goldilocks curls tucked under a snapback. G had her palm read by one of the ladies dressed in floral print garb. At first, I didn't want to partake in the fortunes, but in the end some feeling I can't quite describe made me sit down at her table.
Perhaps due to my external appearance, her palm reading was laughable. She told me I had a flair for drama, that I would likely have twins, that I had a tendency to go after the bad boys because I wanted to fix them, and that when I had enough of being a girl and was ready to be a woman, I should stop looking for a bad boy and find a good man. There were a few things she said that gave me pause, but considering the statistical odds of saying something remotely accurate, I was mostly unimpressed. But my interest wasn't in palm-readings. My fascination has always been with the cards.
The first card I drew was Death. Most people would shudder at the Death card, but I already knew what it signified. That rebirth and great change were on the horizon.
I was asked to draw ten cards, but an eleventh slipped out of the deck. The Four of Cups, the Five of Pentacles, the Six of Pentacles, the High Priestess, the Eight of Rods, the Seven of Rods, the Fool, and the Devil. But there were two more that gave me pause.
I'd kept a poker face through the entire reading, but when I drew the sixth card, I couldn't help but laugh out loud. There was the Lovers card, as if I needed a reminder of the thoughts that had been running through my head all day.
Then, there was the Five of Cups. My old friend.
#
When I saw my third-year roommate at the parade yesterday, he asked me how the date on Friday had gone. Normally, I consider myself a fairly articulate person, but every time someone has asked me about how Friday night went, I find myself eliciting a series of "I don't knows" and embarrassed silence. That was when he said to me, "You know, you're the chillest person I have ever met.... Correction, the chillest person I have ever met who isn't stoned. But I have never seen you stress out over anything except for this."
This, in fact, refers to the person who has knocked me into a cesspool of uncertainty. After two months of circling like two panthers, we finally went out for dinner on Friday night. When someone asks you how a date went, what criteria do you judge it by? Awkward silences, stilted conversations, bad food? There was none of the above, but when I went home, there was a strange feeling sunken in my chest.
My friends tell me I overthink things, that I take this too seriously, but the reality is that while I am generally relaxed about most things in my life, I cannot help but react this way to anything that could potentially upend my entire sense of being. And our interactions have all been completely foreign to me, and the unfamiliarity scares me. I have never had anyone pursue me like this--initiate all these text messages, pay for my dinner, walk me to my car almost twenty minutes away, give me a teddy bear he caught from a parade float. The attention is both baffling and flattering, and I have never been so uncertain of how to behave in my life.
Someone once said to me that it was better to be with someone more in love with you than the other way around, but I can't help but think about how off-balance I have felt in this situation. He has made his interest in me abundantly clear, yet I can barely eke out a series of "I-don't-knows" when others ask how I feel in return. I have studied him for two months and can delineate all the ways that our personalities are compatible and analyze all the ways he has treated me exceptionally well, but the part I cannot rationalize my way out of are the spilled cups splayed out before me. The all-consuming intensity I once lived and breathed on is a ghost that still haunts my memories, and the fact that I don't feel the same way now makes me wonder if my brain has overrun my heart.
January 10, 2015
Lights On
Break or seize me
If the flame gets blown out in the shine
I will know that you can not be mine
Live or leave me
Let me tell you all my secrets in a whisper till the day is done.
I sit on the carpeted floor with a half-drunken bottle of Abita Purple Haze as they talk. She's opening a second bottle of champagne and asking S about his plans to propose to his girlfriend. I watch as the liquid lurches as she fumbles in refilling her glass--a telltale sign of her inebriated state. E is playing with the French bulldog, while C helps himself to another slice of king cake (in celebration of the beginning of Mardi Gras festivities in the city). S talks of diamonds and engagements, and I ask how he and his girlfriend met.
Later, I wonder if she would have told us everything if she had been sober. Maybe she wouldn't have told us that she thinks her boyfriend in California is about to dump her. Maybe she wouldn't have said all those other things about her past. Or maybe she would have anyways.
We are a strange group of six. Four boys, two girls. Under any other circumstances, we would have never all become friends. We are essentially your standard dysfunctional yet loveable sitcom cast. But here we are on a Friday night, with a neglected game of Cards Against Humanity splayed out on the coffee table amongst drained glasses of Bellini. They flip their secrets face-up one by one, but I have yet to play my hand.
I can tell you a little something scandalous about each of them, but they have nothing on me. Not because I don't trust them. But because my lack of secrets is the greatest secret of all.
I still remember what she said to me just last Monday, about a girl she knows from back home who is 24, engaged, and still a virgin--exclaiming this to me as if it were the most absurd thing she'd ever heard in her life. Then, there's the last time we played Never Have I Ever at the sushi happy hour at Vitascope, and I sat out because I knew that even more than any of the dirty secrets they each aired that night, the biggest shocker to them would be mine.
I hide this from them, not because I am ashamed, but because I don't want a reaction. I don't need your pity or your incredulity or heaven forbid your approval (and I have dealt with all these before). If they ask me directly one day, I will tell them. But for now, let them speculate of unspeakable sorrows, dark and tragic pasts, or raw heartbreak if they deign to notice that I do not speak--when in fact, the sheep in wolf's clothing is as pure as the driven snow.
Break or seize me
Let the things that I tell you survive
In the way that you handle your size
Live or leave me
--"Lights On" by FKA Twigs
December 11, 2014
I Don't Know What Progress Report I'm On Anymore
A little more than a week until I go back to California.
I can't wait.
I have come to the conclusion that in my world, school breaks are bad news. I'm sure there are people who come back from these breaks fully recharged, but ever since Thanksgiving Break, I have been suffering from a severe case of DGAF and motivating myself to study has been a Herculean task.
A couple of things to stew over:
During one of my procrastination moments, I compiled all of the chapters of the revised EP draft I'd written so far and put them into one PDF document, so I could read it on my phone at any odd moments. Probably not the brightest idea, given my rule for not going back to revise anything until after a full draft is complete.....
....because ughhhhh, so much work to be done. On one hand, I was impressed by how much I'd churned out in the past year (over 70,000 words, over 250 pages in a PDF). On the other hand, some parts were really bad. Maybe not Fifty Shades level of atrocity, but... still nothing I'd want anyone else to read. The first half of Act I was really obviously a case of holy-pomelo-i-haven't-written-anything-in-YEARS-what-do-i-dooooooo flailing, and the first half of Act II is majorly saggy in terms of pacing. Which might be good, because this draft is gonna need major liposuction to trim down the word count anyways. Also, Act I will need a ton of reworking, because I need to nail down a lot of the details from Rory's side of things in order to revise how much detail I want to reveal in each of the interviews.
But before I can get around to doing any of the above, I need to finish Act III.
And before I can get around to that, I need to slog through this cardiovascular block and make it to winter break alive....bahhhh.
The second thing I was going to bring up.... basically, a classmate of mine asked me out to dinner. It took me by surprise, because 1) the text came out of nowhere, 2) I don't think I'm misunderstanding the implications behind his request, but my initial reaction was pretty much..... huh? You mean me?
I'd rather not get into the details of this whole situation, but basically I left that text hanging there for an hour because I didn't quite know how to respond. On one hand, I've been around this person enough to observe his behavior, and from what I've been able to discern, he is a good person -- well-mannered, polite, hard-working, selfless, and just very nice. On the other hand... I hadn't really been looking at that person in that way.
I read some article the other day about how the so-called "spark" or "chemistry" or whatever doesn't actually mean anything in the long-run; that it's just neuronal responses that wear off over time and don't actually predict how well two people will fare together. But regardless, I'd never felt that "spark" or whatever with this person--our conversations are almost diplomatic, as if we'd never made it out of the small-talk stage (a stage that I am very uncomfortable in, fyi). And unfortunately, I can't help but compare this situation to other ones where I did feel that spark -- usually people with whom I would engage in good-natured teasing or banter.
In the end, I took a friend's advice and said I was busy on the day he suggested, but that I was open to figuring something out after our exam (essentially after winter break, which gives me almost a month to sort my thoughts). I mean, why not, right? One dinner doesn't mean anything. It's not a binding contract for anything, you skittish ninny. But we all know that I have a tendency to protect myself preemptively.
Once, I was talking to M about how much I love being independent, and the thought of having to chain my life to someone else's makes me skittish. Her response was along the lines of, "Eventually, you're gonna meet someone whom you'll want to be chained to."
At this moment, this is not someone I am willing to give up my independence for. But whatever, I have three weeks to not think about this. We'll just have to see what happens in January.
I can't wait.
I have come to the conclusion that in my world, school breaks are bad news. I'm sure there are people who come back from these breaks fully recharged, but ever since Thanksgiving Break, I have been suffering from a severe case of DGAF and motivating myself to study has been a Herculean task.
A couple of things to stew over:
During one of my procrastination moments, I compiled all of the chapters of the revised EP draft I'd written so far and put them into one PDF document, so I could read it on my phone at any odd moments. Probably not the brightest idea, given my rule for not going back to revise anything until after a full draft is complete.....
....because ughhhhh, so much work to be done. On one hand, I was impressed by how much I'd churned out in the past year (over 70,000 words, over 250 pages in a PDF). On the other hand, some parts were really bad. Maybe not Fifty Shades level of atrocity, but... still nothing I'd want anyone else to read. The first half of Act I was really obviously a case of holy-pomelo-i-haven't-written-anything-in-YEARS-what-do-i-dooooooo flailing, and the first half of Act II is majorly saggy in terms of pacing. Which might be good, because this draft is gonna need major liposuction to trim down the word count anyways. Also, Act I will need a ton of reworking, because I need to nail down a lot of the details from Rory's side of things in order to revise how much detail I want to reveal in each of the interviews.
But before I can get around to doing any of the above, I need to finish Act III.
And before I can get around to that, I need to slog through this cardiovascular block and make it to winter break alive....bahhhh.
The second thing I was going to bring up.... basically, a classmate of mine asked me out to dinner. It took me by surprise, because 1) the text came out of nowhere, 2) I don't think I'm misunderstanding the implications behind his request, but my initial reaction was pretty much..... huh? You mean me?
I'd rather not get into the details of this whole situation, but basically I left that text hanging there for an hour because I didn't quite know how to respond. On one hand, I've been around this person enough to observe his behavior, and from what I've been able to discern, he is a good person -- well-mannered, polite, hard-working, selfless, and just very nice. On the other hand... I hadn't really been looking at that person in that way.
I read some article the other day about how the so-called "spark" or "chemistry" or whatever doesn't actually mean anything in the long-run; that it's just neuronal responses that wear off over time and don't actually predict how well two people will fare together. But regardless, I'd never felt that "spark" or whatever with this person--our conversations are almost diplomatic, as if we'd never made it out of the small-talk stage (a stage that I am very uncomfortable in, fyi). And unfortunately, I can't help but compare this situation to other ones where I did feel that spark -- usually people with whom I would engage in good-natured teasing or banter.
In the end, I took a friend's advice and said I was busy on the day he suggested, but that I was open to figuring something out after our exam (essentially after winter break, which gives me almost a month to sort my thoughts). I mean, why not, right? One dinner doesn't mean anything. It's not a binding contract for anything, you skittish ninny. But we all know that I have a tendency to protect myself preemptively.
Once, I was talking to M about how much I love being independent, and the thought of having to chain my life to someone else's makes me skittish. Her response was along the lines of, "Eventually, you're gonna meet someone whom you'll want to be chained to."
At this moment, this is not someone I am willing to give up my independence for. But whatever, I have three weeks to not think about this. We'll just have to see what happens in January.
December 1, 2014
Things I Did During Thanksgiving Break
- Lazed around and took photos in City Garden all morning. See previous post.
- Watched 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street back-to-back at a friend's house and realized just how many of the jokes I missed when I watched 22 Jump Street earlier this year without ever having seen 21 Jump Street.
- Skyped three friends for almost a total of five hours. Essentially caught up on all the drama going on in other people's lives. Per usual, I didn't really have anything exciting to contribute.
- Made three dozen Portuguese egg tarts for a potluck. Caught up on Jane the Virgin while doing so. (By the way, the show's premise seems really ridiculous BUT TRUST ME... IT'S ACTUALLY PRETTY FUNNY. And it features a Latina heroine, so yay for diversity!)
- Played two rounds of Mafia at the aforementioned potluck. I screwed myself over in the first round when I inadvertently revealed that I was the cop, but made an epic victory when I was one of four mafia in the following round. Though the Godfather was killed off, he'd chosen an excellent team: Asian Jesus was the loud-talker who was put out a great performance as one of the civilians; E was the soothing voice of reason secretly diverting the conversation; I was the silent one who, should Asian Jesus or E attract too much attention and draw suspicion, would remain unnoticed and slowly pick off the victims as I outlived the others.
- By the way, the egg tarts were a hit.
- Finally watched Season 2 of Legend of Korra. Will likely not watch Season 3 and 4 until they are free on Amazon Prime, because I am too lazy to look up that stuff elsewhere.
- Visited Abita Brewery with some classmates. Favorite part of that trip was probably driving across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. I'm not sure if it is still the longest bridge in the world, but driving across it feels like you're zipping across the ocean.
- Finished writing Chapter 17 and 19 of EP. (I went out of order and wrote Chapter 18 a while back.) Chapter 20 is a short one, so I am essentially almost done with Act II. Act III will be a tricky one, because it'll mainly be about Rory's fall -- which I haven't completely fleshed out in my head -- but at this point I'm gonna pants it and see where that takes me.
- Got a head-start on schoolwork on my "Lazy Sunday," which also involved trying out a potato soup recipe with my leftover heavy cream from the egg tarts and watching If I Stay, which I'd been meaning to watch since August. If I Stay, by the way, was good but not great -- the film didn't quite tug at me the same way The Fault in Our Stars movie did, even though I was bigger fan of the book If I Stay than the book The Fault in Our Stars. But it did remind me of how much I loved reading If I Stay and Where She Went.
- Last but not least, I got to watch this lady perform live:
This was the first small-venue concert I ever went to, so I don't have much to compare this experience to... but I thought FKA Twigs was amazing.
In typical Sophelia fashion, I was starting to feel antsy before the show because I was worried about parking and, well, pretty much everything. The show was at the Republic, this nightclub in downtown. I Googled all sorts of things about how early you're supposed to get to a show, where to park near the Republic, what you should wear, etc. The doors opened at 8 and the show started at 9. My roommate said that since I was going alone, I should probably just go at 8:30. But I was way too antsy to be hanging around the house, so I ended up leaving my house at 7:30. Parking was a bitch, like I'd been expecting, but in the end I got there early enough to get pretty close to the stage.
I was on the left side of the stage, near a group of tall kids whom I would have guessed were 18-year-olds. They smoked like crazy. I'm pretty sure I smelled of cigarette smoke after the concert. I also smelled the scent of pot later in the night, and it made me want to gag. I essentially people-listened/watched for almost an hour and admired the room. The Republic has two floors, and I would have liked watching from the balcony, except I decided that I wanted to experience being on the floor "for research purposes."
Boots was the opener for the show. He wasn't bad, but in retrospect he didn't leave much of an impression on me once FKA Twigs took the stage.
The show started with "Preface," a chorale-influenced piece in which she chants over and over again: "I love another, and thus I hate myself." Her entrance gave me the chills. She was wearing this gold cloaklet with the hood drawn over her head and a long flowing skirt with two slits and black spandex underneath, and in the darkness, her hooded figure lent to the whole cathedral-esque feel.
FKA Twigs, I think, is one of those artists you can't fully appreciate until you see her live. She's famous for her dancing, which I've seen described in online reviews as "skeletal." It's mesmerizing to watch her move. But you can't discount her voice either. It's surprisingly high and ethereal. She didn't impress me as much with "Two Weeks" -- which is one of my favorite songs of hers to listen to -- but "Give Up," "Hide," and "Pendulum" were great, from what I recall.
In many ways this concert was for "research purposes" -- and I did get plenty of that. But it was also an interesting experience going to a small concert by myself and getting lost in the crowd. Hanging around in downtown New Orleans at night isn't exactly the safest thing to do, but it was worth the risk.
All in all, I'd been dying to get out of the city for Thanksgiving Break -- even went so far as contemplated spending 300 dollars to fly to Miami -- but in the end, it was a good decision to stay in NOLA for the break. I spent a lot of downtime catching up with myself, which I think I needed more than anything.
November 1, 2014
Halloween Cinderella
I almost didn't go out for Halloween last night.
We studied until 8 PM. Spitfire had been craving fried chicken for days, so we piled up in Asian Jesus's car and headed over to Raisin' Kanes on St. Charles. As we consumed our greased piles of soul food, the conversation somehow led to the topic that had left me fuming mad at him almost two weeks ago.
He'd already given me his spiel. Now his roommate Asian Jesus was trying to articulate why he hated hook-up culture. Spitfire and I listened, patiently, commenting and objecting here and there.
Spitfire and I are older than the boys. Only by one year in my case, and three years in hers. I understood their arguments, for I choose not to participate in the hook-up culture either.
I think you're the type to put your eggs in as few baskets as possible. But you'll put a lot of eggs in.
That's how a friend described me, and in many ways, it is true.
So, I agreed with Asian Jesus when he talked about his tendency to treat relationships with such seriousness and intensity, that the idea of casual engagement of heart and body for one night with no strings attached was impossible for him. But once again, I still felt a hollow apathy about hook-up culture -- in that, I really don't care if other people choose to hook-up. As long as people don't try to force me into their culture, I'm willing to accept theirs.
I tried explaining this to my mother a week ago, and her words were eerily echoed by Asian Jesus last night. Do people who engage in hook-up culture treat their relationships more lightly than others like me, him, and Asian Jesus who choose not to? What will happen if you end up dating someone who's been part of that culture?
Perhaps I am naive and obstinate, but I want to believe that whoever I choose to date will like me enough that his loyalty to me will speak for itself, regardless of how he may have behaved when he was single. Perhaps I don't feel that the ability to separate the emotional and the physical is mutually exclusive from the ability to be faithful.
But what do I know? I have been single all my life. I watch people around me make mistakes and learn from them. But it's been an objective, detached education.
After dinner, I went back to my house. Both my roommates were gone for the night. It was only 9 PM, and I'd been planning to stay-in and study, but suddenly I was overcome with an acute feeling of being very very lame.
I didn't have a fairy godmother. I barely even did my make-up, since I was worried about getting to the club before my classmates dispersed. I put on my blonde wig, tucked it under a bear-eared beanie, paired a varsity jacket with a band tee, and drove to Downtown in my rental Ford Charger. Afraid of the traffic around Frenchmen, I parked my car by the hospital and walked for half an hour to my destination.
It was a chilly night -- the coldest I've experienced since moving here. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and walked briskly down the glitzy Canal Street. The marquee lights from Saenger Theater reminded me of that other fateful October night in New York City, except this time I was alone and thrilled by this feeling of absolute freedom.
There's something to be said about experiencing Halloween in downtown New Orleans sober. Canal and Decatur were packed with costumed partygoers, dolled up and decked out in an eccentric mix of outfits. My newfound blondness and dramatic change in appearance gave me a heightened sense of confidence amidst the momentary blips of terror. Two boys followed me momentarily, calling out and asking why I was walking so fast. At another point, someone purposely reached out to hit me on the shoulder as I walked down the sidewalks of Decatur. I didn't cuss out at them, but the very idea that I could and totally get away with it felt liberating.
In the dark haze and smoke of the club, the packed bodies pressed all around me made me feel feverish. I took off my varsity jacket and wandered through the crowd. The reactions from my friends at the club amused me to no end. I would tap them on the shoulder, and their faces would contort in guarded bewilderment until a flash of recognition would light across their eyes. "SOPHELIA!! HOLY SHIT, YOUR HAIR! I TOTALLY DIDN'T RECOGNIZE YOU!"
I was there for maybe three hours. It felt shorter than that. It was fun, but as I came home and peeled off my guise, I came to realize something. There's an immeasurable thrill in stepping into another skin for one night and feeling the freedom to act unlike yourself. But I would have been just as happy hanging out with Spitfire, Asian Jesus, and him for the rest of the night, discussing our philosophies over soul food and sweet tea, in my boyishly short black hair and school sweatshirt, in my own skin.
We studied until 8 PM. Spitfire had been craving fried chicken for days, so we piled up in Asian Jesus's car and headed over to Raisin' Kanes on St. Charles. As we consumed our greased piles of soul food, the conversation somehow led to the topic that had left me fuming mad at him almost two weeks ago.
He'd already given me his spiel. Now his roommate Asian Jesus was trying to articulate why he hated hook-up culture. Spitfire and I listened, patiently, commenting and objecting here and there.
Spitfire and I are older than the boys. Only by one year in my case, and three years in hers. I understood their arguments, for I choose not to participate in the hook-up culture either.
I think you're the type to put your eggs in as few baskets as possible. But you'll put a lot of eggs in.
That's how a friend described me, and in many ways, it is true.
So, I agreed with Asian Jesus when he talked about his tendency to treat relationships with such seriousness and intensity, that the idea of casual engagement of heart and body for one night with no strings attached was impossible for him. But once again, I still felt a hollow apathy about hook-up culture -- in that, I really don't care if other people choose to hook-up. As long as people don't try to force me into their culture, I'm willing to accept theirs.
I tried explaining this to my mother a week ago, and her words were eerily echoed by Asian Jesus last night. Do people who engage in hook-up culture treat their relationships more lightly than others like me, him, and Asian Jesus who choose not to? What will happen if you end up dating someone who's been part of that culture?
Perhaps I am naive and obstinate, but I want to believe that whoever I choose to date will like me enough that his loyalty to me will speak for itself, regardless of how he may have behaved when he was single. Perhaps I don't feel that the ability to separate the emotional and the physical is mutually exclusive from the ability to be faithful.
But what do I know? I have been single all my life. I watch people around me make mistakes and learn from them. But it's been an objective, detached education.
After dinner, I went back to my house. Both my roommates were gone for the night. It was only 9 PM, and I'd been planning to stay-in and study, but suddenly I was overcome with an acute feeling of being very very lame.
I didn't have a fairy godmother. I barely even did my make-up, since I was worried about getting to the club before my classmates dispersed. I put on my blonde wig, tucked it under a bear-eared beanie, paired a varsity jacket with a band tee, and drove to Downtown in my rental Ford Charger. Afraid of the traffic around Frenchmen, I parked my car by the hospital and walked for half an hour to my destination.
It was a chilly night -- the coldest I've experienced since moving here. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and walked briskly down the glitzy Canal Street. The marquee lights from Saenger Theater reminded me of that other fateful October night in New York City, except this time I was alone and thrilled by this feeling of absolute freedom.
There's something to be said about experiencing Halloween in downtown New Orleans sober. Canal and Decatur were packed with costumed partygoers, dolled up and decked out in an eccentric mix of outfits. My newfound blondness and dramatic change in appearance gave me a heightened sense of confidence amidst the momentary blips of terror. Two boys followed me momentarily, calling out and asking why I was walking so fast. At another point, someone purposely reached out to hit me on the shoulder as I walked down the sidewalks of Decatur. I didn't cuss out at them, but the very idea that I could and totally get away with it felt liberating.
In the dark haze and smoke of the club, the packed bodies pressed all around me made me feel feverish. I took off my varsity jacket and wandered through the crowd. The reactions from my friends at the club amused me to no end. I would tap them on the shoulder, and their faces would contort in guarded bewilderment until a flash of recognition would light across their eyes. "SOPHELIA!! HOLY SHIT, YOUR HAIR! I TOTALLY DIDN'T RECOGNIZE YOU!"
I was there for maybe three hours. It felt shorter than that. It was fun, but as I came home and peeled off my guise, I came to realize something. There's an immeasurable thrill in stepping into another skin for one night and feeling the freedom to act unlike yourself. But I would have been just as happy hanging out with Spitfire, Asian Jesus, and him for the rest of the night, discussing our philosophies over soul food and sweet tea, in my boyishly short black hair and school sweatshirt, in my own skin.
October 28, 2014
this is the last song you will hear
Though I shouldn't be procrastinating, there were some things on my mind that I felt the need to jot down for a bit.
Halloween is around the corner. I don't normally dress up (and haven't really made much an effort in years), but in New Orleans it seems Halloween is a big deal. My friends have come up with all sorts of elaborate costume ideas. Mine is a bit more nebulous.
You see, I've always had a fascination with identity. And one of the fantasies I've always had is being able to walk around in a different skin, so to speak. To appear so unrecognizable that you are no longer shackled to your "identity" or what people expect from you. As long as you wear this "separate skin" you can do whatever want, be anything you want.
Sound familiar? Yeah, because it's the whole principle behind Charlotte and the mask of the Ecstasian Phantom.
In an impulsive move, I bought a wig. I made sure I found one that didn't look too cheap but didn't make me feel guilty about the price. Long, curly blonde hair. I'd always wondered how I'd look with blonde hair, but for practical reasons I'd never dyed my hair. I haven't decided what I'll wear with the wig, but all I really care about is being unrecognizable.
The first time I put on that wig, I was sort of appalled. What was this weird hair color doing around my face? It looked awful. But after some adjusting, including adding a cap, the weird thing is that I started getting used to the look. Not only that, the vibe I give off with curly blonde hair is completely different from my normal appearance. Sassy, wild, fun-loving... things NOT typically ascribed to me.
We'll see what happens on Friday.
The other thing I wanted to mull over...
For a good chunk of my life, I wondered why most of my friends were girls. It sounds like a strange question, but given my personality, it seemed a bit odd. The stereotypical adjectives people use to describe dudes -- chill, no drama, cool -- have often been ascribed to me. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I naturally gravitated towards girls, because my self-defense mechanism didn't want to deal with the potential pitfalls of navigating the romantic aspect with boys I had no interest in.
Interestingly enough, my anatomy lab group here turned out to be a majority of boys. There are six of us, four boys and two girls. Funnily enough, all four boys have blonde hair and blue eyes. What surprised me the most -- just how well we all get along together. We behave very much like a pack of siblings with very different personalities. And to support my earlier theory, it probably also helps that three of the four guys have long-distance long-term girlfriends and the fourth guy is gay. I adore my group much in the way that I imagine Blue Sargent loves her Raven Boys. (Though, unlike Blue, I have the added benefit of having another girl in my group who can stand in female solidarity.)
It got me thinking, though, about the core of friendship I'd been trying to sketch out in detail for the past year. Yes, I'm going to ramble about EP again, so close the window if you're done here.
I'd always had some problems characterizing the central male friendships in EP, namely because I didn't have much experience in my own life I could draw from. There's three aspects to the dynamic that I had to consider: (1) how the boys (Rhys, Patrick, Leo) were before Rory ever joined the band; (2) how the dynamic changes once it became three boys + Rory (especially if Rory started dating Rhys); and (3) how the dynamic changes again post-Rory and Charlotte enters the picture, two years later.
I'm not necessarily going to base my characters off of my friends, but in my current writing drought, I've been doing a lot of real-life observation and fishing for material, and I've thought a lot about what kind of personalities can coexist so harmoniously together. The only other time in my life I can think of where a group of friends has gelled together so well was the summer after I graduated from high school, when I was teaching English in Taiwan. To this day, I'm still in touch with most of them.
Anyways, back to my anatomy group. I do have to say... one thing I didn't realize was just how raunchy slang I am oblivious to. You know, the kind of stuff you have to look up on Urban Dictionary to figure out... This is something you pick up on real fast when you hang out with a bunch of boys.
And on a final note... I had another morbid dream a few days ago. I dreamed that I was dying, and as my breaths were growing shallower, I had to pick the last song I would listen to in my life. I picked "Wading" by Jhene Aiko. I still don't know exactly why I picked that song.
Halloween is around the corner. I don't normally dress up (and haven't really made much an effort in years), but in New Orleans it seems Halloween is a big deal. My friends have come up with all sorts of elaborate costume ideas. Mine is a bit more nebulous.
You see, I've always had a fascination with identity. And one of the fantasies I've always had is being able to walk around in a different skin, so to speak. To appear so unrecognizable that you are no longer shackled to your "identity" or what people expect from you. As long as you wear this "separate skin" you can do whatever want, be anything you want.
Sound familiar? Yeah, because it's the whole principle behind Charlotte and the mask of the Ecstasian Phantom.
In an impulsive move, I bought a wig. I made sure I found one that didn't look too cheap but didn't make me feel guilty about the price. Long, curly blonde hair. I'd always wondered how I'd look with blonde hair, but for practical reasons I'd never dyed my hair. I haven't decided what I'll wear with the wig, but all I really care about is being unrecognizable.
The first time I put on that wig, I was sort of appalled. What was this weird hair color doing around my face? It looked awful. But after some adjusting, including adding a cap, the weird thing is that I started getting used to the look. Not only that, the vibe I give off with curly blonde hair is completely different from my normal appearance. Sassy, wild, fun-loving... things NOT typically ascribed to me.
We'll see what happens on Friday.
The other thing I wanted to mull over...
For a good chunk of my life, I wondered why most of my friends were girls. It sounds like a strange question, but given my personality, it seemed a bit odd. The stereotypical adjectives people use to describe dudes -- chill, no drama, cool -- have often been ascribed to me. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I naturally gravitated towards girls, because my self-defense mechanism didn't want to deal with the potential pitfalls of navigating the romantic aspect with boys I had no interest in.
Interestingly enough, my anatomy lab group here turned out to be a majority of boys. There are six of us, four boys and two girls. Funnily enough, all four boys have blonde hair and blue eyes. What surprised me the most -- just how well we all get along together. We behave very much like a pack of siblings with very different personalities. And to support my earlier theory, it probably also helps that three of the four guys have long-distance long-term girlfriends and the fourth guy is gay. I adore my group much in the way that I imagine Blue Sargent loves her Raven Boys. (Though, unlike Blue, I have the added benefit of having another girl in my group who can stand in female solidarity.)
It got me thinking, though, about the core of friendship I'd been trying to sketch out in detail for the past year. Yes, I'm going to ramble about EP again, so close the window if you're done here.
I'd always had some problems characterizing the central male friendships in EP, namely because I didn't have much experience in my own life I could draw from. There's three aspects to the dynamic that I had to consider: (1) how the boys (Rhys, Patrick, Leo) were before Rory ever joined the band; (2) how the dynamic changes once it became three boys + Rory (especially if Rory started dating Rhys); and (3) how the dynamic changes again post-Rory and Charlotte enters the picture, two years later.
I'm not necessarily going to base my characters off of my friends, but in my current writing drought, I've been doing a lot of real-life observation and fishing for material, and I've thought a lot about what kind of personalities can coexist so harmoniously together. The only other time in my life I can think of where a group of friends has gelled together so well was the summer after I graduated from high school, when I was teaching English in Taiwan. To this day, I'm still in touch with most of them.
Anyways, back to my anatomy group. I do have to say... one thing I didn't realize was just how raunchy slang I am oblivious to. You know, the kind of stuff you have to look up on Urban Dictionary to figure out... This is something you pick up on real fast when you hang out with a bunch of boys.
And on a final note... I had another morbid dream a few days ago. I dreamed that I was dying, and as my breaths were growing shallower, I had to pick the last song I would listen to in my life. I picked "Wading" by Jhene Aiko. I still don't know exactly why I picked that song.
October 4, 2014
until we bleed
So we're bound to linger on
We drink the fatal drop
Then love until we bleed
Then fall apart in parts
it took us 3 hours yesterday. 1 hour to cut open her skull. 1 hour to open up her spinal column. 1 hour just to remove the brain from her head, spinal cord swishing from the back like a ponytail.
i've held a heart in my hands. but only literally speaking, that is. we talk of romantic hyperboles and make references to the Aztecs and their ritual sacrifices, but cupped inside my hands, the heart doesn't feel so monumental. a hollowed mass of muscle fibers and vessels, it weighs lighter than a tennis ball.
there are no hackneyed honeyed words, no dramatic tales of historical intrigue that describe the feel of a brain in one's hands. it sinks into your palms, heavy as a locked chest; you feel the weight and heft of its contents but you can only speculate what is hidden inside. who was this person, what kind of life did she live, what memories were mapped into the ridges and crevices. it's the closest i've ever felt to her--this cadaver whose body we've cut open and examined for weeks.
some of these days, i don't know who i am anymore. my last two exam grades were average, and when your whole life has been revolving around exams, it's hard not to place your value on numbers. i feel painfully ordinary, especially when i don't write. i want to stand out but i want to hide. they gossip here like buzzards, circling for a carcass to scavenge. i am the girl with the bow in her short cropped hair, the girl in black boots. i don't want to be known as the girl who kept dancing at the block party with that one guy who was maybe drunk and oh look what do you think is happening here ho ho ho (what a ho).
i've been thinking about the heart a lot these days. well, literally too, but i mean that in the figurative sense. i think about how long it takes for a person to fall and wonder if i've somehow shut down the part of my brain that surrenders itself to the heart's stupidity. i can see the mental pro/con bullet points under the boy's name and wonder why my gut is silent now. i felt nothing when his hands were at my waist and his fingers were laced in mine. i think of all the avoided gazes and prickling blushes and unsent digital love letters from those forsaken teenage years and wonder if, at age 23, i've lost the ability to let myself bleed.
Now we're bound to linger on
We drink the fatal drop
Then love until we bleed
Then fall apart in parts
-- "Until We Bleed" by Kleerup ft. Lykke Li
-- "Until We Bleed" by Kleerup ft. Lykke Li
August 23, 2014
Night of the Hunter
Honest to God, I will break your heart
Tear you to pieces and rip you apart
-- "Night of the Hunter" by 30 Seconds to Mars
When you've kept the walls up for 23 years, you become very discerning about who you let in.
It scares me a bit to wonder how I appear to these people who really know nothing about me. Am I shy, intimidating, aloof, friendly? One girl I went Walmart shopping with asked me if I painted, and when I asked her why, she qualified it by saying I "looked artistic." I suppose she came to that conclusion either by the style of clothes I wear or by the photos on my Facebook profile. Artistic is a quality I will gladly take, but I wonder what else people have gleaned from my exterior appearances.
The girl who has become my exercise buddy here has become a popular target of affections, though she may not realize it yet. She is aware that I heard through the grapevine about a second year med student who kissed her at the block party, but she doesn't know about the classmate who's developed a crush on her. I've already begun collecting other people's secrets, and so far, I've been able to keep everything to myself.
The classmate with the crush doesn't realize I have heard about his affections for that girl. As a result, there's a strange subtext I can't ignore whenever we talk. Compared to the rest of my classmates, I talk to him very often. We joke with each other frequently. But is he using me to get closer to that girl? If that's the case, I can't help but feel a bit peeved.
It's a bit taxing, having to keep track of all of these threads and make sure you don't let things spill over. But we all know I live for drama. Other people's drama. Never mine.
August 12, 2014
Lament
"Everyone cares when it's too late."
The above is a quote I found yesterday on the Tumblr page of someone who killed himself weeks after publishing that post.
Before I go any further, I should probably backtrack and explain how I got there.
Yesterday afternoon, I'd just about snapped. I had sat through four consecutive lectures on spinal cords and radiographic anatomy, and as I drove myself home from school, I was overcome with a severe case of DGAF -- Done Giving a Fuck.
When I got home, I indulged on two snack-sized bags of Flaming Hot Cheetos, which temporarily made me happier but quickly sent me spiraling downward in fatty-guilt. I decided to browse the Internet, and somehow, I ended up on a forum site about Nana. There was no news about Ai Yazawa's health status, and I read some threads with people discussing how much they'd cried when Ren was killed off, or deliberating whether or not Nana and Ren were ideal for each other. It brought back memories of how Ren's death affected me in high school (yes, a fictional character can do that to you), and I played Anna Tsuchiya's "Kuroi Namida" to indulge in my somber mood. While on this forum site, I somehow stumbled across the name "FrankWolf" and looked him up on Google.
That's how I came across that Tumblr. That's how I learned about the young man who was known for his androgynous beauty in cosplay. That's how I read in a Yahoo Answers response that he had endured constant cyberbullying from people who spewed vitriol about his feminine looks and his cosplay hobby, until he could bear it no longer and took his own life.
Later that evening, I was at the gym with a friend, quizzing each other on anatomy while on the elliptical machines. While we were talking, I happened to glance up at the TVs on the wall and was shocked to see the same headline on CNN, Fox News, and ABC News. Robin Williams was found dead, presumably by suicide.
I can't remember how many of Robin Williams' movies I've seen. I recall him most clearly as the Genie in Aladdin and the English teacher in Dead Poets Society (O Captain, my Captain), but I can't claim that he had a significant impact on my life. Still, I was stunned to learned that he had been battling depression. It had never crossed my mind that someone like him could be struggling with depression, but then again, I should have already known that what people show on the outside often doesn't correlate with what's going on inside.
Today, I read an article with anecdotes about people's own battles with addiction and depression. Pieces of those stories reminded me of myself. I don't consider myself clinically depressed, but there are those moments when I lose complete motivation and feel as if I'm staring down into an abyss. That's how I felt yesterday afternoon. I'd already been feeling lonely about my lack of close friendships here, and as I sat in that lecture room and saw a whole year of memorizing body parts ahead of me, it all suddenly became too much for me to handle.
Today, I tried to turn things around. I let myself work on EP for an hour and a half after class before starting my studying. I studied for an hour at a time before giving myself a short break. I found this video during one of those breaks. It gave me some perspective and a much-needed kick in the rear. Whoever's out there, I hope it helps you too.
August 6, 2014
And So It Begins
Today was my second day of class as a medical student. I can't believe it's only been two days. I already feel like I've been here forever.
Firstly, HOLY POMELO SO MUCH STUFF TO LEARN. We're on our first anatomy block, which also includes some embryology, which so far has been a pile of mumbo jumbo to me. On the plus side, however, these lecture classes are reminiscent of that organismal diversity I took at Duke where they literally threw mountains of information at you, and you had to memorize as much as possible. I got an A in that class without much stress, so hopefully the studying tricks I had for that class translate here.
We had our first anatomy lab today, so my hands have been reeking of formaldehyde all afternoon. I'd seen cadavers before today, but not gonna lie, I was still a little worried about how I'd feel about actually cutting the body. It really wasn't that bad. I wish I got to do more, but my lab group only had one scalpel.
On the social front, I'm still sort of flailing around. I've made friends here and there, but I haven't really grouped up or joined a clique yet -- which is probably a good thing in the long-run, but still stress-inducing when you walk in somewhere and don't know where to sit.
Also, I have a confession to make -- some recent conversations with multiple people made me very self-conscious of the fact that my friend-groups in high school and college haven't been very... shall we say, diverse? Unfortunately, that little detail has permeated my brain.
All in all, too early to give really any interesting or juicy updates. I'll probably be too busy to write much anymore. But you know me -- I like being kept busy, so hopefully I'll still be this upbeat a few weeks down the line when I have my first exam. Womp womp.
Firstly, HOLY POMELO SO MUCH STUFF TO LEARN. We're on our first anatomy block, which also includes some embryology, which so far has been a pile of mumbo jumbo to me. On the plus side, however, these lecture classes are reminiscent of that organismal diversity I took at Duke where they literally threw mountains of information at you, and you had to memorize as much as possible. I got an A in that class without much stress, so hopefully the studying tricks I had for that class translate here.
We had our first anatomy lab today, so my hands have been reeking of formaldehyde all afternoon. I'd seen cadavers before today, but not gonna lie, I was still a little worried about how I'd feel about actually cutting the body. It really wasn't that bad. I wish I got to do more, but my lab group only had one scalpel.
On the social front, I'm still sort of flailing around. I've made friends here and there, but I haven't really grouped up or joined a clique yet -- which is probably a good thing in the long-run, but still stress-inducing when you walk in somewhere and don't know where to sit.
Also, I have a confession to make -- some recent conversations with multiple people made me very self-conscious of the fact that my friend-groups in high school and college haven't been very... shall we say, diverse? Unfortunately, that little detail has permeated my brain.
All in all, too early to give really any interesting or juicy updates. I'll probably be too busy to write much anymore. But you know me -- I like being kept busy, so hopefully I'll still be this upbeat a few weeks down the line when I have my first exam. Womp womp.
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