From now on, this blog will be focused on my journey as a premed student. You can label it a "premed blog" but this won't be any ordinary premed blog since it will be a very personal experience for me. I will be writing about lots of things away from premed - such as my every day life as a normal collage student. I never understood people who puts labels on their blogs such as "premed blog" or "a dancer's blog". You'd think they live such different lives from other people. Well, yea, we all have different life experiences, but that doesn't make you any more special than the average person. There are many things that everyone experiences on a daily basis, and a blog is a blog. I don't think I can limit my blog to just one thing because that one thing in my life would link to everything else in my life - love, family, friendships - I don't think I could leave any of that out.

    Anyways, my predestined roommate and I just laid eyes on a nice studio apartment in the city. And it looks perfect so far, so we're going to its open house tomorrow afternoon. I can't wait to see it. I hope it doesn't suck. >.< It's a nice price and not to mention, great location - on Lexington avenue. I'll be back tomorrow with pictures. Right now, I need sleep.

“Life is full of misfortunes. There are moments of heartbreaking. Friendships and families crumble. Hopes and dreams fall apart. But life, life is not those things. Life is so much better. I don’t think we can really ever say that life is pointless until we reach the end. Right now - this breaking, this stumbling… it’s just a step. Life is so much bigger. It’s worth it.”

-Unknown
Thank you to whoever said this.

    I got a C+ in Physics. Ahhhhhhhhh this really sucks! T_____________T

    I've been told and thought many times that premed isn't all about the math and sciences. When you are actually working in the field, it is a totally different experience. Meaning, you don't use actual mathematical science to cure someone. That'll be just downright silly. Imagine yourself in the ER doing some bypass surgery - would you really stop yourself midway and ask, 'what is the diameter between his heart and lung?' I hope not. A health professional needs to think like a critical scientist, but most importantly, the person must have heart. He or she must know how to care for their patient. I understand this perfectly. And I also understand that a health professional does need to do well in the sciences to show that he or she can critically think through problems. But I just don't believe this is a clear-cut or fair way to do things. On my part, I'm good with concepts, but horrible with the math. And what can I do about it if my professor decides to test us on math over concepts? This happens 99% of the time. And do medical schools count the fact that most students cheat through college? When I think this through, it feels so unfair, so cruel, and way too demanding. Especially for honest students. And I wonder to myself, "how many doctors out there actually graduated from college and got into medical school honestly?"

    I don't want to ever give up on premed or anything like that, but these grades are honestly getting to me. I know, I know medical schools mostly look at MCAT scores, but dude, there is a LIMIT to how bad your GPA can get. On top of that, they don't mostly base it on your overall GPA, they base it on your math and science GPA. In other words, even if you have a 3.7 overall GPA, it doesn't mean shit when they have to compare you to another student with a 3.5 or 3.7 math and science GPA. As well as that, if I am doing bad in my sciences and math studies right now, imagine how badly I'd do on the MCAT. No matter how hard or how much I think about a way to get through this, it just doesn't add up. I still end up with a dead end. I think this is the worst feeling ever: Knowing that you are screwed and not being able to do anything about it. Sometimes, I feel like it would be much easier for me if I could just learn to let go and move on - to just give up. No, this isn't called running away, it's called knowing what you really want to do and making another path in life. And the worst part is that these grades will never go away - they will never change. It's like perfectly engraved there for the rest of my life. I think that's the worst part about college GPA, the fact that none of these letters will ever go away - unless I wait a few years until they expire. And on top of that, everything is about grades and GPA these days. You can't go anywhere without anyone stopping you midway to ask about your GPA.

    It gets me so angry that this is the only thing that people look for today. Seriously, there's something wrong with this world when someone asks you for your GPA and you start to feel bad, embarrassed, or stupid even, to tell someone your GPA. I mean, come on! It's just a number! What is there to be scared of? I think my friend, Daniel, put it the best way. I was asking him for an opinion on this guy I liked, and he goes, "What's his GPA?" I reply back saying, "Why the hell does that matter?" And then he egotistically responds with, "Well, you don't want to be dating someone retarded right?" I don't know what in his mind was a non-retarded GPA, but I knew my GPA was definitely not within his radar. I felt humiliated and stupid. Of course, he didn't know my GPA so I couldn't say anything mean back to him. Either way, I didn't want to start anything. So I took it, and 'loled'. Take note that this happened back when I had this whole drama with my ex-boyfriend. I currently like Daniel a lot, and every once in awhile I think back to what he has said and it makes me feel really bad. But this will be whole entry for another time.

*Takes a deep breath*
Okay, I feel much, much better. =D

EDIT: Before I leave, I need to clear something up. This entry is a rant. I have lost a bit of hope but,
I AM NOT GIVING UP ON PREMED!

Wow, how long has it been since I last blogged?
 

Well, things have been going pretty good. Grades haven't really gotten better, but what can I do about it? I got a C+ in Calculus. -.- I felt like I was going to cry, but I didn't. I'll just have to move forward. I've been feeling a lot happier these past few days. Probably because the semester just ended and I'm relaxing right now! However, tomorrow is the start of my summer classes, so stress is going to come back and hit me! I'll be living and breathing physics. Yay. I recently finished reading "Running with Scissors" by Augusten Burroughs and in the end of book he makes a nice conclusion. When bad things happen, it's like when you go to a grocery store and you can only pick out one out of two bad items, and then you throw it in to the cart anyways and shrug, and say there's nothing you can do about that. I don't think my paraphrase makes much sense, but when I find the quote again, I'll be sure to type it here. It was really inspirational to me and it really helps to summarize that "moving on" feeling I'm experiencing right now.

A lot of shit has gone down since I last blogged. And I'll summarize it for a bit. I manged to get an A in chemistry! I'm totally psyched about it. And this was caused by pulling an all-nighter at the college library. Yes, I slept overnight at my college library - you heard right. I didn't do it alone of course, one of my friends kindly joined in even though he was studying a totally different subject - computer science. And I also met some really cool people. But everyone else was studying organic chemistry or physics and so I tried to hide the fact I was doing this for general chemistry, haha. Fortunately, I didn't waste my all-nighter and I got a good score on my final! I couldn't have done it without this struggle. It wasn't only because of this all-nighter though. I worked hard the whole semester and I managed to get good grades for all my previous tests as well. And I love my professor, he's such a great teacher - I was able to understand all his lectures. He also made the corniest jokes ever:

"A neutron walks into a bar and asks for a beer. The bartender responds, "Here you go, you can have it for no charge."

Get it? No charge? Hahahaha....
I'm going to miss him. This proves that professors do make a difference.
As for my other grades, my other professors haven't posted them yet, but I doubt they'll be any good so I'm still dreading them. It's funny how the dread usually ends when you finally receive the truth.

Following finals, my friend, Karen and I decided to pull a huge surprise party for our friend, Francesk.  Reasons being that he has been such a major help - we could not thank him enough. We invited thirteen other people and feared that most of them won't come, but we were gratefully wrong. Eleven came out of thirteen, and one of those people weren't even invited by us, which made it an even bigger surprise. So we lied about the date of his party to him and then we told his girlfriend to act as a buffer and bring him to the party site - outback steakhouse - so we could surprise him. All this time he thought he was just going on a simple date with her. And we definitely did surprise him. On top of that, we all chipped in to get him an ipod nano. After the party he told Karen that he almost cried because he was so surprised and happy haha. I was absolutely delighted to hear that. =) We were so scared everything was going to fall apart, but everything went perfectly.

I've recently gone movie watching a lot. Probably because there are a huge amount of theatres available in the city. I watched Baby Mama, Ironman, Indiana Jones 4, and The Strangers. They were all very good, but I would recommend Ironman out of all of them. It was excellent - even if you aren't a comicbook fan.

Working at blockbuster has been a huge bore, and it's so dirty and grimy there as well. One of my employees managed to sum it up in the best way:

Me: These DVDs are nasty. *Goes to use some Purell*
Employee: Yea, man, you know some people probably masturbate to these things.

He's also been complaining how there's probably some unique form of bacteria roaming around our workplace. I don't blame him. It's so nasty there. Because of this, I plan to quit very soon. I liked how it was right by my house - I was able to walk there - but I can't stand germs. The employees I got to work with made things a lot more fun though. Luckily, one of my aunts came in to save me! She's looking for an intern at $10/hour, so I'm hoping I can get this job. In addition, her workplace is in the city, so it'll be easier for me when I move out.

Also, I plan to get an apartment somewhere in or close to Manhattan.  I mean, I honestly don't mind commuting, but I want to try living on my own. I feel like I've always been relying on my parents and I want to try and live alone...Well not really, I do plan to have two other roommates. They have already agreed with me and we plan to go apartment hunting on one of these hot summer days. I'm so excited about this. Honestly, I'd even settle for a place in Queens somewhere - Forest Hills or Roosevelt.

As far as my love life goes, I've been concentrating very hard on my studies, so I have put that aside for now.
Alright, I should stop writing right now. I have classes tomorrow!

It scares me.

Okay, so enough with the poetic nonsense. Time to talk about what's really going on.

I broke up with my boyfriend and it definitely wasn't his fault that this happened. This was my own decision. I felt like I just needed to be left alone again. From this time on, I'm going to focus 100% on my studies. I can't let anyone or myself down anymore. I believe I can do it - If other people can get into medical school, so can I. I'm not changing my mind anymore. This is the only goal I have right now. No more confusion and indecisiveness. It's just like what Francesk told me once: "Just look through the Chemistry textbook. What do you think? Who wrote this book for us? Humans. Like us. If they can bullshit 1000+ pages of this crap, so can we." I responded in laughter at first, but awhile later I thought back and said, "Hey, he's right."

I've been really naive - still am - and I want to apologize to everyone I've hurt. But I haven't apologized. I feel like if I apologized now, it would seem empty and meaningless. People always tell me it's useless to apologize after the fact - you need to take action against what you have done wrong. So instead of apologizing, I'm going to walk forward and act on improving myself.

I have a job and I'm working at Blockbuster right now. It's a bit boring at times, but I like it a lot. It's a break from all the schoolwork. And the people there are very kind to me. It's interesting to meet other people outside of my "network." I met a strong girl who recently found herself to be pregnant and she told me her boyfriend was angry. He didn't want the baby. Even so, she still smiled sweetly to me and worked kindly at the cashier with the customers. You might say it was her own fault - but her story moved me. The one thing I didn't like about her was how she smoked so much. I warned her that it was going to be bad for the baby - but she just shrugged her shoulders and went out the door. Next time I see her doing that, I should warn her about the birth defects. She's the type of person who only thinks on the present and doesn't think of the future. She would think about doing her best with what is going on now, but she wouldn't think about what would happen after that. Even if she is sad about her boyfriend not wanting the baby, it will be worse after she has it and finds out it has asthma from her smoking. I'm the total opposite. I always think about the future but I never do enough to prepare for it. It's like I don't mind the present as much. It's pretty ironic if you tell me.

I also signed up for volunteering at the Neuroscience Department in the New York Presbyterian Hospital. I already got my first interview and I'm going in for my second one next week. Then I'm going to have a medical screening with two blood tests, and orientation. I should be starting after that. I'm really happy about this since I've always wanted to volunteer at a hospital. =D The only problem is: I HATE blood tests. I have this fear of needles. It's not a phobia or anything, but I just don't like it. The last time I had it must've been years ago - and I cried endlessly. It's sad, I know but I guess everyone has their own fear of something. Fortunately, a kind friend of mine - Enrique - volunteered to come along and Daniel told me he'd give me a pet rock to carry with me, hehe. So I'm gonna be a brave girl and take it like a normal person!

I got work around 5 PM today, so I'm gonna jet now. <3
A jigsaw falling into place.
A jigsaw falling into place.
Jigsaws falling into places, places.

No one, No one, No one can get in the way of what I feelin'.
Oh yea.

I read this really thought-provoking article tonight and I felt like I just had to share it:

    "When I taught English, my students and I read Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672). A Puritan and a mother, she was also America's first published poet. Her syntax and use of unfamiliar allusions sound old-fashioned to our modern ears, and her reliance on Christian faith can prove difficult for secular readers to understand. But I loved teaching Bradstreet. Her poems always proved to be more than they appeared.

    In "Before the Birth of One of Her Children," Bradstreet addresses her husband about an upcoming birth: "How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend/How soon't may be thy lot to lose thy friend" (7-8).1 She counsels him that if she dies in childbirth, he should marry again, but "if thou love thyself, or loved’st me, . . . protect [our children] from step dame's injury" (23-24).

    At first reading, this fear of death-by-childbirth seems overwrought, but read in context of 17th-century realities, Bradstreet's entreaty to her husband is moving: the notion that pregnancy does not also foreshadow death is a 20th-century idea, and even now a luxury only the developed world can afford. Maternal and infant mortality in Bradstreet's day was high, and enough to make delivery of even the most wanted baby an occasion filled with dread. In this context, Bradstreet's pleas to her husband are not melodramatic: they are a frank assessment of what the couple faced when pregnancy represented not just beginning a new life, but the possibility of death.

    Once my students understood this connection between pregnancy and death, we unpacked other particulars of Bradstreet's life. We learned that because she had eight children—and a heart weakened by rheumatic fever as a child—she faced death eight times. We calculated that eight births meant eight pregnancies and that eight pregnancies meant she spent 72 months, or six years, of her life pregnant. Eight births also correlates with nursing eight babies, and in a time when women breastfed for about 18 months or until the birth of their next infant, this means Bradstreet spent 154 months or almost 13 years of her life lactating. Moreover, these numbers only reflect babies she carried to term. Bradstreet likely lost additional pregnancies to miscarriage. But even if we only count births we know about, these numbers mean that America's first published poet composed while dedicating 19 years of her life—some concurrently—to work surrounding childbearing.
 
    Having sorted through these details, my students and I read Bradstreet again, and even to our 20th-century ears, she made more sense. As poet and critic Adrienne Rich argues, "to have written . . . the first good poems in America, while rearing eight children, frequently lying sick, keeping house on the edge of the wilderness, was to have managed a poet's range and extension within confines as severe as any American poet has confronted."1 No kidding.
I have been thinking about Bradstreet a lot lately, not because I am a mother or a Puritan, but because she understands something about the commingling of birth and death, and because doing the mathematics of her life is helping me make sense of my own. Two and a half weeks ago, or about 18 days ago, I finished a residency in emergency medicine and started a new life as an ED doctor. This reality is as complicated for me as the fact that Bradstreet bore eight children. As I have concluded the process that turned me into a physician, I am struggling to comprehend the math of my own life, and to understand what I have lost—and gained—along the way.
When I finished residency on 30 June 2007, I had been working at becoming a physician for nine years. This includes two years of pre-med, four of medical school, and three of residency. Medical training has taken up my 30s and consumed almost a decade.
 
    In addition to time spent, there have been other costs. The most obvious of these are financial. I emptied my savings of $35 000 to pay for pre-med, and then the real spending began: I owe lenders about $150 000 in student loan debt. After consolidating my loans at an interest rate of 4.375%, I will owe $813.40 a month for the next 30 years, or until I am 71 years old. My loan money went for tuition but also bought groceries and paid rent. What loans did not cover went on credit cards, leaving me with balances too embarrassing to reveal in print.
Other losses hurt more than money. Deciding to go to medical school meant leaving a beloved teaching job at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts, so I could return to college and accumulate prerequisites. It also meant leaving friends. On the Saturday morning I moved, neighbors gathered at my Cambridge apartment and helped me pack. My mother and I then drove to my office, where I loaded books into a moving van and began the process of trading one life and career for another.
 
    But the process of accumulating losses had just begun, and over time, the list of important and mundane things lost grew longer. I missed weddings, Christmases, and too many dinner parties to count. Church services, time to exercise or to hear a favorite band play, all went by the wayside in the name of medicine. So did weekends, meals eaten with a fork, all my size eight—and then size ten—clothes, and sleep. Yes, lots of sleep. By my conservative reckoning, I have lost more than 200 nights of sleep in the last nine years, a number that includes only time spent in the hospital taking care of patients, not all-nighters pulled studying for exams. Of these 200 sleepless nights, more than 50 were spent on 30-hour in-hospital shifts, where going to work on Monday meant not going home and not going to sleep until Tuesday afternoon—only to do it over again every fourth day until the end of the month. Nights away from home also represent time lost for family and personal relationships.
 
    Not surprisingly, when I think too long about these losses, I feel bitter and self-pitying—feelings that make me wonder if the last nine years were a mistake. This is when I start doing math in the other direction, to remind myself there are also things I have gained. I have gotten a medical education, I say, and start counting what that means: at 15 to 25 patients per emergency department shift, I have seen about 7500 patients. This represents 7500 opportunities to learn from another human being, and to try to provide some help. These numbers also represent opportunities to do procedures. According to my procedure log, I have placed 24 chest tubes, reduced 13 dislocated shoulders, performed 25 spinal taps, and intubated 109 patients. I have performed 45 trauma and more than 139 medical resuscitations. This, in turn, has given me the sad responsibility of telling two families a month that someone they love just died—and giving at least as many people the news that a family member has been resuscitated and is now in ICU. At the same time, I have looked at more sore throats, done more vaginal examinations, and sutured more limbs than I can count.
I recognize that these numbers mean I have gotten the "medical education" I call to mind in dark moments, so I add the numbers up regularly to remind myself it is a blessing that for the rest of my life I get to do a job that I love and be paid well enough to make a living. But because I have experienced loss, when doing this math, I still wonder if I come out ahead. I say this not because I am ungrateful for my education, but because I did not go to medical school to have a good income, or even to become a doctor with a capital D. Whatever money or prestige comes with my job means little to me: however sexy placing a chest tube or intubating someone looks on television, these skills alone do not make up for missing my nieces' birthday parties and having to calendar, months ahead, chances to make love with my husband.

    These realities lead me to look for other ways to make sense of the last nine years, and answers come in a list of experiences that are less quantifiable, but still real. Often they have to do with patients: the Native American woman who called the spirit of her dead daughter into the ED to heal an ailing loved one (and ended up healing me); the drunk trauma patient who at the top of his lungs forbade us to cut off his pants because "I’ve got a really small penis and don't want anyone to know"; and the parents of a dead baby we had not been able to resuscitate who allowed me to cradle their infant daughter while we all grieved.
 
    Other gains have nothing to do with medicine but are equally important. When I started medical school, I thought there was light and dark, day and night. I knew something about the way shadows fell in the evening and how that was different from the way light looked at dawn, but I had not yet had enough sleepless nights, or worked enough days in a row without seeing the sun, to know that indoor, fluorescent light looks different in the day than at night and that a peek at outside, ambient light on even the cloudiest February day can be something beautiful to behold. I did not know the difference between not sleeping at all and getting 20 minutes of sleep or that what I called "insomnia" prior to medical school meant I had not slept well—not that I actually had not slept at all. I did not know how precious an afternoon off could be after a night on-call or how dear it could feel to climb into bed at the end of a shift with a loved one—or even a dog.
 
    To be honest, until medical school, I did not know what life and death and suffering really meant. Until I paid my $150 000, I had not known that dead bodies are genuinely cold or that the fluids that come from living bodies—blood, vomit, feces, urine—are always warm. I had not yet had the humbling experience of telling someone that a family member had just died or felt the impotence of knowing there was nothing I could do to help the patient or spare the family its grief. In short, until I was a good long way into all that debt and sleep deprivation, I had not understood very well what it meant to be human. Maybe not even what it meant to be alive.
 
    Anne Bradstreet opens "Before the Birth of One of Her Children" with these lines:
 All things within this fading world hath end,
 Adversity doth still our joys attend;
 No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet,
 But with death's parting blow is sure to meet.
 The sentence past is most irrevocable,
 A common thing, yet oh, inevitable.
 
    As I look at the last nine years and ponder the "inevitably" of death and the "irrevocab[ility]" of "adversity" attending "joys," I realize I have been miscalculating the math of Bradstreet's life—and my own. Thousands of dollars poorer and many sleepless nights more tired, I wonder if the important calculation in Bradstreet's life is not how she managed to write "the first good poems in America" while "keeping house on the edge of the wilderness," but how carrying, bearing, and nursing eight children enabled her to do so. Rather than being a heroic figure scratching out time from child-rearing activities to write, I am coming to believe that Bradstreet simply lived. I also suspect that the gains and losses of her life—"confines as severe as any American poet has confronted"—are the very things that generated her "range and extension" and left us with poetry still good enough to be read today.
 
    When I think about Bradstreet now, I try to stop counting the months she spent lactating and hours she spent delivering babies and look at the big picture. I see her at a hearth with a ladle bent into a pot and her foot rocking a baby in a cradle. She may be pregnant or maybe not, but there is always a pen, nearby. For this Anne Bradstreet, to live was not to account but simply to experience and, when she had time, to set it down. This woman understood something in 17th-century America that I am just beginning to comprehend today: that life is not a zero-sum game. A gain in one column does not necessitate a loss in another, and winning does not correlate with being debt-free or having the fewest losses in the final tally at the end of life. Rather, all losses are gains. All gains have corresponding losses. This is not harsh or bleak or cruel. This is being human. This is life. Sometimes you are talented enough to write it down.
 
And sometimes you are lucky enough to read what a wiser writer had to say about it 329 years ago."

    I felt so much compassion when I read this essay - especially the last paragraph. It started off so depressing, it made me want to give up on medical school but in the end I agreed with her. I'm not trying to become a doctor for money or fame either. I want to do it just because I want to do it. This is how I want to live. This is living my life. And just like Bradstreet, she wrote not because she wanted to record her life, but to "simply experience." I also agree with her that losses are gains. and gains are losses. You learn a lot from losing things - you learn the pain and I believe that keeps you from living a life of arrogance. Just like what she said before, she never realized the reality of death until she finally had to actually deal with this. When you go through so many years of schooling it desensitizes you like crazy and this is why I feel a lot of respect for this ER doctor.

I hope some of you enjoyed this article as much as I did.