Complacency

I’m sitting in a trailer in Penticton. I really should be studying but my motivation is in the toilet. In some senses, I feel like I’ve prematurely given up on this elective. It is difficult to carry on bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when you feel like you’ve just been hit repeatedly over the head with questions that you have no idea how to answer. These questions are simple, but the demoralization that has built up from the first 10 or so and your total failure to answer them just seem to compound, one on top of another, until the feeling of utter inadequacy and total stupidity completely crush any sense of confidence you may have had. This has been the last week and a half and I am angry at myself. So angry. I should be acing this.

Truth be told, I have let myself become too complacent. WWDD? (D not being a deity, but a smart R2). He would read. He would pick himself up I suppose, and get to it. This is what I have been trying to do, but it’s not working. I have established my reputation as stupid, and there’s little else I can do to reverse it. Is this true? It can’t be. There is always room for a second chance. Maybe? I only have 3 days left, and believe it or not pulling all nighters with Miller’s isn’t going to help. I don’t know what I can do anymore but feel burnt out and ride out the rest of the week without really trying that hard. Maybe I should wait for Halifax. Maybe then…

Motivation. Come back to me. Please…

Saskatchewan Drive

Familiar talk is all you can remember. Vague banter sneaking up here and there, stealing your ears and attention. Spilling unbridled from what’s-her-name’s lips or what’s-his-face’s mouth, it has deftly, stealthily drowned any island of recollection you tried to glean from the day’s teachings.

A tide of listless applause adjourns the tired congregation from its day-long engagement in the lecture hall. Home you rush, distractedly, eyes burning red and dry; mind hollow, still ringing with the sound of obscure, multisyllabic terms and awkward, quadruple-German-hyphenated eponyms. The resonance soon dulls, giving way to a long-awaited sigh of relief.

The break, though, is short-lived.

In slithers the rest of the afternoon’s exchanges, a discordant symphony of misplaced soundbites …whispering sarcasms passed behind a hand to only the truest allies; strange anecdotes from the OR; delerious visits to the ER; adrenal cysts, ligaments like batman, mannitol bowel explosions, and jabs at mac users …most of all though, you hear the sharp silence of his guarded glare from across the table.

White noise and dark intent. Maybe he too had heard.

…of how stupidly you let physiology betray judgment two Saturdays previous. Wrists glowing blue, green, and orange, you spent too much time laughing at urology jokes, but wasted none when the drinks were finished. Unruly, thoughtless rebellion.    What were you thinking?

Oh wait, you weren’t.  

 …

And suddenly, all at once, the urge to escape conquers your senses. The only thing left of the day’s meaningless murmurs is an overwhelming desire to erase them, to fly away from this all; leave for a minute and never have to worry about returning.

So you do.

The air outside smells like cold rain, and it’s clearer than you remember from the way home. Each step purposely propels your core along the slushy sidewalk; faster and faster you run, almost out of desperation, trying to break from that sunken, resigned, and obtunded-but-annoyed state of mind. Hazy orange streetlights brighten your trail, punctuating the steady, ivory spotlight that is the 7pm moon, peeking out just over the highrise apartments and tall cedars that line Saskatchewan Drive. This is your escape.

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Untitled

…like the term paper you saved too fast at 3:00am and couldn’t find the next day because Microsoft was being an obnoxious jerk.  Knew it, shoulda bought that Macbook.

augh! Can’t believe this thing is due in less than an hour, and you still need to edit, proofread, do all the citations, and jostle your way through a sea of student numbers to the Biochem Dept. office to hand it in before 5pm.

Less than two years ago, I was still sitting somewhere alone in the stacks at Robarts, thoughts of panic and desperation swirling aimlessly in my head …daydreaming of what med school would be like, how awesome/fun/exciting a med student’s life must be, and of how hard I’d celebrate once I found out I got in. 

IE:

jump around like a maniac; hug complete friends, complete strangers, and innocent bystanders; scream “yes!, Yess!! YUSSSS!!!” over and over and over; smile uncontrolably until my cheeks hurt; call my parents and ask them ‘guess what?!’…wait for the expectant pause, then stun them with the best news of my life; go on to iTunes, find my favourite song, and crank it so loud the whole apartment complex could hear. … People from miles around would know how happy I really was on that special day.

Needless to say, things didn’t actually go down like that. The single best moment of my life (don’t judge, I’ve lived a secluded, nerdy existence most of these 22 years and don’t see that changing anytime soon) hit me sometime in the early afternoon. The timestamp on the official e-mail says 10:55am, but given the 2 hour delay in time zones btw my undergrad institution & ‘I wish I got into for med school’ institution, I would have received it at 12:55pm. That day, though, I’d resolved not to check my e-mail after high noon (local time), having given up a little, to be honest, because I figured they’d have sent the admissions letter earlier if I was really a worthy candidate that deserved the spot at that school (besides, I had a safety school anyway, and they’d  sent me the admission straight at 7:54am).  So… after coming back from a lab meeting (1-2pm), I caved and decided to refresh the inbox one more time, just for the hell of it. ….The only time I’d ever waited this hard for something was for a text message/call/indication of being alive from someone that skipped town after an interesting weekend with a promise to return in 3 weeks .. but that’s another story, ugh.

So I clicked the swirly-arrows button at the top of the browser, and the lab computer, being an obscene, spiteful piece of overworked-underrespected crap, took even longer than usual to load the simple webpage. Waiting, waiting, waiting … Finally, there it was. My future.

“yes!…yeesss!!!….YUSSS!!!!”        That was all I could think. 

Of course, I couldn’t say any of this out loud… the rest of the lab, department, and all my friends/classmates had no idea I even applied. It’s like that God + St. Peter joke about the guy who skips work to go golfing and gets a hole in 1 on a gorgeous sunny day, but can’t brag to anyone because he only got the tee time by skipping work to begin with.

…That was me.   So I went back to Western blotting/IF + tissue cultures for the rest of the day. Anticlimactical to the max.

Eventually, I couldn’t really hold it in anymore and when one grad student brought up, conveniently, that today was “May 15th, aka med acceptance day, aka best or worst moment of a science-undergrad’s life day”, I told her I applied and got ‘a few acceptances’. She must have thought I was insane not to do all those things I’d imagined myself doing upon getting the acceptance, though she was very happy for me and immediately told the PI, who was also very happy for me and equally shocked I wasn’t doing all those ‘jumping around/hugging strangers’ things. She kissed me twice on the cheeks (French thing I’m guessing – the lab was explanted from Pasteur) and told me to call my parents …ASAP! I replied that I’d do it later, a little embarrassed at how everyone was doing the ‘jumping around’ for me.   For the next few minutes, everyone in the lab (grad students, post-docs, and PI) looked like owls …smiley ones, with large shocked eyes; but more than anything I was glad they were so understanding and approving of my application in the first place, whom I’d told very few people about (save the PI who wrote my ref letter).

So that was the rest of the day, people coming around & clapping me on the back; many congrats from the lab…etc. I still had to run the rest of my westerns though, and didn’t leave until 6:00 as usual (haha, no amount of celebration allows you to leave early, apparently).   

Then, on the way home, and picked up a large box of one of those Nestle sundaes (chocolate with peanuts & whipped cream all over the top), 2 ripe avocadoes, and a nice loaf of fresh rye bread …mmmmm. Not really a lobster dinner, but those were my favourite things to eat (and still possibly are), especially from the Rabba on the corner (Valumart had closed by then, as they always do at the expense of those who finish the day late…9-5 is not a good schedule for a grocery store…duh?!).

Once inside, I did crank my music; finally now smiling so hard that my cheeks hurt. And then I did jump around, shout YUSS!!!!!, laugh to myself, imagine the rest of my future…in med school!!!, all the exciting things I’d get to do/learn/feel, and finally, I called my parents and did the whole “guess what” thing…though dad’s only response was “huh?!…what?” before I burst out with the news. They were all excited but simply, calmly, in that quiet way I’d known since 4th grade, said back to me “congratulations, L, we’re very proud of you.” That was it… that was all…but I knew they were just as happy, if not more than I had been when I first hit the refresh button.

And the rest of the evening was fantastic…just me, my happiness + Nestle with avocadoes on rye, and old episodes of Criminal Minds off a sketchy chinese-run uploads site (unafraid of violating all the copyrights youtube so strictly enforces). That was my celebration…and I really wouldn’t (couldn’t)* have had it any other way.

So now all of a sudden I am here.  Studying for tomorrow’s final – obgyn + urology…which I should get back to.  

*As said before, nobody even knew I applied, if I broke the news to them, they would have been “what?!?!?”, owls, but probably not so smiley like the lab… still, I did tell my friends a week later and at that point, by the powers of wistful eloquence and e-mail (hooray for no personal contact when breaking news like this!) they understood and were just as supportive/happy/proud.