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| photo sourced from google |
i was spending my evening as per usual, wasting my time on facebook (playing bejeweled blitz) and reading medical student blog entries on medscape.
i've probably had this internal monologue a few times before, and i'm pretty sure that i've come up with the same conclusions time and time again. i was spending my time resenting myself and all the mistakes i've made. (or perceived myself to have made. as i've said on my previous blog, i was stuck in a rut and i (told myself that i) didn't know, and now that i've finished my six weeks at hopkins the blinders have been lifted and i now see that it is not to late to live my life the way i really want to.
all my life, i have been... guided (with only the best intentions) by my family and they have always told me what i (should) want and what i could have, if only i applied myself and stopped being so lazy and actually started being proactive. of course i appreciate that they cared so much for me and that they had really high expectations for me. they instilled the need to constantly be the best and the principle to not settle for anything less than the best.
all this could only go so far.
i grew up knowing that i want to be on top of the pile, and that i could be the one standing on top of the pile, and that every time i didn't get to the top of the pile it was just because i did not try hard enough, there was no other excuse.
i also grew up being uber competitive. in my younger years, i was ruthless. i didn't want to let anybody get in my way, i was ferociously selfish with my knowledge and i would do just about anything to make sure that i was ahead of everybody.
and then as i grew up i started to realise that this wasn't the right way because i didn't like it. i didn't like the constant fear of being overtaken, i didn't like the anxiety that came whenever i thought i felt somebody else gaining on me, i didn't like the sinking feeling of seeing somebody in front of me. i had had enough. i did not have any friends, and i don't think anybody liked me.
so i gave up. i just stopped competing and i just backed out of the competition. sure, i became more likeable, and i seemed to cruise along just fine. but it wasn't long before time got the best of me and i sank back into mediocrity again. and i have been wallowing in this pool of mediocrity ever since. and blogging about the experience.
i have been inspired a few times and i don't know why but these things never seem to stick. i don't know if it's because my passion does not really lie in medicine, or i have yet to discover what i really want to do with the rest of my life, or i subconsciously want to do something else with the finite time i have left, e.g. photography. i don't know if it's because i don't actually find medicine interesting anymore, or because i don't think that this is my life's purpose.
i was surprised when i caught myself thinking that it would be a good idea to go do some voluntary work in developed countries sole of the reason of it being to look good on CV. and then i read another blog entry by another medical student who talked about how his peers constantly help each other and forward each other emails to help understand difficult concepts and how he was honoured to be studying and possibly working with these individuals who were determined to help make each other the best doctors they can be...
... which is exactly what the purpose of studying medicine is. to learn as much as possible about the human body so that we can help cure disease and help to alleviate the pain and suffering of people in need. it takes a special kind of person to be a 'true' doctor. there are so many medical students and doctors who have lost sight of the immensity of the privilege of being able to make a difference in other people's lives. we have the 'power' to 'decide' whether another human lives or dies. no human should be given such power.
i feel humbled and undeserving when i see patients who dress up in their best clothes and who speak so respectfully to doctors and who hang on to their every word, patients who trust their doctors with their lives without a single shadow of doubt, patients who would do literally anything their doctors ask them to do, because 'well, you know best, doctor!' i don't think most of us medical personnel deserve this amount of reverence and respect anymore. i feel like telling them that we are only human too, and you are not below us, nor us above you, we don't deserve to be worshipped like this.
i will also ashamedly admit that i am still very stereotypically 'asian' in the sense that i don't feel comfortable sharing what i know with other people, and sometimes i will go to rather great lengths to keep certain valuable information to myself (i am only saying this because i want to be as honest as i can be on this blog, and because i am fairly sure that nobody reads this). this comes from an inherent fear of 'what if other people know how to dissect this information and gain much more than i did from it?' this also comes from insecurity, and an unwillingness to admit that yes, there will always be many people who will be better at this than me. while i'm at it, i will also admit that i like the fake sense of superiority i 'enjoy' when i am partial to information that is not readily available to anybody else.
this is going to sound like i am putting the blame on something else and like i am not taking responsibility for my own thoughts and actions, but - i think the notion of being in medical school and graduating as a competent and compassionate doctor has been misinterpreted and skewed beyond rescue. the race starts when you start fighting your peers for a spot in the most prestigious medical school within your means, and it continues as you battle it out over your finals, and then rages on as you sit for even more exams to get an internship post in the best hospital in the world, and then residency training in the most competitive specialty, and then finally attendance. and you're not done, after that you start fighting over discovering the cure for cancer, you fight to get the most papers published, you fight to get the most citations. you fight for everything.
so how is this culture which emphasises the mentality of 'every man for himself' a nurturing and supportive one? i do agree that a certain amount of competition is necessary because some amounts of stress bring out the best in everybody and we really do not want bumbling idiots who do not know the heart from the lungs to be operating on your brain, but...
... seriously?
anyway i have digressed.
(you will be happy to know that i have not even breached the subject that i set out originally to talk about, HAHA. you will also find that my point is rather irrelevant to the above, lol)
my point is that i grew up disliking who i was. i was never happy with myself, i was never good enough for myself, whatever i did, i could definitely and without question do better. there was always a prettier poster i could have designed instead of the crap i submitted. there was always a more interesting and funky t-shirt that i could have produced instead of duping people into buying those poorly thought out designs. the convo mag could have looked so much more professional if only i didn't suck so much at photoshop and was more creative and could actually draw for real instead of scamming the world. i could've scored a bleeping A instead of that measly B+. i could have published at least 2 papers by now if only i didn't waste my time being all lazy and passive and enjoying my life more than i am supposed to. i should have never spent my time reading that stupid storybook when i have so many other medical textbooks to read and memorise. this would have been a waaaaaaaaaaay better picture if only i were actually artistic and had some skillz to work with.
i was never satisfied. and it was gnawing away at my soul.
people say i'm emo. i have never really taken that seriously (i mean yeah, i admit that i tend to be 'my glass if half empty and everybody has a full glass and i bet mine's going to leak from a hole in the bottom because i'm sure that i got a defective glass dammit the world hates me' kind of person but)... but i just kinda realised that everything i write has that energy-sucking tinge of grey over it. every word i write is laced with melancholy. every sentence ends with a fullstop that resonates with the whine of my broken heart. every comma a representation of a phrase punctuated with a tear...
i don't like being this way. contrary to popular belief, not every 'emo' person is an attention-seeker. not every 'emo' person writes or thinks the way they do because they like the drama, or because they have nothing better to do with their lives, or because they like sounding all 'melancholy' and 'profound'.
no - surprised as you might be to find - not everybody fits into your neat little labeled boxes of stereotypes.
i feel so... sick and tired and bored when i come across entries like these of my own. i feel like slapping myself silly and asking myself what the fuck possessed me to produce emoshit crap like this and what the fuck was i doing because i sure as hell do not deserve to be given a lot in cyberspace to spew all this bullshit.
that also explains why all my readers have left me.
(ok, that might also partially be because i have moved my blog several times. HAHA.)
see not really the point again.
so the point was that one sentence in randy pausch's last lecture really hit a raw nerve with me and i was truly touched by it because it gave me hope and it told me that i could still get what i want, but only if i wanted it badly enough:
brick walls aren't there to keep us out, they're there to show us how badly we want it.
i won't elaborate why this quote is 'affecting' me so badly because i do not want to talk about my 'brick wall', it's one of those things that has changed my life forever and challenged a lot of my previous perceptions - to put it very harshly and bluntly, let's just say that the master has now become the slave - and this is a piece of humble pie that will forever be sitting at the bottom of my stomach.
trust me when i say that i will literally never be the same again, and i don't know if i can ever truly forgive myself for letting this happen.
but i do believe that it had to happen, and i deserve it - because i believe that this is playing a very big part in shaping the rest of my life and my perspectives on it.
so - as of now. i think that i have decided that i am going to give this a shot. i am going to scale this brick wall because i know that forgiveness and redemption is waiting for me on the other side.
i have to do this. :)
(and i will have fun doing it! 'never underestimate the power and importance of fun' - i can attest to this because i don't want to be the doctor who dreads going to work and who dreads being on call. i want to live and breathe this with all the passion i can muster on a daily basis. if i am going to spend the rest of my life doing this, i want to make it worth my while!)
