pitter patter

when my third year of medical school began i hit the ground running, trying desperately to meet deadlines, read 20-50 pages’ worth of reading assignments and create coherent powerpoint presentations, many times all in one evening. i had to deal with managing multiple group projects as well as the multiple psyches of my classmates. during the first few months i was exhausted, cranky, and quite frankly, fed up with being nice to other people. that’s how stressed out i was. i stopped looking up at the sky at night to look at the stars, i drank instant coffee instead of brewing a fresh pot, and stopped watching films and reading novels that required any intellectual effort on my part. i was, quite honestly, killing myself emotionally (and very effectively at that, i must add).

i was worse than bored. i was tired, fed-up and uninspired. frustrated, i tried to turn to writing. big mistake. i ended up getting even more frustrated. i could’nt write to save my life. there were no emotions to channel. i was neither happy nor sad. i was nowhere. there was no truth within me just dying to burst out, nor was my inner voice (or inner schizophrenic, you decide) urging me to speak about anything. i was simply spending my days frantically rushing to school in the mornings, struggling to deal with my school work and then falling into a dreamless sleep at night. the only respite i had was on weekends, and even then some weekends were better than others. i was doing what i had always wanted to do with my life (study medicine) yet i was somehow hating it at the same time. i continued on this emotional vacuum for several months until it finally dawned upon me.

March is here. it’s finally here, the end of my third year and the start of clerkship. just a little over a month more and i will be handling real patients on a daily basis. i will soon be, in a very small way part of a team that will make a sick person better. how awesome is that? oh, the range of emotion that will bring! i’m so excited at the prospect of being able to feel again. what horror stories about clerkship would i write? maybe clerkship is exactly what i need…

not that i’m unhappy. of course i have no reason to complain, for my life is pretty much great the way it is. no messy family problems to deal with, no backstabbing friends to contend with, neither do i have any relationship woes (for the simple reason that i don’t have one). i have lived my life the way i want to live it, plus or minus a few things like i can’t be a ballerina nor can i travel to europe, but seriously, i’m good. i have figured out exactly what it is that i want to do with my life, i’m on my way to getting there, and more importantly, i’m strong enough to reach my goals. so what if i sometimes feel like i’m a heartless automaton every so often? it’ s all part of the plan…

on a totally unrelated matter, i had just come across an article about the new feminism. it siad something about how feminism could possibly be dead. quite possibly, this could be true, since a lot of girls (and women, for that matter) still choose to be defined by their men. there still exists that breed of females who see their men as the most important thing in their lives, and how they should be kept close at all costs, and give all that their men ask for. they will still drop everything at the command of their man, and they will continue to hang on to his arm practically every minute and every second of the day. i may be the last person on earth to talk about stuff like this because i simply refuse to be one of them, but i’m sure these women have their merits as well. it’s just fascinating how unevolved the male psyche remains to be, and how it can drag down otherwiswe brilliant women. the new feminism must see women soar to new heights in every field of endeavor, but most especially, it must work toward making sure that every woman is made to feel powerful, intelligent, renewed. women are not only wives, girlfriends, sisters or aunts, we are doctors, professors, engineers, entrepreneurs and whatever men can be (and then some).