application season

Med school applications are the sort of thing that can take over your life, financially, emotionally, and otherwise. Especially when you're like me: not quite a shoe-in, lingering at the cusp of being competitive. It's hard not to psychoanalyze, to spend time thinking about how to game the system. Even worse, my default mode of late has been to be super hard on myself. How can I not think, as I write my fourteenth essay trying to convince a nameless stranger what an excellent physician I'll make, how much easier this would be if I had just gotten one or two more questions right on the MCAT? But, alas, it's just not a productive train of thought.

Anyways. I am trying to push through them. I sent in my first complete application yesterday to my first choice school. Today I am trying to get five more out the door. By the end of the weekend, I hope to have all 16 or so finished. At about $130 a pop, it's going to be an expensive few days. And it's going to be an even longer eight or so months waiting to hear back.

I may not get in anywhere, given my cusp-like stats, which is a tough reality after all the time, effort, and expense I've endured in the last two years. Not to mention the, uh, lack of a solid backup plan. J. likes to remind me that I'm doing something really, really hard, especially for an English major, and it helps me to put perspective on it. Organic chemistry is hard, and I did it! So these committees can have my 99th percentile verbal score, they can shake their heads at my marginal physical sciences score, and they will take it or leave it. I don't portend to be a physics genius, but I'll be a great doctor, and hopefully they'll see that somewhere in the delgues of paper they get from me in the next few days.

it takes finals

It's not a coincidence that after a two month hiatus, I suddenly find myself compelled to write two days before finals. How could I study simple harmonic motion and conservation of momentum when I have a blog to update? really.

studying physics and chemistry reminds me how much I like reading and writing and researching. qualitative questions, books, the ebb and flow of words and ideas - I'm so into it. I've wondered this semester on pretty much a daily basis whether it makes sense to force myself into E = mc squared submission, to feign interest in pendulums and acid-base reactions. Of course this is just a stepping stone. Of course I knew pre-med pre reqs would be difficult, and they are. What I didn't anticipate is how hard it would be to force myself to develop an academic interest where it doesn't naturally occur. And I had no idea how much I would miss the writing, thinking, questioning, types of academic work I love. This is the first time in a long time I can recall being in school and disliking the learning. Is it worth it?

I have huge decisions to make soon about how to proceed. Namely, do I plug ahead and sign up for a second semester of chemistry and physics? Do I focus my efforts on an NP program? Do I do something else entirely? incredibly stressful questions to pose, difficult to answer, but it's time to resolve.

things that mattered this month

a dinner party for ten, red, white, cod, grilled asparagus, rosemary potatoes, chocolate torte.
dancing till 3, sleeping till 2, breakfasting till 6. forgetting am or pm.
my niece in a fuzzy red feety fleece.
my niece in a striped pink cotton hat.
the festival of lanterns. little kids in bear costumes.
cocktail dresses and three berry martinis and the top of the hub.
fruit and cheese and asian pairs and garlic scrambled egg breakfast.
sub 8 minute miles.
the lucky number 7.
the first time.
baking lasagna and sweet potato burritos in the rain with my sister.
kissing soft new baby hair.
dancing at mantra.
meeting a mom.
apple picking, sleeping in the grass. cider doughnuts and sticky fingers.
the three generations portrait taken. matching red sweaters.
moroccan dinner.
impromptu trip to maine. feeling family.
lattes in the arboretum.
north end movie night.
beers at peoples republic.
lingering in bed.
talking about the world.
seeing ten friends, eating three sushi meals in three days in new york city. cuddling with indy.
coming back to cambridge and feeling home.

wherever you go, there you are

I keep finding myself in conversation about selfhood. Finding strength and happiness in oneself as the most important part of life. We all move through friends and partners and cities and jobs and schools, but of course we move in unavoidable tandem with ourselves.

I've been overwhelmed so many times in the past months by my own strength. It's a strange and awesome thing to see yourself emerge. In the smallest ways - desperately lost on a run in a new place, I take step after step until I find myself home, sweaty and tired and indulgent. A three dimensional kinetic motion problem boiled down to a neat 7 m/s with my pencil, my time, my brute resolve.

this summer a family, a life, a way of orientating myself in the world was turned on its head. I was sick, I was sad, I felt desperate in the belief that I could never pull myself off the floor. I can and I did. I am astounded by my capacity to pick up and pull forward.

this fall I got into that lovely sweet kind of trouble. dangerous and fast moving and uncertain and all heart. how easy it is to fall into something that you can't trust when you have absolute trust in yourself to pull up and out of it. life is full of such sweet potential when your strong self emerges.

how did this happen?

it was all that talking. we started with construction, passed though the vietnam war, turned to children and money and charity. I knew somewhere between vietnam and charity that I was in trouble. and you tell me now: you're trouble. if this is trouble, I need all the trouble I can get.



I love when you say it: you're trouble. It's all life and fun rolled into two final little syllables. tell me again and again. the diction is new to me and to you: incredible crazy amazing, and that utterly charming trouble - suddenly the ordinary discourse of life. it is hard to trust.



we wonder, together, is this a spike out of the ordinary, or is this the way it's supposed to be? you're trying to figure that out. so we joke about newtonian physics and moses and articulation, and treasure hunt $2 pints of ben & jerry's. I'll let the trouble lead where it will. I want a life of incredible crazy amazing, and I know you do too. however it ends up, it is incredible crazy amazing to learn, now, what incredible crazy amazing feels like.

Incredible

It sounds like you're apologizing for initiating a serious conversation. He looked me in the eye. I don't want you to do that again, ever.

It was 2am. I am floored. I don't want to forget that, ever.

patching the nicks

For my birthday last year, the boy I used to live with gave me a framed print from Scharffen Berger. I loved it and I loved him for giving it to me - knowing my penchant for high milkfat chocolates, he sought it out at the Scharffen Berger shop and lugged it downtown to an art store to be framed professionally. It's all print and glass and old chocolate oak frame. It feels the way Real Art should: very heavy and very huge and very beautiful.

Adding to the casualties of moving this summer, the side of the frame got nicked somewhere en route from New York to Boston. My roommate noticed the thin strip of white where there was once brown as we were hanging it in the hall this morning. Appropriate, I thought, that this should be bruised and damaged. Nothing is safe. I decided to ignore it. What's one more nick?

Thirty seconds later my roommate returned, announcing that the problem had been remedied. He had colored the white strip in brown again with a permanent marker. The nick had all but disappeared. I'm learning you feel your way back to making things whole, one little patch at a time.