Category: Uncategorized

Just like we all have stories we all tell ourselves about ourselves, we all have stories we tell ourselves about other people. Often times we use this other-narrative as a substitute for actually getting to know other people, despite being constructed mostly from indirect interaction or secondary accounts. I wouldn’t get a long with this person because. I think this person doesn’t like me because. This person said X one time so they must think a certain way.

It can be hard to be yourself when you think people around you already have preconceived ideas about who you are as a person. You can resent others for judging you without first getting to know you, even if that is all in your head and has no basis in reality.

We can never fully anticipate or control what others will think about us based on what we do or don’t do. So in the end the best course of action is to just be unapologetically ourselves… whatever that means.

We’ve got it backwards. In school we tell students to sit down, turn off their laptops, shut up, and pay attention, all in an effort to get them to learn. We are starting with the assumption that the content or presentation of the lecturer is not engaging enough to maintain the focus of the students. A good lecturer would tell their students to open their computers, to browse distracting websites, because it is their job, and their challenge to capture the attention of those who are present (https://youtu.be/uVGuOTQ4gtI?t=230).

I think we as students also have a sickness too though, through no fault of our own, but because of the academic culture we grew up in. We’ve learned survival techniques to help us skirt by (or excel) using shortcuts and flashcards based on the current academic system and so we are afraid of changing our ways or when teachers alter the format to try new things to be more engaging. So the teachers who do have the courage to try something different are met with resistance and/ or negative feedback, shaming them into just going back to their old ways.

Maybe you could also say, hey we can’t expect all teachers/ lecturers/ instructors to be amazing presenters and be able to engage any and all students, that’s unrealistic. And I agree, but does that mean we should default to the driest form of information transfers possible? In the age of the internet there are so many resources out their to learn about nearly anything you want and frankly universities are behind the times.

Today it’s possible for a student to get through their first year of medical school without opening an official textbook or attending a single lecture covering exam material. That doesn’t make them exceptionally smart or special, it means they are resourceful and that they prefer to learn in a way that doesn’t destroy their soul.

The information is out there, and it is beautifully packaged and delivered in so many different ways, and much of it for free, and the rest of it for pennies compared to the cost of medical school tuition. The same applies for most undergraduate education. Back then, I went to every single lecture (health permitting) because was under the impression that I had to go to lecture or else that was like throwing thousands of dollars down the drain every day. But I had it backwards. This attitude allows for university to get away with the exploitation of students and aspiring professionals. Instead we should be asking, what are these universities providing that is truly worth the exorbitant tuition costs other than a title and a piece of paper that says we scored well enough on a bunch of tests.

When I write pseudo-depressing things here on my blog, I’m not necessarily looking for pity. It’s not a cry for help. It’s simply an expression of feeling.

Growing up, I felt like a lot of the time it was my responsibility to hide my feelings and emotions from people in order to protect them or to spare them of needing to consider me or tend to me needs, and this is something I’ve carried with me throughout my life. This was especially true with my parents, who of course provided for all my physical needs, but it always felt like they had enough on their plate in terms of emotional burden. Would my parents have turned me away if I came to them with emotional needs? Of course not. But that is precisely why I felt like I had to protect them from my feelings, because I didn’t want to be an added stress in their lives. Was/ is this a potentially autotoxic mindset to have? Probably.

So when I write out these thoughts and make it public it’s me trying to be ok with feeling things, trying to understand them, and trying to sit with them. It’s an exercise is committing those feelings to “paper” and being vulnerable in a space that is not exclusively accessible by me. Even if no one reads these, the idea that someone could is what helps alleviate the anxiety that accompanies those feelings and helps me accept that it is ok to feel these things.

Is posting these feelings publicly a good and healthy thing to do? I have no idea. Me even writing this disclaimer(?) is an attempt to keep people from pitying me or worrying about me, but why don’t I want people to pity me? There’s nothing inherently wrong with it. In my head it goes back to the idea of not wanting to be a burden on others or to not appear “weak,” but I guess that’s part of the problem. Vulnerability is not the same as weakness.

4 syllables that every medical student dreads.

It’s just a word

A temporary designation

An opportunity to grow

I tell myself

I think what makes it hurt

Is knowing others can see it.

I was walking around a shopping center food court yesterday (which was weird in it of itself) and I overheard a dad say shit while talking to his kid. This was like an angry shit; he was saying something about getting something covered in non-literal fecal matter. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard something like this in public, but it doesn’t make it any less jarring.

I’m always curious as to what level of emotion could compel and adult human to have this type of outburst directed towards their child. Obviously I’m not a parent and I can only imagine how very stressful and frustrating an obligation it must be, but where is the utility in targeting venom towards your offspring? There is none, its a purely reactionary response. Maybe some might argue that such swearing is a part of the “real world” and sheltering one’s kids from that is an injustice to them. But patience and kindness are also a part of the real world. Kids will be introduced to swearing at some point no matter what, that I agree with, but the argument that therefore parents should be the ones to introduce it to them is flawed. Swearing to your kids doesn’t make them any stronger or resilient growing up, but it does give them a distorted view of what is acceptable behavior towards others.

There are some things that will always make me cry:

• The scene in The Spongebob Squarepants Movie when Spongebob and Patrick are drying up in Shell City
• Any scene where a character is having an honest conversation with their family about feelings of inadequacy or of being a disappointment
• Listening to Never Not by Lauv
• Iron Man’s death in Avenger’s Endgame

There’s probably a few others.

This is a screenshot of my current browser tabs. There are four more browsers windows where the tabs look exactly like this. Whenever I’m working on something, or really doing anything on my computer, I have a tendency to create a new tab any time a thought comes up about whatever. I do this so that I either don’t forget to come back to that idea later on, or so that I can address it immediately and come back to what I was working on before at a later time. Then sometimes, another thought will come up, prompting the opening of another new tab, and another and another and another. And we end up with what you see above (which is honestly pretty tame compared to the other windows).

Because of this, more often then not, nothing actually gets done. I spend a lot of time thinking and prioritizing the all things that I wanna work on, which rapidly drains me of mental energy and motivation. If nothing gets done, the tabs stay up, tomorrow comes, and tabs get added, ad infinitum.

Sometimes I feel like the best course of action is just to close everything at the end of the day and start fresh, introducing a sort of natural selection of ideas and tasks. Tabs that are actually important or pressing will be recreated, while the more flighty, ephemeral ones will be postponed until the thought arises again. I have trouble with this though, because I don’t want to lose those ideas, which creates resistance against closing the windows (some of which I haven’t looked at in days). I need to learn to let go and simplify my process.

Ever since I was little and watched Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off it’s been a life goal to master the one-handed egg crack (surprisingly and disappointingly I can’t find a video of the specific scene with his dad anywhere). Since I’ve been living on my own I would keep telling myself, Ok remember to look up how to do the one-handed egg crack. And I would keep forgetting and would remember immediately after cracking my eggs for my breakfast omelet OR after I already finished eating. I finally remembered to look for tutorials and the videos that are offered on YouTube are a bit underwhelming and inconsistent, but I got the gist.

So I finally remember to give it a go aaaaand it was a disaster. Hand covered in egg whites and yolk. Tiny egg shell fragment scattered throughout the bowl. I basically just crushed the egg in my hand. The more I practiced though the more of the nuance I picked up that you couldn’t fully appreciate in any of the videos. The cracking of the egg is everything. At one point I decided to think less and just do what it looks like the pros do; quick crack, open the egg. And it worked! My success rate still isn’t 100%, but I realized that before I was being far too timid in my egg crack, and a nice swift, crisp crack is need to get an appropriately deep crack that traverses the eggs midsection (though sometimes I get overzealous end completely obliterate the egg against the counter or pan). The rest is just dexterity.

This experience aligns well with a lot of other things I’ve done or tried to do in my life. I have a tendency to overthink things which in some cases, unbeknownst to me, may be the reason for my failure or lack of progress. Having a clear direction and little courage is sometimes all it takes to move forward.

I tried counseling for the first time this past week. My motivation for doing so wasn’t very clear to me; partially out of curiosity, partially out of “might as well,” partially out of “I actually have things I want to talk about, but don’t feel comfortable having a conversation about some of those certain things with people who are in anyway close to me.” During my appointment, while I did feel like it was a judgement-free zone, I found myself still not being completely honest or like I wasn’t representing myself properly; like I was more ok than I actually am. Not to say I’m in any sort of crisis, it’s just that when I was hearing some of the things I was saying as they were coming out of my mouth there were moments where I thought to myself, Why are you even here? But I think that’s the mental health stigma talking.

Based on some of the things I said, the psychologist asked me about ADHD and whether or not I felt like I had it, and seemed to indicate that it could be a factor contributing to my current situation. I’ve always thought it was possible, but I also don’t know how I feel about labelling it with a diagnosis. It’s not that I don’t want to be labelled by a “disease” or “condition,” its that if I do have ADHD, I don’t see it as something to be fixed or cured, at least for me. This is just how I am and how I’ve always been, and as much as it has affected me negatively I think it has also helped me. Though perhaps I’m misguided thinking that that is going to be her approach. Her being expert, I’m sure I’m not her first patient who is like this and who has benefitted from counseling.

I’ve come to realize that if I really want to change some of my habits, I need to design for laziness. I fall into a lot of my worst tendencies (doom scrolling social media, rabbit-holing YouTube, binging video games, etc.) when access to them is readily available. So step 2 is destroying the factory; moving/ deleting apps, organizing spaces, recreating my environment.