The Change I Could Be

Our behavioral science professor briefly talked about anxiety today. We only just finished epidemiology and biostatistics (not that bad if you have a real professor for it), but he went into the topic just a little bit. He showed a chart and said that anxiety is very good for the exam. Too little and you are too confident, but just enough and you study hard. Then he mentioned the one where every day when you wake up, you dread preparing for the exam because the anxiety has gotten so bad. And that's the category I was in.

And seeing it plotted out a little kinda shook me for a moment. I've genuinely been in a terrible place. I haven't been able to bring myself to study after class (every other student does). I waste time getting frustrated at the slow internet at my apartment (really though) and then maybe watch a little of a sketchy pharm video.

So as I jogged today, I remembered that I am not good enough. I never have been. No matter how far I've come, I don't pretend that any of it is due to my own inborn talents and abilities. No skill set has really come easily, except perhaps entertaining. But (and this is the point I tend to miss) that does not mean that I am automatically aiming for failure. Just because success isn't possible doesn't mean that I cannot be successful, unless I'm working on my own. I have to do better than my best, because that is what is required. I need to find that line, that point of limitation in what I am capable or willing to do, and then take a big step past it, and assess from there how much further I can push.

Because that guy in Uganda back in 2012 who didn't have proper healthcare despite being in a hospital, or any others that I encountered there, they may be dead or dying by now. But if I could be there, if I could throw a sphere of experience and influence and professional education into that mix, those people could live. I could be that change. And I must, because there are so very few who are determined to be such.

So as I enter into the more difficult portions of this study program, it is time to change my habits. Study in coffee shops for internet if need be. Caffeine rather than naps. Because despite the resignation that tomorrow's ceremony will drive in, I need to continue on. Because when those nukes hit, I want to be prepared to be an asset in this post-apocalyptic wasteland.

2016 Year End Reflections Pt 3

My mom getting divorced, my dad getting remarried, and my sister's boyfriend taking his own life, they all hit close to home. Not emotionally, really, but geographically, and so they occupied my world.

At the same time, the election happened. Suddenly, all of my years of education and attempts at understanding cultures to which I did not belong were working against me. After all, this was not a win for intellectuals. Thinkers lost. That knowledge combined with the uphill battle of trying to study at home made me despondent, resigned. Education was only working against me in this world of deliberate ignorance and prejudice.

So I became resigned to the world and myself. And that is more or less where I continue to find myself. This is, of course, an issue now, because I began a study program yesterday that is meant to kick start me back to being a good student. But the drive to work hard and study is simply not present, and it feels as though any reserves I might try to drudge up now were already spent. And never recovered.

I hope that I can study well. And I hope that I can socialize on my one day off per week. But this world continues to be cruel and I do not feel up to the challenge.

2016 Year End Reflections Pt 2

There was the trip to Ireland. The place in which I found myself every few years, which I'd considered to be a sort of second home. It was the only place outside America I thought I could ever live. But I did  not visit Belfast, the focal point of those imaginings, and perhaps that was the mistake. Much of the trip was tourism-oriented. Of course, there is no wonder lost when seeing the Cliffs of Moher, even when you have seen them before. And Guinness tastes just as rich after the twentieth pint. Yet because I had money and a friend, I journaled little and spent as little time reflecting upon my life and transition from life on the island, even though this should have been the very purpose of the trip for me.

My mother's love for the simple and dismissal of the complex in Europe strongly carried with it the same derision for intellectualism that I had already discovered in the States, particularly in my own Lone Star State. Coming from medical school, this nagged at me, and would continue to nag at me for the months to come. So I spent my time in Ireland and Scotland managing my mother and her friend so that they would have no worries. And that trip ended.

This was near the end of September, so I was planning to start focusing well on school. Unfortunately, this is near when the presidential debates began. The nagging at home became declarations. Vague comments resembling racism or bigotry began to solidify as such. My dislike for such became seen as a side effect of living on an island with Muslims. I had effectively been brainwashed. Those who had scoffed at restriction of freedom of religion before now proclaimed it as they sided with Trump, usually not bothering with the only possible (though unfounded) excuse that Islam is not a real religion.

I tried to go to church again, to find and center myself. But I could hear the support for Trump in the amens. I still do not know what to do regarding that. In any case, I became more anxious from attending church rather than feeling relieved or uplifted by community, so I stopped attending.

2016 Year End Reflections Pt 1

New Year. In 2015, I went through what was pretty easily the most difficult year of my life (2014 might have been a contender before that), so it only makes sense that 2016 would try to top it. It's becoming more and more difficult to say that the arduous nature of these experiences should always be crafting me into something better.

Backpacking through Europe was difficult but purposeful; despite this, there remained an uneasy change in the way I thought about God as a result. My first year of medical school brought me through a rewiring of my brain, then failure with the depression that followed (along with the prospect of more island imprisonment) and less comradery with classmates because those classmates changed.

I was surrounded by people with different customs, ideas, morals, and behaviors. People who were willing to talk about things that I'd never thought it appropriate to talk about, yet with that came an openness that made me more comfortable with peoples and groups which I hadn't previously been comfortable.

So I adapted, I changed, I renewed, and though my relationship with God surely faltered due to lack of discipline in prayer and a deficit in Christian community, I was consistent in studying the Bible and watching a weekly sermon.

And then I made it back home.

Home. Texas. The place that my medical psychology professor had mocked for the beliefs of its populace. And he was quite justified in doing so. Here is a place where, for the most part, science and faith are forced to meet in pitched battle rather than in a friendly wrestling bout. Here is where a thing is true until proven false, rather than the truth verified by facts. Conspiracy theories predominate while accepted science is ridiculed. Believe differently? Well, you are both a fool and a man lacking in faith.

And the election, of course...