The year began with me getting over a cold while attending the first nonalcoholic New Years party that I had attended in years. It was fun and I met new/old humans from a homeschooled past. Days later, I began a fairly intensive seven-week study program. During the first weekend of the program, my father remarried at a destination wedding in Cancun. With one sister preoccupied with studies and the other locked up for the week due to suicide threats, it was left to myself and my brothers to introduce the new family to karaoke at our all-inclusive but remarkably child-friendly hotel. Wine and beer were on tap and such privileges were heavily abused, even though I was already dehydrated. Thus did I begin to learn one of the notable practical lessons of the year, namely that I am a far worse singer when dehydrated. Fortunately, my song selections only occasionally require the ability to reach or maintain a difficult pitch.
Following the wedding, I flew back to my study program. Having spent so much time in isolation on the island, and then being the only emphatically left-leaning human at home, it was incredibly relieving to spend time with others who held science and basic levels of humanity to a real degree of esteem. As the study program went on, I made it a habit to bring up some political or ethical discussions at lunch time, always taking the side of minorities and ridiculing the reign of the white man. These discussions always had adequate fodder, because President Donald J. Trump was of course sworn in during the first month of the study program. We were studying medical psychology that week. According to my psychology professor on the island, professors in the past had had to hire actors to portray narcissists, but since Trump had come into the public eye, they just used footage of him.
By the end of the program, I was seen as a leader in the study group (or so I was told), which surprised me, primarily because there was no need for a leader. But it was still pleasant to hear. I suppose that this came from both the lunch discussions, as well as from my taking the initiative to have an open invitation to karaoke nearby every week. As it happens, this is where I met a couple friends from the area who were also studying science things. They are the reason why I had relief on weekends while studying for this most recent exam, always up for karaoke on a Friday night.
Following the program, I ventured to Arkansas and stayed with my friend who was to graduate from medical school in the next couple months. I was only planning to stay for a weekend, but ended up staying for a full week when I learned that there was a party for the medical students coming up. I of course wished to network, by which I mean drink and play video games with fellow medical humans.
Following this, I went back to my family's lake house, where I spent weeks alone studying for what I would soon find out was my last chance to pass my medical school's qualifying exam. It is hard to avoid being bitter about it, considering how much they are setting the students up for failure. But I have likely written out my complaints about that on here before, so suffice it to say that in a state of fed up exhaustion, I managed to fail that exam by a just a few points. We found out about the failure three days after it happened. It took seven more days for them to tell us that to continue with this medical school, we would have to fly back to the island the following week and take a remedial class. So I transferred schools to one on the neighbor island, which accepted my score as passing and allowed me to study for the Step 1 exam, which is the real 8-hour exam that I had been trying to take for nearly a year at this point.
Following the successful transfer to that school, I realized once again that I could not study at home. Anxiety over politics, no quiet study space, and a general unsettled feeling led me to pack up my car and drive to Arkansas once again. I arrived just in time for a friend's graduation party, and then, over the course of the next few days, managed to find an apartment that would allow me to move in a day or two later. Though the roaches were plentiful, the price and location were right (within easy walking distance of everything in downtown Siloam Springs, the home of my alma mater). I studied and frequented the bar which had been erected a year after I graduated. I began to remember how to make friends and communicate with humans again after so much time spent in isolation. I had a clown-in-nature-themed photo shoot, and appeared as a clown at my doctor friend's mom's birthday party after befriending that friend's dad to some degree. This befriending was shocking to me as well, as he was the type to visit that bar only when less people were expected to visit. In other words, he generally disliked people. People who dislike people tend to like me, which seems odd. Or maybe expected, since I am not regular people.
During this time, I also had two choice encounters with a lovely lady from that same small town who had moved to Los Angeles to give a shot at acting. Though I made a terrible impression by my estimation, her presence struck me with the knowledge that there are still single intelligent Christian ladies in existence in our late 20's. I had genuinely thought that that ship had sailed.
That clown photo shoot (and learning to make balloon animals) makes for a classic example of how I cannot seem to study intensely without having a creative venture about which I can plan and daydream. So as the days turned from 6-hour studying bouts to 10-12-hour studies, and I selected the date upon which I would take the Step 1 exam, I began planning a road trip to New York. I naturally pushed everything to the last minute, because I guess that a part of me somehow thought that an 8-hour medical exam filled with 280 riddles would not be enough to stress me out. Also during this time, the early rumblings of my upcoming identity crisis began to make themselves known, triggered by texting with a young lady I was liking, and this triggering was primarily owed to the fact that the contents of the texts were prayers for one another concerning our studies and upcoming exams. Having spent so much time away from the Christian crowd with which I grew up, my thinking had largely changed in that regard in order to adapt.
Then the test came. Over a year of studying for this particular exam, and the day was finally upon me. Following the test, I went to cider and yoga with doctor friend and his wife, and then woke up the next morning to learn that my debit card information might be compromised due to a $40 iTunes charge, so I cancelled the card. This was thrilling, because I was to move out the following day and drive to Nashville, all in one smooth, stress-heavy motion, as I began this road trip. In the midst of this, I did manage to catch Mewtwo in Pokemon Go, which marked the last thing I would do in the game before I deleted the app to make space for pictures from my trip.
My dad and stepmom arrived to help me pack up my things, and I visited with them and the step siblings, then drove to Nashville. In Nashville, I stayed with another London Smith whom I had met through Facebook. Though he was funny and Christian online, I found him to be far too genuine and real of a human in person. I suppose that we all have our burdens to bear.
From there, I drove to D.C., since tentative plans to visit South Carolina fell through, and discovered that an old friend from high school lived outside the city. I stayed on his couch for a few days, finally getting a good night's sleep for the first time in a week or more. Having been to the capitols of other major countries, I found our own to be lacking in comparison, though I did appreciate that much of what our nation did have in terms of monuments tended to be more recent and modern in their artistic approach. I met an Indian fellow who struck up conversation and I explained to him (as I understood it) how this nation had descended to these depths of social and political discord.
I should interject here that a major objective of this trip was to keep from thinking. I knew that I had three weeks before I would find out my test results, and the apprehension of anxiety that would accompany thoughts of it led me to suppress it in my mind. Unfortunately, I think I did this to too great a degree. I refrained from writing, which would normally be the more mature and frankly cathartic method of dealing with something as difficult to process as waiting for the results of a difficult exam. But I did not write. Fortunately, the memories remain fresh, perhaps because the last few years have had such a paramount focus on memorization that when I have anecdotes to accompany what I am attempting to remember, there is hardly a difficulty involved in finding the neural pathways to awaken the memory therein. Anyway, back to the road trip.
While staying at my friend's apartment, I also spent a day in Baltimore. Though I later heard only poor things about Baltimore, my experience was wonderful. I visited a distillery that had only opened up in the spring, but had a rich history back before Prohibition. I then wandered and visited a bar for dinner and made friends with the bartender and customers there, and the bartender offered free shots (of our own selection) for no reason that I could discern.
While staying with my friend, we talked about a myriad of things. I was relieved to talk to someone who viewed things with a deeper intellectual analysis than myself (he works as a data analyst, as it happens), so we discussed a myriad of topics relating to our faith, theology, science, and politics, all on a level of depth that I rarely reach with any other friends. But like all pleasant things, my time there was coming to a close so that I could reach the real target of this road trip: New York City.
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