Back To The Island?

I found out last night that if I fail the comp this time, I will have to go back to the island to take a review course (the same one I took while on the island and similar to the one I took in Dallas as well). Going back to the island makes the list of the very worst things I can think of, yet here is where I remember whom I place my hope in. I was only ever in this for Jesus. I lose sight of Him pretty regularly, especially since it is oddly difficult to balance a love for Him with a love for studying what He has created. Despite me, and despite the apparent world I live in, I choose to trust Him, to the extent that I still know how to trust Him.

Time to study hard.

Two Weeks

Practice test scores are going down. Having to spend a weekend at home (away from my study area) has done little to help my confidence. Not to mention time lost due to Papa Bill's funeral. I will have two weeks to go hard on all of this material. Two weeks. Maybe it is time to turn the cell phone off, to only take timed breaks. 10- to 12-hour study days. Doing a study program was supposed to help, and it was a nice refresher, but I cannot help but feel like I am just incapable of passing these things.

It would help to be around fellow students, fellow intellectuals, but I am in Texas, where most of my company is anti-intellectual in accordance with our country's leader.

I am struggling to give this up to God, to put my confidence in Him. This Texas style of Christian culture makes me feel like the goals and information I'm learning are antagonistic to the very faith that pushed me to this career path.

Two weeks. I just want to run away from all of it.

Maybe I'm a fool to say it, and past me may disagree, but I miss the days of being poor while backpacking in Europe. Or just my blanket fort. Simpler times, these were. But now I feel like an educated fool.

Studying & Processing

I've been studying a lot, though not nearly as much as I should be. Also, my grandpa, Papa Bill, passed away last week, so I had to take a couple days off of studying for that funeral. I was one of six grandsons who served as pallbearers. The days of studying at the lakehouse tend to blend together, with progress only really tracked through which chapter of pathology I am working through at a given time. Given that and the ever-dissipating amount of time left to study, taking aside any time to write about the passing of Papa Bill seemed too much.

I learned the news while I was watching Logan. If any of you enjoy violent films, this movie was a particularly good one to watch while processing the death of a relative who died of old age.

There's a girl that I want to like, that a friend is trying to set me up with. However, there are a few major issues. The primary issue is that I am wary of anyone who seems overtly Christian, because in my mind as well as the minds of many in our nation, a Christian is one who embraces hypocrisy in their devotion to throwing aside the poor and needy. I have friends who treat their faith like something akin to coming out of the closet when they meet new people. The collective shame of America's Christian culture weighs upon a great many of us. So this girl is very devout. At her family's New Year's party, prayer and worship replaced booze. At this point, unless God very specifically directs otherwise, drinking is an important cultural aspect of my life that I'd want my partner to embrace as well.

The other issues, such as her being more manly than me (she likes hunting and camping and outside), are not nearly as critical.

In any case, I am thankful that I remain outside of a life which requires romance. I will stick to trolling tinder bots.

It Begins Anew, Afresh Even?

Seven weeks in a study program. Much of a week in Arkansas reconnecting with friends from college. And this week, I began studying on my own again. But unlike last semester, I have so far been able to do it in isolation. UWorld question bank scores are (so far) equal to or greater than what they were last semester, and a fair amount of that is due to confidence. I am my biggest obstacle now, which is relieving. Once I get my study habits honed, I may be able to really cover some ground.

As painful as it is to admit, I need to build up my confidence, even if I am tricking myself. Tonight's practice test felt bad at first, but I affirmed myself and then ended up doing better than yesterday. Some days will be worse. But these practice tests are mostly about learning anyway when I review the test answers.

Also, I had been drinking like every day since that study program started. Such is the issue with an early morning. But I have been sober since Sunday. It adds an extra hour or two to study time at night.

The plan is to have social time for one day per week to avoid burnout.

Also, February turned out to have less days than I had hoped, so whoops, I guess that studying started in March.

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.