On My Identity

Applying to medical school made me re-examine my identity. I had to convey who I was, what made me, me, and how that would make me a successful student and future physician. On the surface, I guess it is rather easy to identify oneself: Here are things I like, these are my ethnicities, this is where I’m from. In part, this collection of facts explains my function in the world. But internally comprehending my identity is what trips me up.  

Some days I am sure I am simply a half-Jew, half-Korean, Midwesterner, humanities lover, foodie, and future physician. Some days, however, I can’t even begin to see where I fit in.

Since I appear more Asian than white, or at least, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t pass as white, this question of identity came to mind in light of the recent recognition of violence towards the AAPI community. First off, I found my emotional response surprisingly strong after hearing the stories of these needless attacks. When I saw the photos and fundraisers for the victims of the Atlanta shootings, I teared up. Even “good” news made me tear up. I saw Asian American influencers that I follow post videos about awareness, history, and the problems surrounding the model minority myth. I watched a clip of Sandra Oh during a protest in Pittsburgh ask for Asian Americans to come together; she proclaimed “I am proud to be Asian! I belong here!” and that made me teary as well. After recognizing my strong feelings, three sets of questions arose:

1.     Are me and my family in danger? Are my friends?

2.     Why didn’t I cry when I heard the stories of violence toward the Black community? Did I not feel as strongly? Of course I support BLM, tuned in more consciously to my own biases, and read more about race relations especially in the context of medicine, but I wasn’t tearing up in the same instinctual way.

3.     Do I even have a right to feel this way? After all, I’m not fully Asian–I grew up in a white community. The most (stereotypical) Asian things we did were take our shoes off in the house, go to our local Korean restaurant frequently, and eat many of our meals with a side of sticky white rice.

Let’s explore these three points.

1)    Are we, my loved ones and I, in danger?

I’ll be real: I’ve lived a privileged, sheltered, and naïve life so far. I have never really felt in danger, ever. I’m a smaller, younger, female. I’ve walked around NYC and Boston by myself at night. Despite hearing horror stories of fake Uber car abductions, school shootings, and random attacks on young women, I never felt like “that could have been me.” Until the recent media coverage of anti-AAPI violence.

In the midst of the pandemic, with half of the country subscribing to the rhetoric of COVID-19 being the “China virus,” I ignorantly existed in my own liberal echo chambers. I falsely believed this racist and illogical rhetoric was only used by a small minority of the country. Recent events, however, demonstrate otherwise. Cities like Los Angeles and NYC where minorities abound, where voters consistently lean liberal, have been home to many of the attacks I have heard about. To some, I might look like the victims of these anti-AAPI attacks. The other aspect of this violence that made me feel unsafe was the type of victim: often female and/or elderly. These are people that are sometimes seen as “weak,” that can’t easily defend themselves. They are vulnerable. I am equal parts disgusted and terrified that these are the people being targeted. Furthermore, it’s unacceptable that despite having video evidence and photos of these attacks, it still seems like no one (in charge) is doing anything effective to combat or prevent further violence.

Before these events, despite how toxic the model minority myth is and how it originated by white people in order to retain power, I falsely believed that I benefited from this myth. Never mind my anxiety to be good at everything I tried, to succeed in school, to do all of this while remaining humble, quiet, and happy. I thought the pressure to succeed, according to stereotypes, motivated me and shaped my personality. I was never accused of wrongdoing; I never had anyone tell me I couldn’t achieve something. I had examples from both of my parents that hard work = success. I also think I often look younger than I am, maybe not anymore (thank you dark circles), but pre-panorama I believe people were nicer to me because I looked “innocent.”

I believed the myth. Since I conformed to the stereotype, I thought I couldn’t be harmed. But bigoted people won’t care about my academic accomplishments or future goals. They won’t care where you’re from, what you do, or who you are. They just see non-white and it’s over.

For instance, my mom, a Korean immigrant and physician, was doing her weekly grocery shopping for our whole household (we love and appreciate mom for keeping us fed). In her unassuming 5’1” frame, she was walking out of the store with her bags. My mom takes a brisk walking pace and so she walked around a lady that was in front of her. After my mom had walked ahead of said lady, my mom heard a shout directed at her from behind, “Go back to where you came from.” Again, I naively thought things like this couldn’t happen in our suburban, affluent town, until they did.

2)    Why didn’t I cry during the media coverage of the stories of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor last year?

I spoke a bit with my roommate about this question. Do I lack empathy because I didn’t cry in response to the violence against Black Americans? I started to feel like a bad person. If I was truly empathetic, I would have the same teary response to all stories of racially motivated violence. However, my roommate made a point that made me feel this wasn’t a complete moral failure on my part. She basically said it’s not that I didn’t feel sadness and outrage after hearing story after story of anti-Black violence. It’s that, unlike with those stories, the women killed in the Atlanta shootings could have been my mom. My aunts. My grandmother. My family. They looked like me. This is the same reason I get so excited seeing Koreans in media like in Parasite, Minari, Grey’s Anatomy, and Killing Eve (I might be a Sandra Oh stan). In other words, the violence resonated more deeply with me because I could more strongly imagine our similarities. Does that make me unempathetic or a bad person? I am starting to think maybe not.

3)    Do I have a right to feel this way?

I have always been a person that cares about how others perceive me. My ethnic ambiguity makes it difficult for me to see how I fit in or predict what other groups might think about me. Do Asian Americans tend to think I don’t really understand what it’s like to be Asian? Do white Americans even recognize that half of me is white? I know I have tended to identify more with Asian Americans, but does that make me a part of the community or just someone on the outside peeking in?

I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out why I identify as more Asian than white. Is it my appearance? My natural interests? Some childhood experience? Or is it totally random?

For a while I believed it was a combination of my hobbies and the friends I had in high school. As I focused more on my academics, violin, and tennis, I noticed that a lot of other people with the same interests were Asian. Given that my high school was only 5% or so Asian, I started to see the same people a lot; naturally, I grew close to them. Beyond that, I found these friends tended to care about school to the same degree that I did. Not that it’s mutually exclusive–being Asian and caring about school–but these are the patterns I tended to see in my specific friend group. And beyond that, they are still some of my closest friends today.

More recently I think this interest in my Asian side developed much earlier. I remember loving when my uncle came to Ohio to visit because it meant that we could go to my grandma’s house for a Korean feast. She would scoop too much onto my plate and snip hot meat off the bones for me, but I would eat it all because I didn’t know when the opportunity would strike again. I discovered Kpop sometime around middle school which also led me to watch a few Korean dramas as well.

I remember sitting in the kitchen when my mom, her sisters, and her mother all talked in a mixture of Korean and English. I didn’t know what they were saying, but I liked hearing the intensity, inflection, and emphasis in their voices and their loud laughter accompanied by even louder clapping.

A memory I just recalled a few days ago was my fascination with this one picture book I still have in my closet called, “The Korean Cinderella.” It must have been elementary school when I liked this book because I started reading chapter books pretty early on in elementary school. Anyways, I remember laying on the floor of my room reading through this Cinderella story retold in a Korean context. Something about the beautiful hanbok and the fact that I connected this story with my mom and her family made me love it. I came back to it often. Maybe that is where it all started. Or maybe it was my dad and others telling me how much I looked like my mom. There is this picture of my mom and her sisters outside of their first house in America, in Cleveland, OH, when she was 11 or 12; when I first found the photo, I thought for a second that it was a photo of myself.

I still often feel like I don’t see where I fit in. Sometimes, I am grateful for my mixed family. Both sides have rich histories that I will continue to explore for the rest of my life, and one day pass on to my children. Other times, I think it would be easier if I was just one ethnicity. If I just had one identity to explain to others. But in the end, at least I can say for sure that I am American. Next time someone asks me, “What are you?” hopefully that will be enough.

Note: If I said anything ignorant or maybe something you’d like to chat about, please reach out if you feel inclined so I can address it

On the Smell of Human Flesh

Have you ever noticed the distinct smell of human flesh? The smell of bodies, or the scent of someone you love that you can only catch when they are near?

I first became conscious of this phenomenon after I spent a summer working in an emergency department in NYC. After a shift, I would leave the hospital, walk a few blocks, and sweat a little from the heat bounding off of the boiling black asphalt and from my thick cotton polo and long dress pants.

When I rode the elevator up to my floor, however, I noticed an odor. It wasn’t me–it wasn’t a sweat smell, or the faint “shower clean” scent of my deodorant, nor was it just your classic body odor. It was a smell that I can only describe as human flesh. The bodies of the ER lingered and cozied their way in between the fabric of my polo. When I got to my room and pulled my shirt off over my head to take a much-needed shower, the smell whacked me in the face. I was carrying peoples’ scents with me. Their bed pans, their exhaustion from waiting, their sweat, their skin, all hung like a cloud in the ER which I absorbed during my hours there. But I couldn’t distinguish the smell until I left. It’s not exactly a bad smell, it’s just distinct.

After I realized where this odor came from, and how tightly it clung to my clothing, it felt strange to carry it home with me. I would immediately change when I got home, regardless of how hungry I was or what time of day it may have been or if I needed to meet up with someone soon. The smell of human flesh seems like it should be a private thing, not something that mingles in a crowded ER for everyone to inhale and take home.

That same summer, I observed a surgery for the first time. I stepped into the operating room; I didn’t dare move or speak so as not to be deemed a distraction to the procedure. One of the first surgeries I saw was an orthopedic surgery. Again, I learned a new smell that day. The smell of burning flesh. I’ve had it described to me as White Cheddar Pirate’s Booty, a type of popcorn snack. To me, it smelled unnatural. I tried to ignore it. I believed if I thought about it too much, it might make me queasy. Part way through the surgery, the bone saw came out. I’m pretty sure they were doing a knee replacement, but I can’t exactly recall now. The saw slicing through bone, moving so quickly and cutting so easily that the bone seemed like Jell-O, emitted a different smell. It was similar to when I get my teeth polished at the dentist. Somewhere in between smoky and metallic. I was transported to my dentist’s office, my mouth wide open, tongue drying out, with the taste and smell of the polishing tool whirring against my teeth. Every time after that when I went to the OR, I recognized the smell of burning flesh. When the surgeons cauterized something, I heard the little zap and pshhh of hot metal touching a warm, bleeding body. When they used the bone saw to cut through ribs to perform a triple CABG. When they delicately peeled back the scalp, cauterizing along the way to open the skull to relieve the pressure building inside.

But then there are less graphic, more comforting smells of human flesh. Like the smell of my mother. It has been ingrained in my brain since birth. When I share a chair with her to watch a K-drama, or when I hug her in greeting after she comes home from work, she has her own smell, as everyone does. That coupled with her warmth (despite the fact that she herself is always cold, her fingers almost purple at times) makes it a comforting smell. Even when I borrow her coat to run outside, or toss on her scarf to grab the mail, her scent lingers in the cloth and I immediately feel at home; I feel younger and safer.

There’s also the smell of newborn babies. This, I know, is a smell that everyone loves. When my youngest brother was born, I remember I loved to hold him in my lap. My seven-year-old arms cradled him gently. His wild hair that stuck straight up as if he was constantly charged with static was prime for smelling. His soft, delicate skin and teeny tiny fingers and toes were fun to hold; he would wrap his whole fist around just one of my fingers. Even when I held him up and he spit up right below my face and all down my shirt, in the end, I could not be disgusted by his little sweet scent and wide innocent eyes.

The final smell of comfort for me, of another body I have come to know, is of course, my boyfriend. While we are sentenced to long distance for the foreseeable future, I cherish that first moment when we embrace after a few weeks or months. When, even with our masks on, I can bury my nose into the side of his neck, drink in his distinct smell, and feel safe and comforted and loved.

On New York City

New York City is the kind of place a midwestern, suburban girl dreams of visiting in her childhood. It is the epitome of big city lights, unimaginably larger than downtown Columbus, Ohio. Unfathomably more filled with everything: restaurants, smells, people, trash, windows, cars, bikes, at least according to the movies. New York City is where grown-ups go, where people who want to grow up move. Take 13 Going on 30, The Devil Wears Prada, or Felicity. It is where people find love, see When Harry Met Sally, and where they reunite against the odds at the top of the Empire State Building, see Sleepless in Seattle. It is where the action is: look no further than the Toby Maguire Spiderman movies. It is where talented musicians, unlike myself as I would come to realize, go to perform solos in Carnegie Hall. It is also where people use cool words like “bodega” and “schmear,” and even though the streets are numbered, people manage to name every inch like SoHo, NoHo, DUMBO, FiDi, and MSG. And finally, it is where humour lives: take Saturday Night Live or Friends. In other words, it makes Columbus look drab in comparison–all its manicured lawns, friendly neighborhoods, cul de sacs, and quiet by 10 p.m. New York City, the city that never sleeps, is everything different from what I had known, and that made it the ideal place to aspire to live, someday.

As the eldest child, I have always attempted to act the part. This culminated in an undiscovered drive for sophistication in high school. I would force myself to do things grown-ups did so that I could be deemed: mature. Coffee, in all its bitter blackness, was how my mom got her day started. Two cups, always black. I shifted my Starbucks Frappuccinos to black coffees with a splash of skim milk. Everyone on the internet told me tea is good for you, so I bought green tea and drank it in the evenings, trying to make it through the whole mug. I opted for studying rather than video games like my brothers. I started listening to Brahms, my dad’s favorite composer, rather than Taylor Swift like my friends. The final step to my transformation would be to live on my own in New York City.

  ~~~

After seemingly fulfilling this dream, earning myself a summer to live in NYC in the middle of college, in a place just outside midtown in the Gramercy area close to Trader Joe’s (more importantly Trader Joe’s Wine Shop) and the green six line that went straight up and down the heart of the city, the dream of the city persisted, unsatiated. The summer experience felt wispy, slipping through my fingers, leaving me confined as a suburbanite forever. I could never belong in NYC. It would instead always be that place of dreams, the city that never sleeps, where something exciting was bound to happen every day.

It was a hazy summer–not from the shimmering asphalt in the heat, nor from the car fumes of the packed streets, but because my imaginative childhood self and present self came face to face to meet and shake hands in Central Park. They met quite often, on the corners of particularly New York sidewalks–perhaps by a bagel shop, or one of the thousands of Starbucks–on the subway, or by the hospital before walking in for work; really anywhere that reminded my present self of my past visions of the city. The city of skyscrapers. Maybe they convinced each other this was all still a dream.

I lived on the 21st floor of an apartment-style NYU dorm. I had to take the elevator to get to the ground floor. I could smell the fumes of the finance bros in the mornings on my way to eight a.m. hospital shifts. They were the ones in suits with leather shoes, greased hair, and a heaping does of cologne; their scent was a reminder of the six figures they earned while I, in my ugly bright red polo and hospital ID lanyard, looked like a middle schooler and was earning zero dollars to work there.

On my way back into the dorm building, the smell was entirely different. After leaving the hospital, walking the few blocks, pushing through the hot stagnant air of a NYC summer and past the revolving glass doors of the dorm, I would become aware of the human stench that clung to me, a smell unique to the emergency department where I spent my time. And I swear, it wasn’t me; it wasn’t a B.O. smell, or my “shower clean” deodorant wafting up my shirt as I ran around pushing patients to x-ray or grabbing someone an extra cup of juice. It was the smell of flesh, of a bunch of bodies in one room only separated by constantly opened curtains. Sure, urine, sweat, and occasionally feces wafted through the ED, but those were temporary scents. What stuck was the human smell, the smell that I only noticed when stepping into the confined metal elevator, on the long ride up to the 21st floor. It hit a second time when I stripped immediately after getting into my room, as I pulled my red polo over my head and let it drop to the floor.

Being so high up in the building and in a corner room (aka extra windows), there were endless lines of lights visible from the floor to ceiling windows in the common area. Sometimes I would just stare out at the lights, how they changed from day to night, how it never really got dark in NYC. I could see the Chrysler building from the window by my bed. Those were fun lights. They would sometimes alternate like a light show, constantly changing colors, and on the Fourth of July they flashed red, white, and blue.

 It was when I stared at those lights, though, that the unexpected could happen. Maybe an ambulance honking and blaring its way by on the street below, not making much progress due to traffic; we were close to the hospital avenue. One particular night, my roommates and I heard a big crash, 21 floors below us on the street. We rushed to the window to see; it was maybe an hour after the sun had set. On the corner to our right, at the intersection of 3rd Ave and 23rd St, a hoard of ambulances, police cars, and fire engines quickly assembled. Squinting, we could see what looked like a vehicle on the sidewalk which had crashed into the glass bus stop on the corner. In the group chat my roommates and I were a part of, full of fellow hospital volunteers, we asked if anyone on shift had someone come into the trauma slot from a vehicular accident. A young female who was on the phone with her boyfriend, waiting at the bus stop, was hit by this rogue car. She was stopped mid-conversation by the shards of glass and impact of the car. I believe she was in critical condition and ushered away to surgery. We didn’t find out what happened to her after that. Such is the nature of the ED: fleeting.

It surprised me, this summer haze, my memories romantic and blurry around the edges. The dreamlike fuzziness lasted past leaving the city, the images never solidifying in my mind. The reality of living on a busy street with clubs around the corner, of breathing in the urine stench of the steps leading down to the subway, or the hot and rotting food waste that just missed the trash can or leaked from the piled black bags on the sidewalks, of the constant bustle of people rushing–always rushing to get where they were going, never diminished my awe. My naïve notions of NYC, borne from movies and media, still tinted my perception. Reality didn’t wake me from my haze, rather, I left NYC with a drive to return. The next time I went back, for I knew I would be back, I was determined to dispel this childish dream. I needed to grow up, become a grown up. The rosy picture of NYC needed to be squashed so that I’d be content wherever I ended up, which I predicted, would not be NYC.

Perhaps the dreamy haze was my childhood self’s way of telling my present self to loosen up. Maybe it wasn’t time to complete my transformation into adulthood; I wasn’t even 21 yet. I glided past the realities that kept my parents from the city–the filth, the pollution, the cesspool, and the crowds. If I went back, it would be on my own.

I entered the summer preparing to grow tired of the noise, of my randomly selected roommates, of my sweaty walk to work in my non-breathable red polo, business casual pants, and “work appropriate” shoes. I thought, let’s get this experience out of the way now, so when I’m old and nostalgic I can look back on my time living in NYC without regret.

But I found that in the city, I felt free. Maybe that’s dramatic, but there was a sense that I was invisible, yet confident. I could wear a new outfit, tie my hair up a different way, and no one would pass judgement. I could spend my whole day wandering, or people watching, and no one would doubt my place in the scene. I could pick a direction and just walk that way for hours, not fearing boredom; I would find odd spots like tucked away open gardens sandwiched in an alley, or a particular stream of graffiti that I recognized from other parts of the city.

If I wandered south, I’d hit Chinatown, passing the Strand, some bookstores with rainbow flags, and the iconic Madison Square Park Shake Shack… the park always smelled of bacon and weed and burgers. If I headed uptown instead, I’d pass through K-town (really, K-street), past NYPL, and eventually come to Central Park where I’d dip into the shade of trees that sometimes leaned over the path. I would see some cute dogs, find a spot to sit in the grass, and maybe even bring a book and snack from Trader Joe’s if I was feeling particularly lounge-y and luxurious; I’d spend an afternoon in my Ray-Bans in the park. Though, if I went uptown, I learned to avoid Times Square (tourists, am I right?). If I went west, all the way, I’d hit the Hudson. I would pass by the piers, the golfing, the games, and the very New York version of parks which paled in comparison to the open fields, tennis courts, wooded trails, and acres of soccer fields I had back in Columbus.

At the same time, I didn’t feel lonely while out in the city. It was only back in the apartment, when my roommates were on shift and my boyfriend already asleep, 1,000 miles away, when I lay awake in the dark looking at the ceiling from my cheap, dorm twin mattress with sheets I lugged in from Bed Bath and Beyond some blocks away, that I felt alone.

On What I Might Have Become

Sometimes I consider what else I might have pursued if not medicine. It usually begins by compiling a list of some of my marketable skills. Realizing that list is not very long, I quickly move on to considering areas I have tended to enjoy. This list is also short, but it raises a few, concrete ideas: teaching, music, and writing.

~ Teaching ~

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like most students, if they enjoy school, at some point consider becoming a teacher. Aside from my parents, these were the only other adults I saw nearly every day since age four. By the time I was in fifth grade, again aside from my parents, these were adults I began to admire. They encouraged my curiosity, tending to my strings of inarticulate questions. They offered me the extrinsic motivation of grades or prizes or praise.

This was especially true when it came to English class. I felt like my teachers knew me. They were present for all of the stories I created, or the thoughts I shared for the first time to someone outside of my own head.

At this point in time, I would argue that I have had more experience with teaching than with medicine. In eighth grade I was a helper for a student with autism at my Jewish Sunday school (which I only attended for three years). From sophomore year of college through senior year I was a TA for chemistry, and my senior year I was also a biochemistry TA. During this past year I have tutored two students since July and am teaching in an after school program (online) called Anatomy Academy. This is not to bore you with my resume, but rather to illustrate that a consistent chunk of my time has gone towards other students. That being said, I think my experience teaching will benefit and inform my future in medicine.

This is perhaps the most realistic job I would have pursued if not medicine.

~ Music ~

I wouldn’t have deemed myself “good” at music until maybe high school, despite starting piano at four (and a half) and violin at five. My ear was good enough that I knew I sounded bad, but I didn’t possess the patience or diligence to practice enough to fix my errors. I would operate by working until I sounded “good enough” so that my teachers would allow me to either move on in the piece or pick a new one entirely. This looked like fifteen-minute practice sessions or playing through all of my material only once. Sometimes it looked like not practicing for days, then cramming in a long practice session the day before my lesson.

It’s possible this came from a place of considering music as a hobby rather than as a potential future career.

When my ear finally told me: hey, you don’t sound all that screechy or out of tune anymore, I was in high school and already considering medicine. I wonder what could have happened if I had practiced an hour or more every day, if I had found the joy I now find in music, back then?

In college, music was my respite from work. To be fair, I was in orchestra so technically rehearsal was class/work. But it was a space where I got to chat with friends, where we grabbed dinner together after rehearsals, and where I found my first large community of friends.

I felt that in high school as well. Especially after traveling with the orchestra. We endured long rehearsals, practiced on some weekends, and celebrated our accomplishments as a group. It was somewhere in this time that I finally started to enjoy classical music. I’m not sure why I felt the need to like classical music; it is probably similar to why I felt the need to like the taste of tea and coffee, or why I created a list of “classic literature” that I tasked myself with reading. I abandoned the Twilight-s and other young adult novels of my peers in search of books that would make me appear more mature and well-read.

Whether my interest in classical music was organic, or stemmed from thinking I had to like it because I played violin and good musicians listened to it outside of class, or came from my father listening to WOSU’s Classical 101 on the radio, or sprouted from admiring the seeming elitism of classical music, I’m not sure. But now I genuinely enjoy it. For the music, not the sometimes elitism.

When I have long trips ahead of me, I often download an album of classical music along with its score on my computer so I can follow along. Much like someone would flip through the pages of a book, I click through the score as I listen along.

Because music often brings me so much intrigue and enjoyment, I wonder if it’s something I should have tried harder to pursue. But then I remember crying during my lessons (yes, even in college), fuming at myself for doing so, and then still not practicing every day. So then I think, perhaps I do not, in fact, have what it takes to pursue music professionally.

~ Writing ~

Writing has been my form of expression since the sixth grade. I kept journals of the latest goings-on of the middle school drama scene–who I liked, who was mad at who, or anything else of note from that day.

By the time I reached high school, I was revealing a lot in English class. All of the thoughts or stories I had that I was too scared to say out loud, I would write. I would mask truth in fiction, or perhaps reveal truth through fiction, as a way to hide my reality behind made-up names and settings.

This made me gravitate towards my English teachers; the ones who had to read these pieces. I knew they had to engage with what I wrote on some level, if only for a few minutes.

My teachers always told me I was good at writing. Now this doesn’t necessarily translate into employment, but it made me at least consider writing in some capacity in my future. Who wouldn’t want to pursue a career in something they’ve been told they’re good at? I’ve thought about what made my writing good at that time, but I can’t quite articulate it or recognize it myself. All I know is, I have worked into my identity that I’m a decent writer.

I strongly believe that everyone can be a “good” writer. I usually write how I speak, or rather, how I think the more polished me speaks when I plan out sentences in my head. Part of what might make me good is my observation skills. I’d like to think I can pick up on nuances of expression, body language, mood, or environmental changes.

For example, my mother recently got veneers. I had been away at college, but my brothers had been home with her when she got them. However many weeks after she had the procedure and I finally came home, one of the first things I asked her was, “Is there something different about your teeth?” She explained to me the whole, long process of getting veneers, including shaving down her original teeth. During this process, which sounded like an ordeal, my brothers were unaware–or maybe just uninterested–in the slight physical changes of my mom’s front four teeth.

Another small example is when I would return home after a long semester, I would do a once-over of the house and ask my mother about everything that was different. “When did we switch those lamps? Where did the basket go that used to be on the table? Is this closet emptier than it used to be?” Noticing details, or being able to relay them through text, is part of what helps me develop imagery and description.

In the past, I used to think I was creative. After graduating, I find that to be less true. I’m not sure if it’s from melting my brain with hours of YouTube, or from being so tired from schoolwork that I couldn’t muster up the energy or make the time to think creatively, but I felt that all my ideas were boring. Even in my fiction writing classes, I would take stories that were completely true and just change peoples’ names to pass them off as “fiction.”

Fearing a day when I don’t feel creative, or the uncertainty of a future in writing in which I can’t come up with an idea, is what makes me realize I couldn’t pursue a career in writing.

So, I always circle myself back to medicine, no matter how dreamlike or happy futures in these other areas may seem. I have told myself medicine has elements of all of these other jobs, but there’s the added bonuses of the science I spent so much time studying, the fulfilling aspect of helping others, and the constant changes in the field that make it a field of lifelong learning.

But more on why medicine in another post.

On My "Growth Year" Thus Far

I wasn’t sure how much growth would really happen for me in this gap year, or “growth year,” in between college and medical school. On the one hand, I was moving to a new place (Boston), for a new job, with new roommates, ready to build new relationships and explore. On the other hand, COVID shifted the possibilities available to me in this new environment. For the most part, I work from home. This looks like a 50-dollar Amazon desk, my slowly dying Apple laptop, and my continuously worsening posture as I hunch over my knees to work, sitting in my 30-dollar Walmart desk chair. The cynic in me thought: how much can I really grow in these nine months, sheltered inside, spending a good portion of that time working or applying to medical school?

I’m happy to say I’ve found a bit of light during this COVID/growth year.

I thought at this point in my life, my hobbies were relatively set. I played tennis, violin, guitar, and piano. I wrote occasionally when I found the motivation. I binge watched shows. I regularly consumed entire bags of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (yes, I qualify this as a hobby at this point). But I’ve found myself trying lots of new things recently, and I’m not sure if it’s the growth year, the COVID situation, or the combination of the two, but I’d like to share some of what’s been making me excited recently.

~

I am, within the next week, a yellow belt in jiu jitsu. I hadn’t touched any sort of martial art since I promptly quit taekwondo in elementary school after learning I needed to take a test to get my yellow belt. My philosophy, or attitude, for this year has been to say “yes” to things, even if they sound uncomfortable. A friend of my boyfriend’s, who I’d consider a friend now, happened to be in Boston this year as well. When I first arrived in September, she reached out and asked if I wanted to try out this jiu jitsu class she had been going to. “The first class is free,” she said. At first, I resisted the idea. I politely declined and said that I would maybe think about it. But in each conversation we had after that, she would get so animated whenever she talked about the class. The teacher was great, it was safe to do, it’s good exercise, there’s some nice people there. So, I did the trial class.

I had a great time. The sensei, Nick, was energetic and encouraging the whole time. Even though he singled me out a few times in front of the 15 or so seasoned students, I felt a good kind of discomfort. I mean, it didn’t feel good at the time to have the whole class stare at me while I was clueless, but now I see that it motivated me to pursue something new.

After the trial class, my friend convinced me to sign up for a month of training. It’s just a month, I thought. If anything, I’ll just quit if I don’t enjoy it. A month passed. I wasn’t entirely sure if I should stay, but it was nice to get out of the apartment at least once a day, move around, and see new faces (behind masks of course). Whether it was my fear of saying “no” to someone that made me stay, or the joy I started to feel from learning new things, I’m not sure. I slowly felt stronger and more confident, even outside of class. Now, five months into it, I look forward to class twice a week. I try to squeeze in a third when my friend is able to drive me.

~

I am a runner now. I can’t describe how awkward and fraudulent that feels to write. For the first time in my life, I can run a few miles without cramping up or needing to stop and walk. I can actually carry a conversation with someone while running. I ran ten miles for the first time ever.

At present, I have a bit of a stress fracture situation happening in my tibia, but before that I was really running. And I even got injured from running. I think that alone qualifies me as a real runner.

I’m not saying I’m the fastest, nor can I run a marathon, but I enjoy my time running. Whether it’s with my 60-mile-a-week running mother, or with my roommates, or just me and a solid podcast, I cherish that thirty minutes I spend outside. It's a great way to break up my day, clear my head, or explore Boston and people watch.

~

I am, very slowly, learning how to crochet thanks to my patient roommate. I won’t lie, my wrist and hand hurt from my clumsy stitching motions, but I can eke out stitches at an okay pace. Crocheting strikes the perfect balance between mindlessness and focus. What I mean is, it’s the type of activity where I can get tunnel vision and literally count my stitches out loud for thirty minutes straight; it’s also the activity where when I’m on an easier section, I can chat or watch a movie. It’s the right amount of satisfying, where after I finish a row, I can either feel accomplished and stop, or set out with a goal to finish four more rows before taking a break.

The last time I felt a similar way was with a paint by numbers I did in the fall. I could mindlessly paint larger sections while listening to a podcast or music, or I could do detail work with my face inches from the canvas, painstakingly and delicately placing my brush on the surface while trying to keep my hand from shaking.

I think the satisfaction from these activities has something to do with creating while being semi-active.

~

After trying and enjoying all of these new hobbies, learning new information through work, and spending some of my time tutoring/teaching, I actually feel satisfied with my growth year so far. As a self-proclaimed perfectionist, it’s not often I feel proud or accomplished with my activities and achievements. Sure, I didn’t publish in Nature, nor did I complete all of the self-projects I set out to do, nor did I learn Korean with all of my “free” time this year, but taken as a whole, I’m happy with where I’m at right now. At least in this moment writing. I’m sure doubt will creep back in when more medical school rejections roll in, or when my job ends in a month, or when I’m feeling lonely, but for now I’ll enjoy this feeling of growth.

On Relief

I have survived the first half of the sophomore slump. The feeling I had after turning in my last exam, walking across the indoor track of Barton, sliding my thick packet of way too many organic chemistry problems into the A-C slot: relief. Happy, even. As I walked back to my red metal chair to collect my pencils, jacket, calculator from under the table, and my friend's model kit–since I forgot to bring mine–my friend walked by me and gave me an eyebrow raise as if to say, "We made it."

Those next few hours before I went to the airport for home were bliss. I walked back with my self-assembled "orgo squad." The four of us had sat together in lecture every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the whole semester (assuming they woke up in time for class). I'd arrive early to save three other seats beside mine, laying whatever I could across the beat up seats of Baker 200. It was windy and snowy outside, but we were done. I clasped my boyfriend's hand and the four of us made our way across central campus, down the slope, and said temporary goodbyes. 

I packed my excessive amount of stuff into my suitcases, while my friend judged me for having about four times as much baggage to bring home compared to her. Even though I made her wait, it was all ok because once I finished packing we were off to go get bubs in ctown. We collected my other friend on our way from West campus to ctown, and together we foraged for bubs in the cold, nearly desolate Ithaca. 

I had my two closest friends with me, bubbles in my tummy, and I would be home in a few hours. I  was living my best life at this point. We stopped in CTB for a quick lunch before I had to say bye to one of my friends. My remaining friend and I were on the same flight to Philly, so we collected our luggage from my dorm and were all set to call a cab to the airport, when my boyfriend called and said he and his dad could drive us instead. After a short car ride, we were finally really leaving. We entered the automatic sliding doors of the so called Ithaca "airport" with all of its five gates, and the waiting began. 

The immense amount of relief I felt was strange looking back. It happens at the end of every semester, but it is so difficult to remember the feeling once it has passed. It almost makes the weeklong grinds, lack of sleep, and overwhelming stress forgettable. The boring hours of staring at books get thrown out and forgotten like cleaning out an old closet filled with inconsequential childhood trinkets. 

This relief is temporary but welcome.