18 May 2006

A new chapter.

The poet Adrienne Rich once wrote "We will not live/to settle for less We have dreamed of this/all of our lives." The quotation sums up my journey unto this point--indeed, it has been the driving force on many a night when I have had thoughts of quitting this whole crazy process of following my dreams to become a physician.

It took about 19 rejections from medical schools before I finally got a "yes" in answer to my application for admission. Needless to say, the road to get to this point has been bumpy at best. But now I'm here, pinching myself, trying to grok that this is really happening--that I am, at long last, going to begin medical school in just a few short months.

I am not naive--I know that this process will only become more difficult over time--but I begin having learned an important lesson. As Helen Keller put it, "although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it." It is in this spirit that I begin this new chapter in my life...one that I hope to record here as it unfolds.

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a little disclaimer...

i'm a medical student. just a student. so please, don't take anything i say too seriously. remember that i was an english literature major as an undergrad, so there is much fiction to be found in these pages. do you think i'm telling a story about you or your illness? more likely, you're tapping into my sense of "everyman"--that is, your story resonates with what i write here because it's not so uncommon after all. need help? please, please go see your physician. <--i'm not her. yet. ;-)