College is full of opportunities, but as much as I knew the first day that freshmen dorms are cramped and hot, I knew I was not going to med school. It wasn’t just that it would be too costly or another four years of school seemed too masochistic. It was entirely because, as the daughter of two surgeons, I didn’t see how getting screwed by the American health care system was worth four years and $300,000.

My dad was on call at so many hospitals and at so many odd hours that he managed to develop double pneumonia twice while I grew up, unknowing, because he always smiled when he came home. When he came home. I have seen my mom cry when she overheard me mention that I was incapable of double-knotting my shoelaces in less than ten seconds because she was never around to teach me. She feels guilty. I wear slip-ons.

I was selfish. And I wasn’t about to apologize for it. I was also ignorant.

I’m diabetic, asthmatic, shockingly allergic to haywood (to the alarm of the PA who administered my skin test), I have a vitamin D deficiency, I’m just depressed enough to need therapists every once in a while, I’ve torn a labrum, got anemia that prevents me from donating blood, and I have pityriasis alba which I self diagnosed as vitalaigo resulting in a Michael Jackson (bless his soul) freak out. I carry needles, apply crèmes, shoot up nasonex, inject insulin before bed while I brush my teeth, take Benadryl to go to sleep. From an evolutionary standpoint, I should be dead. Realizing this, I began to become a little more appreciative of the care I’ve received. I’ve heard peers complain about how much they hate doctor’s visits; how much they hate doctors. But I’ve been blessed to have great doctors as I’ve stumbled upon more and more displeasing diagnoses.

And in retrospect, I’ve been blessed to have doctor parents. Earliest memory? My mother skimming a dead rat out of our pool and dissecting it in front of my sisters and I. I’ll never forget what water logged rat entrails look like (kind of like spaghetti in watered down spaghetti sauce). As much pain as I was in, I was fascinated when my dad injected my foot with lidocaine to extract a particularly well-stuck splinter. And I’ve always enjoyed the ethics questions my mom brings home from work as over dinner conversation: An elderly woman has a terminal diagnosis. How do you tell her she’s dying? Do you even tell her at all?

In short—I know what I’m getting into when I say now that I want to go to med school. Of all the things I lack—a functional pancreas, an understanding of skin diseases—resolve is not one of them. I know now that there’s more to life than getting yours. I know now how doctors can maintain pride even as they operate in a stressful occupation. I hope that everyone goes to college to eventually help people. I could help others doing any number of things. But I want to help people directly. I understand the importance of good doctors—as doctors and as people.

And I’m confident that I have the skills to be a good doctor. I am a clear and concise communicator; partly because of the many rhetoric courses I've taken at Colgate. I have a long history of working hard to achieve self-set goals. For over fifteen years I participated in a sport that only rewards intrinsically motivated individuals. I am also compassionate. I selflessly help friends with homework and edit the papers of siblings. I also get carried away in personal projects. When I found out that the rats I was observing freshmen year for a neuroscience experiment would be killed after the experiment, I canvassed all my friends to save as many as possible. But probably most importantly, as a diabetic, I have the additional benefit of possessing empathy for people dealing with chronic issues.

Sovereignty

My dad and I often argue, both sides of the issue because we are both as equally stubborn as we are rational, whether it is better to be good at many things or excellent in a few. I usually favor the good at many things, not because it makes more sense to me, but because it is the way I have naturally developed. My dad, because he is concerned over my safety, would favor me to excel at a few things. And by a few things, he only means grades. Of the many things I may have accomplished, excellence in academics is not one of them. True, I have received the highest academic award for writing at my school. But writing is a pastime, a hobby. It is not a class that can be isolated into itself or worthy of my attention as a scientist.

Occasionally my dad will quit insulting me for being merely good at so many things, and praise me for the little things I am capable of that have no direct bearing on my GPA. I am thankful for this. Because I oftentimes worry if I will seem good enough on paper. But why should that be important? How do the things that I can say I've done and accomplished, say anything about my actual character? I know how to sail in sunfish on Lake Michigan. I know the most effective way to make small children laugh. I know how to run faster than all my friends and how to run away from them. I know how to make shrimp fried rice. I know when it is appropriate to be kind to strangers. I know what pitch to giggle in to make boys pay attention to me. I know how to throw a frisbee. I know how to throw a football in a perfect spiral. I know how to swim butterfly. And I know how to catch them. I know what Tourmaline is and I know how to fascinate children about the physical properties of a dollar bill.

Hell is other people? That's absurd! and existential!

My little sister called me yesterday, all panicked, about her senior AP English project. She had chosen for her assignment to read six plays. But these weren't simple theatrical works. She chose, for some intangible reason which likely deals with the fact that she has an intellect larger than ideally controllable, to read plays possessing themes of absurdism. We debated it for a while. I've never really talked about absurdism in any class, and am only kind of aware of it. I do know that it should overlap with existentialism, if only because Camus' The Stranger is considered a work of both the absurd and the existential. Fortunately, my sister had no idea what existentialism was and after I had explained it the best I could, we compared the two studies. And we found the overlap!

Existentialism tries to find meaning in things which should have no meaning. It's a kind of counterpart to religions, which usually try to tell you what you should be doing with your life and more importantly, why you must do what you're told. But existentialism is more like one person:one meaning. You make your own decisions.

Absurdism, on the other hand, seems to throw many random details at you and makes use of your mind's inherent demand to find meaning in anything. Just as I can see faces in the front bumpers of cars, being presented with many random details, we will find the meaning, the lesson, the cause of such random events.

A famous work along these lines is No Exit best known for it's quote "Hell is other people." Four people find themselves in a room which turns out to be hell. When the door to the room finally opens, they do not wish to leave, because they've found a sort of meaning in the other people they've spent close time with.

And it's almost painfully true that you can only judge yourself by knowing yourself through other people. You can only do so much objective analysis of yourself before you realize you are nothing without a sort of external scheme to compare to. This scheme is presented by others. I've always assumed that I am quite tame in the sins department because I didn't drink alcohol or have sex until I was twenty, whereas most of my peers have much younger ages of first intoxication and lose of virginity events. I've also occasionally thought of myself as much more of a lesbian than any of my female friends because I've made out with somewhere between four and six women (I said I was a virgin, I didn't say my mouth wasn't a slut).

I wonder if this is at all misleading. In isolation you could easily grow to hate or love yourself to unhealthy extremes. But how accurate are other people's portrayal of you? Things like racism, sexism, and other smaller details like how tall you are or how pretty you look, go a long way in tainting people's assumptions about you. I just broke up with my boyfriend and I couldn't comprehend exactly why he was breaking up with me for the longest time. And when I finally found out his reasons, that he thought of me as harsh and insensitive in the way I communicated, I was shocked. That's not how I imagine myself at all.

And maybe we're both right. Surrounded by my family, my comments have been cultivated alongside my older sister and my parents, all of whom joke to the extremes. The sarcasm, the black humor, I can't shake it. I don't feel like I ever try to be overly mean to anyone. I'm easy to love most people, as long as they don't hurt me first. But what is hurt? And how do you judge if you've really been hurt or if you've just received a compliment from a very negative person? raised completely different compared to you?

So now I have to determine if I'm a bad person or not. But if hell is other people, maybe it would be preferable to being alone, with the last thing you remember being the details of how you uncontrollably and unintentionally hurt someone whom you respected quite a lot.

vague

Today Elora is sad. Not too much. She is south of the Mason Dixon line. It is warm. It is not snowing. It is not raining. It is almost sunny. She should be ecstatic.

But then there's all this goddamn guilt and its killing her.

And she's been tricked. She's almost sure.

And its killing her.

She got ahead of what she was going for.

And she can't do this again, no more.

i'm just like you, don't know what to do. i'm caught here in the middle of a life i can't live but i want to; i don't know how they do it though

but marquees will make everything better.

It started with an Interrobang

Why‽it's absolutely positively and completely unfair that I always find myself getting treated this way! Why do I feel so terrible? What would happen if I began to cry? or scream? Or punch through a wall? a person? I believe I'm justified. But would anyone else see my actions as righteous? Or would I be just another crazy person? Dismissed? I feel so betrayed!