Gonnabeadoctor

T-minus 50 hours before my first Chemistry midterm. Instead of preparing for it, I’m busy doing a problem set for Physics, which is due the same day as the midterm.

But you know what? That’s stupid. I just realized that. Right this moment. That’s totally stupid. Because the problem set constitutes such a small portion of my final grade for Physics. The midterm, on the other hand, constitutes a colossal portion of my final grade for Chemistry. What the hell am I doing?

That’s it. Physics book down, Chemistry book up. I will do the Physics problem set, but after I’m comfortable enough with the material that’s on the Chemistry midterm. And if that causes me to get a lower grade on my Physics problem set, so be it. Compared to my Chemistry midterm, it ain’t matter.

Jesus… what was I thinking?

Our first Chemistry midterm is on Thursday. Earlier tonight, Gary, Jose, Nicole and I went into the auditorium where the midterm will take place, took out the first practice exam, and gave ourselves 2 hours to complete it. Independently, and with no distractions.

It kicked our ass. Which was surprising. I mean, we understand the material really well, and we’ve done well on our homework assignments, lab assignments, Logan Notes, and the diagnostic practice exam. But DAMN. This practice exam was HARD!

We’re taking the second practice exam tomorrow night, in the same fashion. I’m going to do better on that one.

God bless the 24-hour library at Harvard. Today, I started studying at around 1:00pm, went strong for three hours , and then had to leave. I had a date at 5:00, and dinner at 8:00 with two friends from out of town. I got back to campus at 11:00. A seven-hour break… not ideal.

Luckily, I have become nocturnal! These days I go to sleep around 3:00am and wake up around 10:00am. I give myself three more hours before I get really tired and hit that “Alright… I gotta get out of here” moment.

If I get that far, I’ll net about 6 hours of solid work. Not bad. I’m getting better.

I’m in Widener Library. I have to punch this out quickly. I have a long day of studying ahead of me.

Last night, I got home from hanging out Ross, one of my roommates, and Christian, one of my good friends from college who is visiting from out of town. At 4:00am, I sat down and I wrote a blog post about how the road to becoming a doctor is riddled with sacrifice, and lacking in much of the robustness of life that should be savored in one’s twenties.

Stupid “poor me” bullshit. I published the post, re-read it, and promptly deleted it. It just didn’t sound right. A few minutes ago, I realized why.

I’m living the dream. I’m in school, I don’t have to work (my parents are paying for my living expenses and I’m putting my classes on loans), and my only obligation is to learn really interesting things and study really, really hard. I’m LUCKY to be doing this.

Yes, the road to becoming a doctor is riddled with sacrifice. But if you learn how to maximize your time with friends and hobbies (that is, whenever you have the opportunity to step away from your studies), you won’t feel like you’re giving up TOO too much. You’ll have to prioritize, but at the end of the day, you’ll feel fulfilled.

And at the end of many, many days, you’ll be a doctor.

I don’t have the mental or physical capacity to make this a long post, but I just wanted to get this down while it’s fresh in my mind. I get it. I finally get what the next, 7? 8? 11? years of my life are going to be like. They’re going to be filled with days like today, when I go into the library at 2:00pm and I don’t leave until 5:00am. Granted, tonight is (or was) the eve of a day when I have to turn in two problem sets and a prelab. I know that most days won’t be like today. But many will.

Towards the end of my 15-hour marathon, I started working with a group of people from my classes. Good people, fun to be around. As I walked home, I thought about how I need to do even more socializing in my immediate surroundings. Unless I don’t want to have a social life. School takes up a good 95% of my time. So I can’t afford to keep my school life and social life separate anymore. I have to integrate the two. Because if I don’t, I’ll go through all of these years with nothing more than a healthy head and a weak heart.

The sun is going to come up soon. I’m going to try to not be awake for it.

I don’t have a whole lot of time to write this, both in the general sense (school is taking up most of my time) as well as the immediate (this library closes in less than 20 minutes). But I wanted to punch something out, as I haven’t posted since I was in Europe. My life is drastically different than it was in August, but almost entirely in positive ways. My brain is being stimulated on a daily, sometimes hourly basis, by what I’ve been learning. True, not all of it is stimulat-ING, but at least it’s new. More often than not, the stimulating part is actually understanding the material. Whenever that happens, I feel like I’m advancing a few feet into the light-year distance between myself and my goal.

I’m becoming a little nocturnal, as I had hoped. I typically wake up by 10:00am (which is late for me) and go to bed by 3:00am. I study better at night, when I have a few hours of nothing but me and my books. The Lamont Library is open 24 hours Monday through Thursday. Awesome. But nothing beats the reading room of Widener, even though it closes in the early evening. I think I like it better than the reading room at the Boston Public Library in Copley.

With regard to my current situation, the two main things I’ve realized are (1) Time is more valuable than money, and (2) There’s not enough time in the day. The horizontal escalator of this program keeps going at a steady speed (with occasional increases in acceleration, thanks Physics) and it doesn’t wait for anyone. It’s so incredibly easy to fall behind. You have to look at the material every chance you get, because planned study periods are not at all enough.