Pics by Randall Munroe, and then copied and pasted around by me…(a la). MCOM = Morsani College of Medicine – USF got an endowment by the Morsani’s so they added Morsani to our school name.  The name change was somewhat controversial at our school, but what can I say?

I arranged the above for a potential class shirt, but it seemed only my close friends liked it; others were less excited.  But it basically encompasses everything my class is known for…we have our athletes, flash mob/dancers, foodies (<3), drinkers (embodied by people with party hats), sleepers, ADD/ADHD/caffeine-overdosed (swivel chair), TV people.  And then the other half of the cycle is us studying and practicing our doctoring skills.  My friends wanted me to make our own shirts since the shirt committee didn’t like it.  So perhaps I’ll get this printed (or try printing it myself!  One of my summer goals was to learn to screen print, but it is a lot of work and a lot of mess…hmm, is it worth it?).

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I’ve been away for quite a while, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t been on occasionally snooping.  O_~ – no worries, I haven’t forgotten Xanga, though perhaps I have forgotten my writing-voice, or how to write in general.  My absence can be accounted for in a simple or complex way.  Simple, being that medical school is basically a blackhole and I somehow made it into the event horizon and now cannot escape its pull (ahhhhhh).  And also complex, in that I’ve been having small internal crises, which I suppose I can elaborate on now. 

I spent a lot of my younger days being relatively unsocial – not antisocial, but just passively social – social when things were arranged, but mostly just social when at school, or within my nuclear family; I did not venture out too frequently, largely because of a disinterest in being socially assertive, though I had been encouraged to be more assertive (in all walks of life), or at least try to; coupled with a somewhat crippling fear or discomfort with things like talking on the telephone.  [To this day I struggle with those fears; a fear of an unknown voice at the end of a line, fear that my hearing (or lack thereof) would making things awkward, fear of a lack of understanding - for some reason I am terrible with accents, and probably above all a fear of being awkward and inarticulate.  And I hate asking people to repeat themselves, because it seems my hearing just isn't the best; especially when there is a lot of background fuzz.  But I digress.]

…I became more social after attending Duke TIP summer camps, but my social life shifted towards people online/long distance rather than at home, with maybe one or two exceptions.  But after maybe a year or so of keeping in touch really well with these friends, each year I found my friendships gradually fading, as my friends, and myself became progressively more busy with school work.  After a while, a part of me started to become increasingly detached from people – why?  Year and year again, I would feel a sadness inside at the ebb and flow of friendships that I had felt to be so deep and full of potential.  But a part of me felt that those friendships would end up living in the past, in that we were all long distance and so our friendship circles would be confined to the people from camp, and being young it was hard to arrange to meet up in future/present days.  So even our memories seemed to be a thing of the past.  I let friendships slip away…

It didn’t help that my first relationship was one that was carried over distance too.  It is true – I learned to communicate more and more, as I found myself increasingly attached; and then things like Xanga helped perpetrate that – I could hear my own voice when I wrote, typed, but when I had to get up and speak, I felt myself lost.  Online, I generously allowed myself whatever time I felt needed to compose my thoughts, to carefully construct my words.  I was happy with my composure.  But in person, I didn’t have that luxury.  Conversations move at a faster pace in person; you have to think quickly and speak up to be heard – you have to pace yourself, otherwise the conversation moves on.  For me, that meant, my voice was often lost.

Part of me needed to be away from a place of introspection – because sometimes I suspect that when I think too much, and allow myself to worry, I end up making myself more awkward.  Part of me needed to grow up, and learn how to speak in real-time.  But I was torn, because over the years I had developed friendships here on Xanga that I was afraid to lose in my absence.  And I have relied heavily on my journaling to remember past events, chronicling my life (you know, like an external hard drive o_~).  But I needed (and still need) to learn how to interact with people in my normal day-to-day life.

Part of me felt like I was being cowardly and disappearing under the auspices of being busy with med school: it was 95% truth – school was absolutely consuming for both mind and spirit (psychologically, I was quite shaky from stress); but to say I had no social life, and no time for correspondence would be a lie.  But the above .  I am not entirely sure at the present how much time I will have to post/browse once the school year starts back again – second year is supposed to be kicking first-year up many notches, and at the end of second year I have the biggest test of my life (USMLE Step 1 – it’s probably the biggest thing residency considers since my school is pass/fail/no-grades, so it basically determines what I can do for the rest of my life…besides interviews, letters of rec, etc.), but I’ll be around for the next few weeks.