The Distilled Point

I distinctly recall the night before I started medical school. In fact, I immortalized those feelings into a blog post, which you can find here. I called it “The Still Point” and I spoke of many things, like “leaving Southern California for the first time, meeting new people, and getting oriented to my new surroundings . . . stretching my mind and soul to prepare for the changes that are still to come . . . becoming a medical student, handling the workload, creating a work-life balance, and carving out a home for myself in Northern California.“

I remember the feeling of newness, uncertainty and excitement. It was sweet in the way that beginnings are sweet with the promise of new adventure. It is remarkable to look back and realize that I have done the very things I had set out to do, and then some. To realize the unfamiliar landscape of Northern California has become a home I can trace as well as the back of my hand. To think of my experience here in medical school with more familiarity than that of college or my gap year. To comprehend the medical topics I intimately interacted with. To consider the friends and mentors I’ve made in medical school, and wonder how they’ve not been in my life forever even though it sure feels like it.

The world is quite different from when I started medical school. If I had known then what I know now about just how much things were going to change in my personal life, academic life and even on a global scale, I honestly don’t even pretend to know what I would’ve said. I guess, the good news is that I have changed. I have done the human thing and reacted, then adapted, to my changing environment. Then, I emerged out the other side a different human who is also still very much the same.

As graduation approaches, I feel consumed with nostalgia. I find myself going back through old photos, old texts and old posts from 2018, trying to remember the person I was then. Perhaps I do this so that I may fully understand my own growth. To distill four years of stretching, squirming, dancing, laughing, crying, whispering, shouting, and changing into a moment that I can feel. I suppose it’s like putting on a pair of worn old sneakers for the first time in a while after you’ve long tossed them aside for a pair of newer sneakers. You feel the places in the sole where you wore it down more. It still fits you, but it feels a little unfamiliar. I ramble, but I mean to say that I don’t want this moment to go by without my acknowledgement of its magnitude.

In “The Still Point,” I wrote: “It is fascinating to think about all the changes that have happened and all the new variables that have entered my life in the past week. But — this is my favorite part — we haven’t even started yet. What a joy it is to have a day like today, where I can take the time to look backwards and forwards simultaneously, and feel gratitude for both dimensions.” Perhaps today, as I am poised to enter my graduation week and then start residency shortly thereafter, one thing still absolutely still rings true. We haven’t even started yet.