Post-Finals Quarter One

Today marked the passage of quarter one. With complete exhaustion and utter humility I can say, I did well - despite it all. At 4:00AM this morning I was still begging my brain to remember countless dirty mnemonics to remember what all each of the 20 amino acids does/becomes. I was trying to remember every step and enzyme and enzymatic subunit of DNA replication, transcription, and translation. I was trying to remember what happens from the moment you eat your dinner to the moment what's left comes out. It seemed like billions of enzymes all starting with either gluco- or phospho- and ending in -ase. And the pathways! The pathways and their enzymes and things that can go wrong and what happens when things do go wrong, and what to do about it. . .and on and on and on. 500 pages of this!

If you are a pre-med student, do not tear-up your application. It's hard as Hell to get in. It's hard as Hell to succeed. However, it's great to be here. My friends and I discussed how it's similar to being in an abusive relationship - "It was my fault; I'll try harder next time." "If medical school didn't love me and want me to succeed, it wouldn't push me so hard." All right, that's a terrible analogy, but there's some truth to it. It's horrible, and yet, it's awesome. I bet you didn't know tonsils are also on your tongue and your palate. See - pretty damn cool.

It's worth it, even when I feel like I can't possibly take another day of this or another bad grade it all evens out, and by tomorrow, I will have had more than 3 hours of sleep, and that's truly wonderful.

What an honor - to learn so much about the secrets in every crevice and cell. It certainly isn't easy, but I'm glad I'm here.