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SubscriptionsSites I Read
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| Great-ish Expectations A week ago, I received my stupid-good-better-than-I-deserve MCAT score. You'd think this would make me ecstatic, that I would interpret it as some shining beacon towards getting into a good med school. To be fair, there is a nontrivial amount of that. Yet, I've been more stressed than expected this last week, more so than before I got my score.
I've finally figured out why (thanks, cathartic runs!). I think that one of the few things worse than scoring poorly on the MCAT is scoring very well on it, then not making use of it. I interpret the score as a combination of my preparation and quite frankly, a gift from God. Now that I've got this gift, I very much do feel the pressure to make the best of it.
I'm well aware that the exam is something that helps put you on a particular tier, but there's still much work to be done to make sure that you stay there and get into something of that tier. I'm just mortified that I won't put in the last remaining work (essays, recommendations) that an admissions person would expect of someone with my score. I guess this is the very definition of heightened expectations, and why anyone in the know tells me that the (medical) rat race never will never until I willfully and consciously get out of the race.
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| Involvement vs. CommitmentI heard the following quote today, and upon some googling I found that it originated from Martina Navratilova:
"The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig is committed."
If only it were bacon instead of ham, I'd totally be committed!
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| Awards Every now and then I gain recognition in interesting ways. At the end of high school, I was voted 'most likely to go wild with his newfound college freedom'. I discovered today that one of my current groups of friends has voted me 'person I'd least want to trade lives with right now'. Ouch.
I don't think my current life is all that sucky, but I will admit that the friends in question probably have better ones..less stressful ones at least! Oh well, c'est la vie.
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| Alone I was at a party earlier this evening with a number of friends. At one point, there were only four of us in the room, the other three being friends who have been in Boston for as long as I have, a year and a half shy of a full decade. Then it hit me that six months from now, all of them will have moved elsewhere, either for school or work. I had known this for a while now, but I was suddenly hit with a large dose of loneliness. Not because I'll be friendless here (I won't be by any means), but that for better or worse, next winter will be markedly different at least with regard to my social life.
I can interpret this one of two ways. Firstly, that I should really look into moving on like so many of my friends have and accelerate the process that I've already set in motion. Alternatively, I can take this as a sign that it's time for me to improve at defining myself beyond the friends I have. I mean this in the sense that in the next party I attend, perhaps my first action shouldn't be to look for friends or acquaintances I know, but to meet people I don't. That I should actively create a niche such that when I look back many decades from now, I can unequivocally say that I charted a path that was motivated solely by my aspirations. The question then becomes, do I have that kind of will?
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| Spring in New England I biked into work today wearing no layers but a
t-shirt. It's currently sunny and 65 out with a light
breeze. Lest you think something's wrong with this, I assure you
it's very much in line with the schizophrenia that is Boston
weather. This highlights the fact that Spring in New England
isn't a continuous season -- it's really two weeks of Spring-like
weather scattered between March and December.
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