Tuesday, April 15, 2008

The Sunshine Post #11

Hello dears!

Ohmygod, you guys! Today, I saved the owner of a yoga studio from a completely heinous grammatical error on a poster he was going to blow up to be 53 feet high. Bad design must die, but grammatically incorrect design must burn forever! That cheered me up just a teeny bit. For at least a few seconds anyway!

***
"You know, thank God I'm not in medical school," was the one big conclusion I had after several weeks back in The Motherland. I think I finally had it with meeting friends in medicine who were so sick of what they were doing but didn't know what they wanted to do outside the box that they found themselves in. My Chinese side of the family has been screaming "Medical School!" since they found out I was out of research. Admittedly, I did think of this briefly. Surely there isn't anything bad in wanting to alleviate human suffering, right? But I just imagine myself buried under piles of textbooks, filled with drivel I have to memorize and spit out, being concerned with every single tedious detail only to have theories overturned the next year, and being obsessed with which hospitals to go to and which doctor I wanted to be with and that just did it. I can't do this, man. No more standardized tests – heck, standardized anything -- for me!

"Uh, Cathy dear, you do realize that's what we do, right?" my best guy friend who is in medical school told me after I had to explain (for the umpteenth freaking time!) Why. I. Don't. Want. To. Do. Research. Anymore. I think he thought I was allergic to doctors or something.

Well, not exactly. I think there are doctors, and then there are great doctors – the ones who really wanted to devote their lives to healing the sick, instead of those hacks who simply want the degree.

It might be an odd thing to say, but sometimes I feel that medical school (or law or business school) is Every Overachiever's Insurance Policy – what they would latch onto when they don't know what to do with their lives but wish to do something "respectable" in the minds of everyone else. No one wants to be in a phase where they don't have a "vision" of the future. But while they see it as a safety net, I see it as intelligence of no consequence if it's really not what you want.

It was August of last year when I experienced, for the first time, what it's like not to know what the future will bring. Oddly enough, while I was beleaguered with panic attacks during separate points, it was one of those phases in my life that kicked ass – the dreaded Transition Period. There is something to be said about being in a phase that wasn't in The Plan. Ohmygod, you guys! It was painful, but it rocked. For those who might be experiencing the same thing, here are the main points that I encountered:

1. People who are "transitioning" will take a language class because it's one of those things they can finally have time for, and it would be good to put on their CVs. In my case, I took up Spanish and French because I wanted to have a reason to wake up in the morning. Before I came to WYA, I planned to just pack it all up and go to Spain for a year. (When I tell this to my friends, they say, "Whoa, way to go, Cath! I didn't know you had it in you." Thank you. *takes a bow*) Language class also became my therapy session – you meet a lot of kindred spirits there. Everyone will say "Yo soy desempleado" or "Je ne travaille pas." I do not have a job. My favorite line was "Yo no se lo que hago." I don't know what I'm doing. Hell yeah.
2. Random strangers will applaud your dreams and share their life stories with you. In my case, I clearly remember a nice cheery Aussie woman in the top floor of Barnes and Noble Lincoln Center telling me to go for what I really want. The books you read, the movies you watch, the people you meet at that particular time will be very timely to your condition – it's like a film that Mother Nature is making out of your life.
3. There is an incomparable feeling of lightness that you will feel, letting go of a phase in your life and trusting that the next one will come. You feel like the world is yours to conquer again because you are starting on a clean slate, untainted by past (naïve) desires.
4. You meet a lot of people who are in the middle of the horrible state you were just in. They will tell you that you're lucky to have gotten out while you still can. This makes the period much easier.
5. Telling my parents I wasn't a scientist anymore was like coming out of the closet. And hel-lo! What a relief. Yeah Mom, I'm pregnant, a lesbian, and I work for non-profit. Just kidding about the pregnant and lesbian part!
6. I felt extremely happy being emancipated from having to decapitate rats all the time. I will never channel Lady Macbeth again, you guys! Out, damned spot, out I say! No more massacres!
7. I got through two taekwondo belt tests because I went to class everyday.

I've noticed that old friends want to meet up with me not necessarily because they want to catch up, but they want to see what I've been doing and what I plan to do. ( -- the latter of which I am so happy to keep to myself … My future, for the first time, is mine! All mine! Whee! You can bribe me with facials and massages and vegan desserts but I'm not telling you what I'm doing next year!) I think that it's the trend for those in their early-to-mid-twenties – we want to see how our peers are doing as a gauge to see how we are doing. Am I slacking off? Am I just on the right track? I hope I'm not the burnout of my generation. These are the thoughts that I can hear them thinking, mainly because my own brain is echoing them. No one wants to be the person who didn't "make it," especially when people had such high expectations of you.

You know, growing up, I've always had these nutty ideas and executed them until the end because they haunt me at night if I don't and I get these crippling migraines. But instead of "creative," they call it "obsessive compulsive." You have no idea how being referred to as The Creative One has turned my world upside down, you guys. I was just The Nerd before! "Happy" today was "Neurotic" in high school. Hahaha! Yahoo! Ah, how perspectives change when the wording is different. I think I hated everyone's previous labels of me because I haven't done anything with my life yet; I felt like they expected something of me that I couldn't give and because they implied some sort of defect. They laud the potential, instead of waiting for the actual achievement. They saw me as a freak. I think I like this now because it commands me to have something completely original and unaffected to give instead of being just another fraud. At least I hope so – Steve Jobs once said to stay hungry and stay foolish. I am both of those things right now and it will likely remain that way forever. But I hope minus the hungry part. It's hard to live on yogurt and granola bars alone, y'know. Vegetarian or otherwise.

***
I've been saying the weirdest things lately. Last week, at the Australian embassy when I attended the World Youth Day info session, I was waiting for a cab outside, under the blazing heat of Manila's summer. I skipped to the elderly woman ahead of me and said, "Excuse me! If I hold your umbrella, may I share it with you? My hair is starting to fry." Umbrellas during the summer are one thing you can see in Asia but not in the West. For them, it's because they don't want to darken; for me, it's because I don't want my thymines to dimerize and cause genetic mutations! Sigh. I wish I had a built-in tan.


Lots of love (and yes, I promise to be happier next time I write),
Cathy

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