The Good: I'm in Grenada, It's a beautiful country and when I make it out to the beach (rarely), I feel so lucky to be in such an awesome place for medical school. This semester, I have made some really good friends. The best being Taymaz, he gets my sarcastic sense of humor and we're constantly being assholes to each other but in a funny way. He doesn't take himself too seriously and is hard to offend. We click really well. Swetha, Chay, and Taymaz are in my wet lab group and we are constantly laughing. I'm not sure how much we are learning but I look forward to this part every week because 1) it means anatomy lab is almost over and I will soon be napping and 2) I never laugh so hard the rest of the week.
The bad: I'm super homesick. Jason is at home with Ginny and I miss them so much. I miss being able to lounge around and not stress about how much studying I am or am not doing 24/7. I can't wait to go home so I can watch movies, go out to bars with friends, go shopping, hang with family, cook, etc. I love Grenada but it is definitely not America and I dream about the day I will be able to walk into publix and have so much produce to choose from. At IGA, the grocery store here, there is only one salad green each time I go. So if they only have spinach, I'm lucky and I eat spinach that week. If they only have arugula, then I'm unlucky and I'm stuck eating Arugula all week. I hate arugula.
The ugly: Last week in wet lab, I held a brain. Like super nonchanlantly, sat there holding it while talking to my group about our plans that weekend, what we were eating after lab, etc. And I realized holy shit I'm holding a brain. This person's entire life was in this thing. Memories, stresses, moral decisions, thoughts, prayers. Everything that was this person was in this thing and here it is, resting in my hands. Being in medical school is weird because I feel like I know too much and it makes my anxiety skyrocket. Sometimes in biochem, we're learning about all these incredibly complicated and intricate pathways and I have a hard time believing that I'm alive. That these pathways are actually working inside of me and have been perfectly for 24 years, and I'm still alive. The human body is an extraordinary machine and while I'm so thankful to have the opportunity to learn it inside and out, it can also be overwhelming and a bit personal in the moments I remember that I'm also human and all this knowledge applies to my own body. Learning about these diseases and ways this machine can screw up becomes oddly personal and unsettling when I think about how that can affect my own body and the bodies of people I love.
Overall, this semester has been full of ups and downs. While I have had moments of despair and nights of crying and stress, I am happy to be here and have a newly found confidence in myself. Can't wait to be home for awhile to recharge my batteries so I will be ready to kick some ass next term!
