Nadir...not too different from Nader and his politics

Dear Mr. Ham,

I am very pleased to let you know that you have been accepted to our medical school for the class of 2012. Our applicant pool has been the largest ever, and we would like to congratulate you for having come out on top of very competitive candidates. Just kidding. I am totally f@#$ing with you.

Yours truly,

Life


That about reflects my sentiments. I completely hyped myself up for this 1 month summer trip to China to work with their CDC and other public health sectors. I figured the shock of sitting on a frozen toilet seat earlier this week was as bad as it could get. For me, it almost feels equivalent to Bill Clinton turning down a Rhodes Scholarship to rush to his J.D. There are ultimate goals in life, but there are opportunities we come across that help us grow as a person, ultimately monumentally bolstering our greatest goals. It's not just about everything we can put down on paper and prove to others, but what we can prove to ourselves. In addition, opportunities such as these help mold our direction. In 5 years, what residency will I choose? In 10 years, what occupation and milieu? Currently, my selection would be as haphazard as most people selecting undergraduate majors. How asinine I would feel having half-heartedly made these decisions, and becoming an unpaid intern in global public health to test the waters following post-graduate residency, etc? Who decides what men get to follow their hearts and what men get to follow their minds? Back to Clinton, he was interested in medicine and thought he could be a fine doctor, but never a Michael DeBakey. The majority of physicians perform exponentially below Dr. DeBakey and a hypothetical Dr. Clinton, but who was to say that he would become the next president of the United States? I say it's the difference between getting pulled out by the current and swimming upstream. Cookie cutter my butter and let it melt as it pleases.