Time to get back up on my feet

2011-08-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

I got the confirmation that I am no longer a student at the university. I am a reject out of the reject medical schools. i had to tell my parents and the devastation and disappointment on their faces was crushing. They're worried sick. They're calling all over the place to figure out if I have any option to enter medicine. To be completely honest, it seems to me that going into medicine is not a good option for me. It might just be the disappointment of the grades talking but I need to figure this out. The problem is that family in India have told me I need to decide "within hours" if I want to do medicine and they might be able to get me an admission in India even though I'm a U.S. citizen. It's going to cost my parents a fortune (it is a one time payment up front to enter the university). It is a payment of around 160,000 USD. My dad can't afford that. He would have to take out a second mortgage on the house to finance this (there is no financial aid like American schools so that I can pay for myself, I have to depend on my parents completely). To be completely honest, I think I'm going to talk to them and tell them going to India for medical school at that cost is not preferable. But let's be fair, not having an option to do anything isn't that preferable either. I really got myself in a big mess and I need to get myself out of this as soon as possible. The thing with telling my parents I don't want to do medicine is that when I do tell them, my dad says 'you can't just give up on something, you need to go through with things in life'. He has a point there. I can't develop a tendency to quit all the time. But what do I do in this situation where I need to figure out my capabilities and just the simple practicality of this. If I'm being honest, I would have to say that I liked the concept of medicine as a career but never pursued it with the passion I needed to succeed.

Either way, worrying about the past will get me nowhere. I need to figure out what to do now. I feel like I need to tell my parents they can't that type of a risk on someone this undependable. I'm not being gloomy about myself but I need to be honest with myself - I need to develop some dependability. If I don't do medicine, the other options mainly include business and law. Law kinda rules itself out based on the fact that I've taken only a few undergrad political science classes and I need to probably go back to undergrad and THEN apply to law school. That would extend the whole thing by a couple of years. The other option seems to be business but I would have to either take a semester of classes in January and apply for an MBA starting August 2012 (pointless if the world ends that December lol). However, my parents believe the best thing for me to do is to go to India (noticing a common trend here lol) and prepare for what are called 'entrance examinations' for some of India's best business schools. Most of them don't require any previous work experience and I would have a relatively good shot at getting a good job when I return to the U.S. It might seem that I keep saying 'my parents want me to do this....' a lot but the reality is I'm kind of lost right now. I need to snap out of this and take care of my life. I guess I've started some things - I haven't watched any TV or wasted times on the laptop but I still have a long way to go. Sorry for the whiny nature of this blog but I'm just working my way out of a rut... let's see how this goes. Hope everything's good to whoever reads this.

Here it Goes

2011-08-22T17:08:00.000-07:00

I'm a slacker... there's no other way of putting it. Not only that, I'm a stereotypical slacker. I'm the guy in the Judd Apatow movies that doesn't really have a purpose and is just going along in life being a nobody. Wait... there's one difference... my life isn't nearly as funny/charming. I spent most of my young adulthood (?) going through school on intelligence. I put in absolutely no hard work. I usually got things once I looked at them and that was enough... or so I thought. That was enough until high school. To be fair though, college wasn't that bad either. After doing horrendous my freshman year, I found the right balance of slacking and studying that got me through college without much effort. Of course, I was no A student... no, I haven't been an all-A student since sophomore year of high school. I graduated college with a double major in biochemistry and business. I graduated with half of my classes being A's and the other half most being with B's and some C's here and there. Nothing extraordinary... pretty average.... unless you want to be a doctor. Which is exactly what I wanted to be, funnily enough. Took me 5 years to go through undergrad... when I was done... I applied to US medical schools.. that didn't work out and then I applied to Caribbean Medical schools... wasted a year after graduating and then went to one of the medical schools in the Caribbean...

so that's the background story of my life...

fast forward to present day... after a semester in that school... it looks like I didn't make it to next semester... yes, that's right... I might have failed out.... which means I have to either look at a backup career or apply again to another Caribbean medical school and hope for the best.... quite a situation I've managed to get myself into. To be honest, the school wasn't too helpful. It wasn't geared towards the student being successful (it has a famously poor attrition rate).. but bottom line is that this happened because I don't know what hard work is. I went 23 years without ever working hard and started couple of months ago. And I have no logic behind why I thought I could just pick it up out of the blue. I would spend hours and hours studying. In fact, most of my day was spent studying with the odd half an hour here and there to check my mail or watch a show here and there (keep this one in mind). But my days consisted of studying, eating, and some more studying. But it didn't work. I would spend hours going through material but I wouldn't be used to the concept of picking material up. I would remember going over it but I couldn't remember the details that I needed in order to do well on the exam. So I did bad on one of the midterms and although I got A's afterwards... it was too much of a hole for me to pull out of. But to be honest, the effort could have been greater. There were nights that I couldn't keep going and called it a night instead of pushing through. Either way, what is done is done.

My options at this point are switching to a masters in management (or an MBA) or reapply. And honestly, that's a decision I need to make with my parents so I haven't figured it out yet. But there are a few things I need to change about myself. First thing would be my horrible attention span. I stopped three times and went to do something else during this blog entry. I started this almost two hours ago and I haven't even written that much. I need to change that. I figured I will try meditation or other mental exercises to fix it. So i'll track those on here as time goes on. Second thing I need to change is my attitude. I need to be more positive about life and realize that no matter how bad things are, there is always a possibility of it working out. I just need to remember that whenever I'm doing anything. Third, and perhaps the most important, is that I need to stop watching TV. Well, to be more specific, I need to stop watching TV shows on hulu or other streaming websites. I have somehow developed an addiction to always having something playing on my laptop on the background (I have downloaded every single episode of about 10 or 11 different shows) and I feel like something's wrong if there isn't something playing in the background. To be honest, it is immensely debilitating. I can't focus when there's no show (or that's what it feels like... in reality I understand that it might be that I focus less with the show on). I need to fix this as soon as possible if I want to be anything in life. I realize I can't stop cold turkey so I need to slowly control my desire to watch TV. I started by deleting all of the episodes that I had downloaded. I did this during the semester but it obviously didn't help as much as I thought it would. But I have to keep going. I'm at a point where I know the story lines of so many shows that I wanna keep watching and following the plot lines. I know I can't stop all of them at once. So I've decided to go from double digits down to two. I don't know if that is too big of a jump but I have to try. Finally, I need to develop a reading habit. I need to read more in my free time, no matter how little of it I can find. Developing a good reading habit will help me read textbooks as well.

Sorry for such a rambling post (then again, I doubt anyone will read this). But I have five immediate goals in my life.

1 - figure out my career options (apply to business school and reapply to medical school)
2 - develop a better attention span
3 - maintain a positive attitude
4 - stop watching TV eventually
5 - develop a good reading habit

and working out wouldn't hurt either... so I guess that's 6 goals that I want to achieve. I will either pull myself out of this or be stuck like this and be a deadbeat. Wish me luck.

- a slacker trying to change

Slacker at a crossroads

Time to get back up on my feet

Here it Goes