Y.O.L.O.

Y.O.L.O. A good friend of mine taught me what this acronym meant. It simply means, You Only Live Once.

It is with this premise that I submitted my paperwork to transfer to Austin in the spring. I'm nervous and excited but I feel like this needs to happen so I can move forward with my life. Since I moved back home, I think I've become dependent on my parents and the conveniences of Suburbia.

I think moving away, while obviously not convenient or financially palatable, will do me some good. I need to grow up again, regain independence and ultimately, be where the professors are who are doing the research I want to be part of.

I've been in some sort of funk ever since school has started. Something just feels off. Maybe it's where I'm at, maybe it's what I'm studying.... I just don't know.

With the move to Austin underway, my parents want to know my next plan in excruciating detail. Well in all honesty, my answer to their questions is mostly, "I don't know." I'm beginning to this k that's okay. In the past, I was a meticulous planner, strategically orchestrating everything. And where has that gotten me?! Not particularly far. I think I'm just going to play it by ear and go where my heart tells me to go.

Sometimes when I freak out about my career, I revert to the whole maybe-I-should-go-to-med-school attitude. But in one of my epiphanies, I think I realized why I keep running back to medicine: because it's safe, predictable. But when have I ever been orthodox? I'm aloof, airy and if I were to consider a doctorate, I think a PhD would be more accommodating because I like so many different things. Medicine doesn't give me the chance to do what I want to do and it's so hierarchical that I don't think I could conform to the narrow parameters of the profession.

But I just have to hold steady, be true to myself and have faith that it'll work out in the end.

More to come later!

Dean