Thoughts are with Michigan right now… I just… cannot wait for this summer. I think about it most days of the week.  Thoughts are also drifting around. I read on a website recently, that it’s not enough to be better. One needs to be different. There is a need, or if not a ‘need,’ an insatiable human desire, for good stories. Compelling stories. Stories that make us go, “What?! Weird. Cool. That’s awesome. That’s crazy. That’s crazy awesome. Is that possible? Did somebody really do that? I want to do that.”  I’m not about to sit on my ass for my whole life and not do something that contributes to life. I may not have any clue in the world what the point of life is, and no other living thing probably does either, really, but I’ll create my own meaning, seeing as I’m here for at least a little while. For now, I’m going with the following: I’ve been blessed with a rather high quality of life, much agency and freedom, and many other things. There is no reason that other people (or living beings of any kind considering plant life, animal life, and bacteria life all sustain humanity more than we can really understand) should not have the chance to experience at least a decent quality of life. We are all people, and on a larger scale, we are all living beings, connected through threads of biochemical reactions and experience despite the differences in manifestation. I want to do something that balances reaching out to other people, with webs of relationships and worldviews that I only ever see glimpses of, and other living things, in a beneficial way, because hey, I’d like it if other people would do that for me. Treat others the way you want to be treated (on a basic level…). I’d like to be treated with compassion, understanding, open-mindedness, and awareness. The golden rule is golden for a reason.  So. I’m sure there are a lot of people with those same or similar ideas and desires. How will I be different?  Possibilities: being the first kid to enter or maybe even win the concerto competition on steel pan at my school; being the first kid to enter or maybe win in the undergraduate artist competition on solo steel pan at my school; stay local with volunteer work - there are people in poverty in my backyard, masked by the atmosphere of my university, and there is no reason not to reach out to these neighbors; do research on music and healing, whether that be ethnography or perhaps a scholarly, musicological article, and maybe get published someday; be the medical school candidate who has outstanding grades and a high-ish MCAT score, has over 60 hours of shadowing under her belt, hasn’t done lab research because she doesn’t particularly want to, quite frankly, and who has done local volunteer work and understands the power of empathy and social science in the dynamic field of medicine. I want these things to happen. They will happen. Priorities. 

Thoughts are with Michigan right now… I just… cannot wait for this summer. I think about it most days of the week. 

Thoughts are also drifting around. I read on a website recently, that it’s not enough to be better. One needs to be different. There is a need, or if not a ‘need,’ an insatiable human desire, for good stories. Compelling stories. Stories that make us go, “What?! Weird. Cool. That’s awesome. That’s crazy. That’s crazy awesome. Is that possible? Did somebody really do that? I want to do that.” 

I’m not about to sit on my ass for my whole life and not do something that contributes to life. I may not have any clue in the world what the point of life is, and no other living thing probably does either, really, but I’ll create my own meaning, seeing as I’m here for at least a little while. For now, I’m going with the following:

I’ve been blessed with a rather high quality of life, much agency and freedom, and many other things. There is no reason that other people (or living beings of any kind considering plant life, animal life, and bacteria life all sustain humanity more than we can really understand) should not have the chance to experience at least a decent quality of life. We are all people, and on a larger scale, we are all living beings, connected through threads of biochemical reactions and experience despite the differences in manifestation. I want to do something that balances reaching out to other people, with webs of relationships and worldviews that I only ever see glimpses of, and other living things, in a beneficial way, because hey, I’d like it if other people would do that for me. Treat others the way you want to be treated (on a basic level…). I’d like to be treated with compassion, understanding, open-mindedness, and awareness. The golden rule is golden for a reason. 

So. I’m sure there are a lot of people with those same or similar ideas and desires. How will I be different? 

Possibilities: being the first kid to enter or maybe even win the concerto competition on steel pan at my school; being the first kid to enter or maybe win in the undergraduate artist competition on solo steel pan at my school; stay local with volunteer work - there are people in poverty in my backyard, masked by the atmosphere of my university, and there is no reason not to reach out to these neighbors; do research on music and healing, whether that be ethnography or perhaps a scholarly, musicological article, and maybe get published someday; be the medical school candidate who has outstanding grades and a high-ish MCAT score, has over 60 hours of shadowing under her belt, hasn’t done lab research because she doesn’t particularly want to, quite frankly, and who has done local volunteer work and understands the power of empathy and social science in the dynamic field of medicine. I want these things to happen. They will happen.

Priorities. 

Tags: life musings michigan be different if you cannot be better premedicine music health