So upon finishing up my orgo test last Thursday and suffering inhumane sleep deprivation all week prior and all weekend since, I have come to the conclusion that I do not belong in medical school.

The clouds in front of my eyes are slowly breaking down and the more I look and think about the situation, the less justifiable it seems to be to me, personally, to study something so marginally personally rewarding as figuring out what is wrong with a patient. It seems to be a lot of years of expensive schooling. It doesn't just *seem* that, it IS that. Four years at fifty thousand dollars a year to be earning another forty five thousand dollars for the five years after that seems to me to be the worst use of the best and most active years of my life that I can come up with, short of cross-stitching my way across America. Whose moronic idea was it to design a 10 year plan which involved coming out and staying broker than they'd started at the beginning?
It may not at all be about money but seeing that the "changing people's lives" aspect is limited at best, I can't come up with any other reasons which seem attractive as of yet.

So it looks like (and it just looks like this right now....It may look very different tomorrow) I will be joining the workforce after I graduate from good ol' Columbia and putting to use this wonderful degree in BS. I haven't even yet decided where or how I plan to get this "job" but I know that ultimately what I want to do is sit in a cave of books somewhere reading and writing papers. But really this is just a nice way of saying i don't quite know what I want to do, because I haven't found a maximally effective use of my skills and years. What I would really like is an academic reference or two willing to say that the work that I've done at college is really good enough to let me read law in England, but I think I've missed the boat on that aspect - I haven't had a seminar in over a year (fucking Columbia core got in my way as did my Sinai requirements) and probably not a whole lot of professors who remember my brilliant contributions anyway. I don't research and I don't want to research and that is a large-ish obstacle to getting a recommendation, it seems.

A part of me still screams that I should be looking into ski bumming for the rest of my life. I opened up a magazine the other day while I was on rotation and there was this big splashy profile on Whistler and the guys who lived there (guys, because it was a guys magazine). There was a pro downhill biker, a ski patroller/DJ, a bona fide ski bum turned videographer for Matchstick Productions and just a whole bunch of other wholly enviable types who graced the pages of "I want to be a man like that" magazine (I forgot the name of it).

Also, reading K's blog makes me itch a little bit. Maybe I'm too comfortable in where I am right now...I have long since stopped clubbing with any semblance of regularity (throwback to the HS days, where I used to do it incessantly), only sometimes go to parties, haven't thrown one in forever, and, it seems, am perfectly okay with it. Most of the time. Reading about psychotic escapades with champagne and clubs and bars and lounges makes me want to pretend that I am single and run amok in cities more exotic than New York with hot twenty-somethings (who are more than likely willing to exploit my asianness) who are spending off their trust funds. I don't know what to do, whether this is serious or not, whether I actually really think that kind of thing would be "fun" at all, but there are parts of my conscience telling me that it could be, given that this time around I am actually legal while attempting all this. It probably would not be all that much fun given I could not be thoroughly ridiculously drunk doing it.

I also have bills to pay, which sucks.