Summer Anxiety

I guess this summer should be, or at least one would think it to be, the quintessential summer of freedom. This is how I at least hoped it would be. However, after 3 or 4 graduation parties, I soon realized that the rest of my friends were racing towards the “real world”, leaving myself behind in a lagging haze, awaiting a fresh start in academia.

Its strange. Perhaps I should have had this experience in college, however I did not; I’m living with another MS1 in my class, a person whom I have never met. However, in college this experience comes with a sense of security, rooms regimented and set up so that this type of relationship reiterates itself per dorm floor, leaving for a sense of community amongst those sharing the same anxiety. In my case, I found a place in North Philly, went onto our blog, and wrote “help, I need a roomate”. I got a response, which is money because it cuts my rent in half, yet, for the first time I really feel stranded, left to be defined solely by the consequences of my actions. No academic advisors, no mass-exodus to and from lunch, no crowd to follow up and down the main artery of campus, no patio to sit on to enjoy the blur of life as it passes by, no 2 minute walk to class in whatever I decided to sleep in that night… no scranton community. I went to a small liberal arts college where everyone I knew was within a mile radius of me, everyone purely available when needed. Imagine diluting such a community over the greater philadelphia area… thats my class and their physical proximity to one another outside of Temple… I was always on the more stoic side of the scranton culture, but I always had someone I knew and could trust right around the corner. In a month, I will be living in a corner of the city, living a preset schedule, running a pre-planned life for success. What if I miss something, or forget a form? Will there be that frequency of social interaction that allots for the probability of discovering my own mistakes and shortcomings? or, Will I go on ignorant to something I may have done (or not done) until its too late? I guess what I am asking is the whole sense of community gone for good once the Wachovia Center empties that afternoon in May, leaving only promises constrained by the new limits imparted upon us by the “real world”? Maybe I’m being too harsh, or perhaps blowing this feeling out of proportion. But at least I’m glad Ifeel some sort of anxiety. I trust that its better than feeling nothing at all.

I hope this sort of anxiety will soon be replaced by excitement. Nix that. I hope the fact that all this is really happening soon hits me as a reality in itself. I’m still unable to believe it. I do not want Med School to pass me by in the same way that college did; a reality too fast to get a handle on. Memories blurred into random conglomerations due to the inability to be conscious of each and every moment.

There’s an interesting problem; time flies when you are having fun, completely immersed in your life at the moment, and thus, unable to consciously recognize each and every one of those moments until they are only elidgible for recollection. So whats better, participating only part-way in life, living the other part in your head as a narrative, forfeiting some participation, so that the most precious moments don’t slip away without notice? Or, completely immersing yourself everyday in your experiences, not missing any crevice of the reality around you, living in one sense, a vibrant experience in real time, but a diluted life when becoming conscious of it? Stopping to smell the roses is nice, but what do you miss in the time it takes to do so?

Right now, I’m in Hafey, typing my reflection paper for Dr. Steele.

Thoughts?