29 Years in the Making....This one might be a lil’ bit long folks!!!!

May 17th 2014....Graduation...

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s 4am and no one goes to bed. That night of eating donuts and studying or playing ping-pong between lectures.. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. 

Life is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A bible study group, sports team, our casa, clubs, friends, spouses. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something, so that even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers — exhausted yet awake enough to study another hour for our 9am exam. We won’t have those next year, you know, exams... And no words exist in the known vocabulary of this race that can explain how, oh so excited I am about that (glazing over boards for the time being; gonna take a moment to relish before I allow the reality that only the most important tests EVER separate me from this happy fantasy forever)...Eeeeek!

Of course, there are things we wished we did: our readings, optional assignments, opting out of enjoying those light night beverages with amigos (yeah right, who regrets these nights)...We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I’ve looked back on my High School self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us.

But the thing is, we’re all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy person who thinks they’re going to win a prize or something…) We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that’s okay.

I sometimes feel that there’s this sentiment that sometimes creeps into our collective conscious as we lay alone with our thoughts, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.

When I came to NEOMED, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy – and it’s easy to feel like that’s slipped away. We never had to choose and suddenly we’ve had to. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it; already going onto residencies, working at the perfect consulting “ work-from-home” job, doing research that can change the future of disease treatment. To you I say both congratulations and you suck.

What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating from pharmacy school. We’re young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I’d say that’s how I feel at right now. How I feel at this moment in my lifetime. Here. In love, impressed, humbled, scared. And I don’t want to lose that.

We’re in this together, 2014. Let’s make something happen to this world!!