So, I'm in my last year of medical school, year 6! This year is our intern year, which in the US is the first year of residency, but here it is the last year of medical school. I will have to complete another intern year when I start residency, which will be different and challenging in its own ways.
How have things been so far this year? Hard! Not really hard as far as the course content, but the workload is killer! In my first rotation, Pediatrics, I was working 6-7 days a week from 7:30am to 4:00pm, and if everything was done at 4, I could go. If not, I stayed until everything was done or took my work home with me. I also had overnight call shifts every 5 days, and often times more often because I was making up calls that I missed by missing the first week of school. Also, I was doing early completion of calls so that I could participate in a medical conference back in the US. On top of all of the call and normal day time work, I also had to study like crazy for weekly exams in different areas of pediatrics. I am happy to report that Pediatrics is now over, and I finished well. For us in Cuba, Pediatrics is the most labor intensive and draining rotation. There is more documentation required than adult medicine, which is all written by hand, and is time consuming as well as hard on your wrist tendons.
This year, I feel at peace with everything in my life, even though I know I am about to experience a major life shift. Now that this experience is almost over, I want to make the most of it, regardless of how tired I am from all of the work I have to do. I'm already starting to miss all of my friends in Cuba, who have been with me for the past 6 years. Whether they are Cuban, American, African, Caribbean, Latino or otherwise, our relationships will be greatly affected by graduation. I hope to stay in contact with everyone, but things will surely be different, and I know it.
I've been thinking quite a bit already about where I want to go for residency, and where I want to live just in general. Do I go back to California? If I do, do I go to San Bernardino where my family is, or do I go back to the Bay area, my favorite area in California? Do I go to a place with even more need than California like Mississippi or Alabama or Detroit since I know I am called to serve an underserved community? Will I even be able to afford to apply all over the country? I'm just not sure about a lot of things. I know no matter what, everything will be fine, but my life is once again about to go into flux.
Everyone says this year passes faster than any other, so even though I still have 8 months, the two that have passed, BLEW by like they were 2 days! I just hope I can hold on to peace, love and positivity as well as productivity and the adrenaline that has kept me going so far!
Sunday, November 9, 2014
New Perspectives on Old Topics
For me a huge part of growing up and maturing was/is realizing how much my perspective influences my understanding and my experiences. Before very recently, I feel like I just went through life forming opinions about different things without really thinking about where that opinion came from or how that very same opinion influences how I feel, how I remember, how I experience, and really everything about my life because life really kind of boils down to a series of experiences that we then remember in a particular way. Well, now I try to be very conscious and intentional about how I feel about things so that I can have more positive experiences and thus more positive memories, and as a result a more positive life.
To give everyone an example of what I'm saying just in case it's too vague to for people to really grasp, I didn't like avocados for a long time. I wouldn't eat them, and when I did, I had already decided in my mind, without even knowing that I had decided, that eating them would be an unpleasant experience, that I wouldn't like. And of course, I would never be disappointed, and would always have a horrible experience eating avocados and so would avoid them. Then, little by little, I started to open my mind to the idea of eating avocados mostly because I didn't have access to the same sources of protein in Cuba that I had in the US, and they have really great proteins in them that are important for me to eat as a vegetarian person. Now before I even buy an avocado, I'm thinking about the savory, delicious, smooth taste of them, how much they do for my body, and how pleasurable it will be when I get to eat them, which in turn makes the experience that much better. It takes time of course to change what I thought the first 25 years of my life, but I LOVE avocados now, and eat them as often as I can! My initial hatred for them was really just a lack of experience with them, and a prejudice that I had against them as a result of only tasting them a few times without any context.
I've decided to apply this ideology to many areas of my life, food being one of the biggest examples. I now eat mangoes, eggplant, raw onion, garlic, and bell pepper, fish, plain unsweetened yogurt, unsweetened tea and all sorts of things, that I thought I would never be able to stomach, just because I've changed my perspective on them to include their importance as part of a healthy diet which will then lead to longevity, vitality and health.
Another area of my life is my medical school experience. I LOVE studying medicine in Cuba. I love it even when I hate it. The reason why I love it even when I hate it is because I know in my heart and mind that my medical school is a wonderful place to study and practice medicine. My medical school and Cuba as a country are not without fault, just like anything else. My struggle is to always take the positive aspects of my school and Cuba as a nation with me in order to apply those things to my future life as a healthcare provider and to use the things that I perceive to be negative as lessons in what not to do. It's hard. It's really hard when I feel like I'm being treated unfairly, or being deprived of things I need, or promises to me have been broken, but I have decided that it is more important to me to be continuously growing and to have positive and healthy life experiences than it is for me to feel sorry for myself or wallow in negativity. At the end of the day, what real value does feeling sorry for myself really have? I don't feel better after I've gone on a rant about how I've been wronged. I don't grow from it. There is no more justice in the world afterwards. What really calls me to action is not a long speech about how terrible my life is. Not at all. I am motivated by my hope that I and all people can change. That all people can feel compassion. That we can learn from our own and other people's mistakes and strengths in order to create a better world for all of us. And for me that better world starts with first having a positive self image and a positive image of other people and things that I value. Then forgiving myself and others for our faults, and instead of judging, using those qualities or actions or whatever to improve ourselves, and finally always being open to have a new perspective on an old topic, because it will in fact change my experience and thus my life.
To give everyone an example of what I'm saying just in case it's too vague to for people to really grasp, I didn't like avocados for a long time. I wouldn't eat them, and when I did, I had already decided in my mind, without even knowing that I had decided, that eating them would be an unpleasant experience, that I wouldn't like. And of course, I would never be disappointed, and would always have a horrible experience eating avocados and so would avoid them. Then, little by little, I started to open my mind to the idea of eating avocados mostly because I didn't have access to the same sources of protein in Cuba that I had in the US, and they have really great proteins in them that are important for me to eat as a vegetarian person. Now before I even buy an avocado, I'm thinking about the savory, delicious, smooth taste of them, how much they do for my body, and how pleasurable it will be when I get to eat them, which in turn makes the experience that much better. It takes time of course to change what I thought the first 25 years of my life, but I LOVE avocados now, and eat them as often as I can! My initial hatred for them was really just a lack of experience with them, and a prejudice that I had against them as a result of only tasting them a few times without any context.
I've decided to apply this ideology to many areas of my life, food being one of the biggest examples. I now eat mangoes, eggplant, raw onion, garlic, and bell pepper, fish, plain unsweetened yogurt, unsweetened tea and all sorts of things, that I thought I would never be able to stomach, just because I've changed my perspective on them to include their importance as part of a healthy diet which will then lead to longevity, vitality and health.
Another area of my life is my medical school experience. I LOVE studying medicine in Cuba. I love it even when I hate it. The reason why I love it even when I hate it is because I know in my heart and mind that my medical school is a wonderful place to study and practice medicine. My medical school and Cuba as a country are not without fault, just like anything else. My struggle is to always take the positive aspects of my school and Cuba as a nation with me in order to apply those things to my future life as a healthcare provider and to use the things that I perceive to be negative as lessons in what not to do. It's hard. It's really hard when I feel like I'm being treated unfairly, or being deprived of things I need, or promises to me have been broken, but I have decided that it is more important to me to be continuously growing and to have positive and healthy life experiences than it is for me to feel sorry for myself or wallow in negativity. At the end of the day, what real value does feeling sorry for myself really have? I don't feel better after I've gone on a rant about how I've been wronged. I don't grow from it. There is no more justice in the world afterwards. What really calls me to action is not a long speech about how terrible my life is. Not at all. I am motivated by my hope that I and all people can change. That all people can feel compassion. That we can learn from our own and other people's mistakes and strengths in order to create a better world for all of us. And for me that better world starts with first having a positive self image and a positive image of other people and things that I value. Then forgiving myself and others for our faults, and instead of judging, using those qualities or actions or whatever to improve ourselves, and finally always being open to have a new perspective on an old topic, because it will in fact change my experience and thus my life.
Friday, November 7, 2014
This is creativity, sustainability, and just overall great! 10 Uses for Newspaper!!!
Cubans use and re-use newspaper over and over again in ways that are both official and unofficial, which I think is cool. I thought I would blog it! I hope to upload pictures soon!
Here's a list of all of the uses I've seen for newspaper in order of what I think are the most common uses to the less common uses...
1. Toilet paper (both as recycled paper that you buy in the store and just crumpled up paper that people use in their homes)
2. Bottle insulator (you wrap your frozen water bottle in newspaper and then put it in a plastic bag, which keeps it cold and from wetting everything in your bag)
3. Hand towels (just grab one and dry your hands!)
4. Moisture keepers for fresh herbs and flowers (you wrap fresh basil, cilantro, oregano, lilies, etc in newspaper to keep them moist and fresh)
5. Seat covers (if a chair or bench is wet, you just fold some newspaper and put it down to sit on top of it so you don't get your clean dry clothes wet and dirty)
6. Wrapping paper (for gifts, packages, storage, etc)
7. Window shades (in lots of buildings, you will see newspaper taped to the windows I think to keep the sun out)
8. Hand held fan (with the write folding, newspapers can create a pretty nice breeze)
9. Dust pan
10. Book covers
Here's a list of all of the uses I've seen for newspaper in order of what I think are the most common uses to the less common uses...
1. Toilet paper (both as recycled paper that you buy in the store and just crumpled up paper that people use in their homes)
2. Bottle insulator (you wrap your frozen water bottle in newspaper and then put it in a plastic bag, which keeps it cold and from wetting everything in your bag)
3. Hand towels (just grab one and dry your hands!)
4. Moisture keepers for fresh herbs and flowers (you wrap fresh basil, cilantro, oregano, lilies, etc in newspaper to keep them moist and fresh)
5. Seat covers (if a chair or bench is wet, you just fold some newspaper and put it down to sit on top of it so you don't get your clean dry clothes wet and dirty)
6. Wrapping paper (for gifts, packages, storage, etc)
7. Window shades (in lots of buildings, you will see newspaper taped to the windows I think to keep the sun out)
8. Hand held fan (with the write folding, newspapers can create a pretty nice breeze)
9. Dust pan
10. Book covers
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