by. the. way.

I’m going back to Peru. I’ve wanted to return to Peru since the moment I left it four years ago. Knowing the immensely profound opportunity I have to travel to a foreign country, be welcomed by a community, and help that community with my newly acquired skills and knowledge has the power to make me take a deep breath and hold it. Then I stop and think: Is one week enough? The answer is most definitely: No, it is not. I want to stay there for months…and months. There are multiple problems with that. 1. That would be expensive. 2. I have a fantastic job opportunity that will not wait for me for that long. 3. I do not know if I have the capacity for being alone in a country I do not know, speaking a language I am only slightly acquainted with for that period of time. I am not sure which of those three problems is the most significant. Maybe they are all equally significant. Each has its own importance. The last thing I want to do is go to an amazing country for an extended time whil...

Countdown has begun. Officially 5 months and 26 days to go… Graduation. Cliché to say it is one of those exciting/terrifying/confusing/exhilarating anticipated moments. It is though. The complicated part involves determining which fractions of my past deserve being ended while my multiple new beginnings set to blossom soon. This is further complicated by having what seems like EVERYONE ask you what field I am going to go into once I’ve graduated and passed my boards. For a while I was concerned because every rotation I entered left me with the feeling of “Wow, I could do this, too.” I was warned by multiple advisors and professors that I would most likely find myself in that situation; the situation of enjoying and being good at several fields, while finding it difficult to determine which was truly calling to me as a possible profession. Fortunately, I do not think that will be the case for me. I finally had my true “AHA” moment. The trick is now to align my “AHA” moment with r...

I have been single 25 of my 27 years of life. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. And yet, everything around me tells me that I should not be so content with my solitude. The movies, the wedding channels, the tv shows centered around relationships, every person I know engaged/married/pregnant… these things all point to our predilection to pair off in twos and go forth and prosper. Some days, I log onto Facebook, look at the most recent engagements, pregnancies, marriages, relationships, wedding planning, etc, and I want to delete every single person. It is not a malicious deleting that would occur. I think of it more as self-preservation . What is a girl supposed to do while she is inundated with couples and procreation? It is particularly obnoxious when you have not seen a person in multiple years and their first question for you is, “So are you seeing anyone?” Now, when you are asked this question as their opening line, it intrinsically implies that nothing else going...