Wrap up: Time and Place

 I've been back in the States for three weeks. It feels much longer, like I've been here all summer. This surprised me. I thought that I would feel more reverse culture shock, that Ann Arbor and East Lansing would feel more foreign. I thought that I would feel uncomfortable driving my car again. I thought the American hypermarts would overwhelme me. I thought I would cringe at American-accented English.

The first three to five days, I felt this way. I wanted to find all the foreign things I had in Europe. Trader Joe's 100% Rye Bread is a close approximation of rugbrød. At a restaurant in East Lansing I had Zywiec beer.

At the same time as the discomfort, however, these were also glorious days of rediscoveries. I finally got a fragel, which I wanted to do the last day before I left in January but the store was closed for the holidays. So I fulfilled a wish I had maintained for six months.

By the time first weekend was over -- I came back on a Monday -- it felt like I had been here in Ann Arbor all summer, which begins for most American college students in early May.

This doesn't mean I've forgotten about Denmark. The opposite: I think about Denmark and Erasmus all the time. Like I've said many times before, those six months were the greatest six months of my life. The people, the traveling, the just hanging out in Århus. But I'm not raving about it to everyone the way I thought I would. I feel like I've entered a different chapter of my life. Denmark exists in memories. For the people I met on Erasmus, we're all post-Erasmus now and that's the way it must be. I feel that if I keep talking about Denmark and exchange that I'll start to have Peter Pan syndrome. As much as I would like to go back to Denmark, I can't because by "Denmark" I mean both a place and a time. Maybe sometime in the future I'll go to Denmark but we've all moved beyond that time to new endeavors.

My train from Århus to Copenhagen airport as it passed Copenhagen central station. July 12th, 2010 approx.12:30am

Things I think about: The next 10 years

It's in part the publicity about the Sex and the City movie, in part the transition to medical school -- a narrowing career path, and in part joking with some friends here in Århus, that in the past couple weeks I've imagined a life like this 10 years from now. 

They include: 

an apartment in NYC

a vineyard in upstate New York

a cat

a stay-at-home husband to cook, clean, and oversee the wine-making in our vineyard

and a job to support all this

As you can see, some of these goals are more realistic than others. Or actually only one is likely to come to fruition and it doesn't involve real estate or subservient spouses. 

With all seriousness, none of these things will happen, probably. And really, I don't want a stay-at-home husband to cook and clean. By calling out the inadequacy and injustice of patriarchy -- assuming the male experience to be the correct and universal one -- I don't want simply assume the dominance. That's not feminism. 

But all this represents some things that I do hope to have: a sense of home and permanence. It's not anything I want now! But I think that after 10 years, I'll be weary of school, of moving around every few years to complete my education and start a career. I want to be able to live life the way I want, maybe have some choice in the city or region I live. And I would really like to have a cat. It would be a nice life. 

Epic fail. Epic freak out.

I can't count or look at a calendar apparently. The halfway point of my time here hasn't come yet! It will be this weekend. When I was panicking last night, thought I had two more months here, but I actually have three. Now I feel a bit silly for freaking out earlier.

But I'm still really stressed out -- in the short term because of planning this Easter break trip. In the long run, I'm stressed because of the general drawing down of my time here. I have three more months but I will need a week or two to prepare for my exams and to pack and clean out my room.

If anything, my miscounting shows my level of panic.

I did email STA Travel to inquire about changing my return flight. They haven't replied yet with a price quote. Even if it's cheap to change the date, I actually don't have a place to stay past June 30th. The obvious solution to this is to keep traveling for about two more weeks but this brings about all sorts of logistical problems and additional expenses...

Setting the scene, two months later

Yikes it's been a long time since I've updated my blog. This entry is basically a fact dump. It's very likely that I've said all these things before but just for the record here:

Århus is spelled with the letter Å but it is also spelled as Aarhus. This is because the letter Å was introduced in 1948 to replace Aa. The name of the university is technically Aarhus Universitet because it was established before the new letter was  used. But the name of the city is Århus. Å is also the last letter of the alphabet. After z comes æ, ø, å in that order.

I'm taking classes at Aarhus University. Two of my three classes are regular courses open to Danish students. The other is a Danish politics course only for non-Danish students. Danish college students don't need to learn the names of Denmark's main political parties. That's what we're learning now.

I have never lived so close to all my classes. They are all within a five to seven minute walk from my house, which isn't on campus but is just across the street. It's so close to the university buildings that I can get their wireless internet (though the signal is weak). Even when I lived in Case Hall, I still had classes or work in a distant corner of campus.


From my window, the university -- the yellow building with the orange roof -- is literally across the street. 

Århus is also the name of the city where the university is located. It's the second largest city in Denmark with 300,000 residents but it's really quite a small city by the standard size of cities. It's also a college town. There are something like 40,000 students here.

Århus means literally "the mouth of the river" because there used to be a river running through the city. But in the 1930s the river was filled in in order to make a street. But now a section of the river has been reopened and there are lots of expensive bars and cafes along it. If you've seen any photos of Århus that show a river, it's that bit of river.

EDIT: I'm not sure why the river was filled in but I'm guessing it had to do with its declining significance for trade. I was surprised to hear about it too especially because the river gave rise to the city and its name.

Like this photo, taken in the summer

First Days

I left the States last Sunday morning and arrived in Århus on Monday local time so I have been here for a week now.

The past week was a mirror-image of the first few days of college: moving in, finding the grocery store, going to the grocery store, figuring out bus routes. Though it's a very distorted mirror since this is a whole different country. The day I move in, a German girl was also moving in to this house. She and her parents drove up from Germany with their car packed full. Much of her belongings were in plastic tubs. My mom would have fretted over my accommodations the way her parents did, saying that the kitchen was small or the room was cold or the bathroom dirty. It reminded me so much of moving into my dorms and my parents helping me. It made me miss my mom right away.

Meeting new people made it seem the most like starting college anew. The past week has been non-stop introductions. Then followed a series of formulaic questions we asked one another countless times. It starts with introductions: What's your name? Where are you from? What are you studying here? Which dorm do you live in? Next we moved on to chitchatting about the weather: How cold is it where you're from? Oh the Australians must be having a hard time adapting. Oh I should have brought warmer clothes.  Then we complained about our living situations. Oh I live so far away. Oh my rent is so high. Oh I live with all Danes. Oh I don't live with any Danes. Then we compared who got the most money to study. Americans are the clear losers. Then we talked about drinking. It seems that students the world over drink a lot.


Throughout the week, there were events I wanted to go to and events I felt I should I in order to get to know people. I know that like starting college, many of the people I meet in the first days will become my friends for the durations. It's not the time to be anti-social. At times I really wanted to meet people, but other times I had to drag myself out into the bitter cold to meet more people. It was mostly great fun but all quite exhausting.

On Sunday I finally had a less hectic schedule. I went to Risskov, a seaside park with a few friends -- not too many. Walking in the woods and along the sea was much more relaxing than I thought it would be. Then I came back to the house and had some quiet time to myself. Blogging is really relaxing. I feel recharged and ready for the next week.

I hope now that I'll gotten over these introductions, I can get to know some people in greater depth. I think that will be very rewarding.

Right now I'm craving a bagel with cream cheese. The latter is available in all grocery stores, but the former, not so much.

A view of the harbor from Risskov

From the archives: Do you feel liberated?

I have a lot of half-written blog drafts saved, I don't know about other bloggers, but it seems that a lot of the  entries I start I never finish. I was looking back at some old drafts and saw this one that I think deserves to be published because I think much about commitments I have made and the ones to make in the future.

This was drafted on April 13, 2009 and if there's any similarity between then and now, it's that the end of the semester is approaching. This means the workload is picking up in preparation for finals and I am looking ahead to the next semester. Since I will be spending it in another country, I have a lot of things to figure out...
 
Over the weekend I went to Starbucks. This was the quotation on my cup. I wrote it down on a napkin and took it with me.

The Way I See It #76

The cup reads: The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating -- in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life.
The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating.

Pre-Teen Life, Part II

For all the middle school nostalgia, there were things I don't miss from the summer of 2000, when I was 11 and moving up to 7th grade:

Abercrombie and Fitch and American Eagle brands were the markers of popularity. In fact, the cult of popularity seemed to rise out of nowhere. I think this is where I gathered there was a social stratification around the hallways that run in a square around the perimeter of the Clague Middle School courtyard, just as social stratification existed in the "real world" outside the plot of land at the corner of Nixon and Bluett Roads by income, by class, by race.

Sometime in middle school, East Asian girls showed up with brown or reddish brown highlights in their hair. I desperately wanted at the time but my mom wouldn't let me do it. Her reason was that the chemicals in hair dye were bad for me, but I thought her main reason for denying me this wish was because it was expensive. But I'm glad I held out until that desired passed from me. I am satisfied with my natural hair color now. I don't think that dying one's hair is a manifestation of discomfort with one's racial identity. It's far more complicated that just wanting to be white. I know that I'm not gonna be white if I have light brown hair. But there is an element of cultural tweaking that makes me uncomfortable.

I really wanted a second piercing in my ear, right above the first one that I have had since I was about five. I thought about it very seriously and actually convinced my parents to let me do this when I turned the very mature age of 13. But then I chickened out because I was afraid of the pain. I have a higher tolerance for pain now, but thank god I didn't go through with it then. I think they look so tacky now.

The Mysteries of Pre-Teen Life Revisited

Teen Magazine really had the pulse on the mysteries of pre-teen life: boyfriends, makeup, and periods. Basically these aspirations translated to crushes, lip gloss and bright nail polish, and period mishaps.

I had a jolly good time flipping through the July 2000 issue of Teen Magazine with a couple of Women's Council members. I don't think I have read an early teenage girls' magazine since that time and I had forgotten about the content of those magazines. I can look back and reminisce and laugh about that time.

I saw a Bonne Bell Lip Gloss ad in the July 2000 issue for lip gloss with a top that flipped open when you pushed a sliding button. I remember that model lip gloss. They don't even make it anymore; I checked the Bonne Bell website. We were all "addicted" to lip glosses, especially Bonne Bell's LipSmackers, in its simple cylindrical tube. They used to be as cheap as $0.99 each, but they're probably close to $2 now. That seemed like make-up to me.

One mainstay of pre-teen magazines were the Embarrassing Moments combining bodily functions, friends and family, and very bad timing. The submissions rated most embarrassing reliably combined periods, boyfriend, and extremely bad timing. A sure winner would be: I got my period when I was having dinner with my boyfriend's parents for the first time. I was wearing a white skirt and I stained their dining room chair!

Cooties did not follow me from fifth grade to sixth grade. I left them scattered like wood chips around the elementary school jungle gym. The pre-teen years made me see boys in a different light. Teen Magazine -- very timely -- was on hand to guide me through this feeling that I really wanted to talk to this boy who was in my class. It answered such burning questions as "How do I know if a boy likes me" and provided valuable advice on a very grown-up skill called flirting. Today I read an article in which a genuine teenage boy described the signs that a girl is interested in a guy: she touches you on the arm or the shoulder and smiles and laughs at everything you say.

Somehow in middle school (and to some extent high school), everyone followed the same conventions of what pre-teens thought romance. It's really cheesy to recall now, but at least we all agreed on those conventions. Yes this shows he is interested in you, no, this means you're just friends. "Going out" meant you were entitled to very intimate privileges such as going to the movies together (even though your parents had to drive you there), holding hands, and slow dancing with the same partner during Fun Nights (6-8pm in the gym with the cougar logo on the floor about once a month, I think).

If only it were still that simple. In my early adolescence, I couldn't imagine something like friends with benefits. Well, I still can't really figure that out. Oh, did we just make out? I didn't mean that. Oh, let's have sex. But I don't mean it either.

EXP01-2014

Yesterday I attended a book reading by David Sedaris. After his reading, there was a book signing. He signed my copy of When You Are Engulfed in Flames and drew a cat that looks kind of like a beaver. (Side note: I wish I had remembered to bring Holidays On Ice for him to sign. It's actually much funnier than his latest book.)

He also gave me a condom. Seriously.


As I was giddily, fan-girlishly leaving the Wharton Center, I inspected the little blue packet. The expiration date read "EXP01-2014". It's not often that I see a date that is far into the future. It made me think what my life would be like in January 2014.

In January 2014, I will be 25 years old. I will be in my fourth year of medical school, unless I take time off to do other things. I will have long since completed my undergraduate degrees in Human Biology and Comparative Cultures and Politics. That's about all I know at this point.

But I wonder about a lot of things, some significant and others not , some personal and some not:

Will David Sedaris still even be popular in a little more than four years from now?
What medical specialty will I choose? (Will I actually be in medical school??)
Will I have short hair?
Where will I be living??
What will be the most pressing political issues? Will some form of health care reform be enacted? What will be the extent of climate change? What
How many of my friends will be -- gasp -- married?
Which of my friends now will still be my friends?

Have you seen this cat?

On Monday -- the same day and same place I saw the Emily Dickinson poem on the sidewalk --- I saw little black kitten. It was near the bushes at the end of the bridge that leads to Wells. It had big yellow eyes and a white patch at its throat and on its belly. It was so very very cute.

I didn't know what to do because I think it was a stray. It didn't have a collar. A couple of girls who saw it at the same time I did tried to catch it and take it to the Humane Society, but it kept running away from us. I hope it's okay but it's getting cold outside. So if you see the kitty, be nice to it. And take it to the Human Society if you can. Thanks.


Take with my cellphone

Of course it's a coincidence that that particular poem was chalked on the sidewalk, but I couldn't help to think about what Emily Dickinson wrote about helping one fainting robin unto his nest again. I will try to not live in vain.

I don't want to be the crazy cat lady, but I really want a cat, especially after what happened on Monday. But not right now because I can't take care of one. Maybe in a few years when I have some money for food, toys, and vet visits. I think when I finish med school and have a job I'll get one.

Sidewalk poetry

I was walking from Williams Hall to the International Center this morning just before 8am. It was still gray outside and chilly. Crossing the end of the bridge onto the Wells Hall area, I saw two poems chalked on the sidewalk. They were:

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

- Emily Dickinson

and

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

- William Carlos Williams

This made my day. Thank you, whoever wrote it on the sidewalk.

I need to read more books.

I have never had so few books for my classes! It's insane that I only have two required books for all my classes this semester. Printed course packs of essentially powerpoint slides or lab instructions don't count as real books. The only two (TWO! TWO!) books I bought were an immunology textbook and a genetics textbooks.

In previous semesters, I've always had one or two James Madison classes. We read probably at least 6 books in each class. I loved how I'd buy all the books and line them up on a bookshelf or crate so I could visualize the whole semester.

But now, I only have two textbooks and a few flimsy notebooks in my stackable crate. This is sad. This is probably why I have been thinking so much about reading for pleasure lately.

Things I've been thinking about:

I heard about this satirical novel called How I Became a Famous Novelist. The author, Steve Hely, was interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air today. Basically the novel is about a guy who wants to write a best-selling novel just for the money, so he gathers up all the tropes of best-selling novels into one novel and writes details that will appeal to the most demographics. Examples: natural disaster, secret love affair, clubs, a scene of driving on a highway to make driving poetic and magical for audiobook buyers, a folk singer for music merchandise tie-ins. I would add that he should add some pseudo-historical conspiracy a la Dan Brown.

I heard that the Madison freshman summer reading book was Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss. I want to read it!

Should I read Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake before I read After the Flood? They're set in the same universe, I think, but this new book is not necessarily a sequel to Oryx and Crake.

Has anyone bought a non-Harry Potter, non-Dan Brown book the day it was released? I'm counting down the days until September 22 because I really really really really want to buy After the Flood and Nocturnes the day it's released.

Case Hall

I didn't realize that Case Hall was such a familiar place to me until I no longer had class there or lived there. For the past two years I lived in Case Hall. For the past three years, I had two classes each semester in Case Hall. But this year, I am not taking any James Madison College classes this year and I have moved to Williams Hall.

A couple days ago I stepped inside Case for the first time this school year and I was surprised how many people I knew in the building. I went to a professor's office hours and in the process saw two professors who I have had for multiple classes and they are probably my two favorite professors. I also saw several Madison students I knew.

A part of me is a little nostalgic for Case Hall but I'm also adapting very well to being a Human Bio major this semester since I'm taking all science classes. But I realize that many of the people I know in Madison don't know any of the people I have met through the sciences. It's two different circles of friends, people with different interests. I mean, they're not so different that they won't get along with each other, but just that there aren't many situations where they will be together. That's why I find it fascinating to find someone else who shares a background in the sciences and in public policy and social studies.

(Pre)Medicine. Part I.

I've started to read Pauline Chen's columns in the NYTimes. There are two columns that I want to bring up together, Stories in the Service of Making a Better Doctor and The Misery of the Med Student. Both of them ask basically the same questions. What makes a good doctor? How do we train medical students to be good doctors? The consensus is that well-rounded individuals make good doctors. We want doctors who can related to their patients, who can talk to them well, who care about them as a person and not as a disease, etc.

But I'm not sure how to judge medical schools' efforts at making well-rounded doctors. Are they really successful? Or are they just making some insincere effort at making it seem like medical schools care about more than the science of human body function?

Chen writes positively about the addition of narrative medicine in medical school and residency curricula. These are classes in which students read fiction and non-fiction works to gain better insight into a patient's Her column has anecdotal evidence for it and she says that studies have shown that it is successful. But it is also true that most doctors don't love literature, the arts, or the social sciences as much as people with advanced degrees in those fields. Otherwise they wouldn't be doctors. I think narrative medicine classes valuable if they can be taught so that even med students who don't like literature can discuss it in a meaningful way that helps them as doctors. Otherwise, as one comment said, it's just a glorified book club.

Med schools now require a certain number of humanities credits so they can accept more well-rounded applicants. But how do you know who took humanities classes as a undergrad because they really liked them or because they needed it to apply to med school?

Or do you even think this distinction matters? It is really hard to study anything other than medicine when you're in medical school because there's so much medicine to learn. Everything else has to get put on the backburner. One comment talks about the difficulty in fitting in other interests in med school:
I am a medical student with a literature background from undergrad. I wholeheartedly agree with the purpose of these programs, but the reality is this: the things one must learn in the med school — anatomy, physiology, pathology, immunology, microbiology, etc. — are simply too time-consuming to allow more than a cursory study of literature in some kind of throwaway class. Those students who are interested in it will explore further, but the vast majority won’t find it useless and will just resent it.

Dr. Chen had a similar experience in medical school. There was just so much to learn that these other efforts didn't diminish the amount of sheer information they had to learn. She writes:
Some of my professors tried to 'humanize' the process. They invited us to dinner in their homes, supported our extracurricular efforts to set up health screening clinics in low-income neighborhoods, and tried to make our basic science courses more relevant to working with patients. But sitting where I am now, as someone who teaches medical students and who loves helping others as a doctor, I can understand the challenge they faced. Given the fire hose of information medical students must learn in just four years, how does one ever gently take a sip?

Is waiting to go to medical school after earning some "life experience" the remedy to the lack of empathy, humanities, and high burnout? Several of the comments were from people who had a career before entered medical school and they seemed happy with their decision. I think this is generally a good idea, but it doesn't address whether or not medical education as it is should be changed. It simply gives med students time to steel themselves before plunging in.

I don't know the answer to these questions. In an ideal world, we would all be Renaissance men and women. Our journals will contain anatomic diagrams alongside sketches of landscapes, the Madonna, and fantastic flying machines. We'll spend our days in the chemistry lab and write music by night. We'll all be well-read, empathetic, intuitive, doctors.

But in reality, our time is finite. We have to make choices, prioritize, and prepare for standardized exams. And I have physiology lectures to watch. Oh, and I could be totally wrong about everything because I haven't actually gone to med school.

That's all for tonight. The next post about this matter is going to get a lot more personal. I reflect on how I have taken to trying to be a well-rounded (future) physician.

Imnotstupidimnotstupidimnotstupid. Repeat.

Peers and Professors

It's been a long time since I last updated, I know. I thought about letting the blog go but I couldn't for two reasons.

First, I could not give up reading up on my fellow bloggers. Friends near and far (Marci: Very Far), please keep updating because checking my blog for your updates requires me to take note of how long it's been since I've updated myself. Of course, do leave love here as well and I will reciprocate.

Secondly, I conquered one instance of procrastination and the result was favorable. It made me believe that much -- my internship paper and this blog -- is salvageable.

See, the due date for the first draft of my research paper following my summer internship was nearly a fortnight ago yet I'm not done writing. I was miserable thinking about how I would tell my faculty reader that I had not finished it. She hadn't emailed me inquire about its progress and so I assumed it was up to me to initiate the conversation.

But I procrastinated on telling her. The dangerous nature of procrastination is that the longer you wait, the more difficult it is to get finish that task. I didn't think I'd make it through the weekend without knowing whether or not I was going to fail a class so I took a deep breath and sent her an email.

I expected a reply conveying disappointment and anger but instead she said that my topic was "fantastic" and that the deadline was "somewhat flexible". This was much more clemency than I expected.

Thank you professor; Thank you fellow bloggers. I'm back.

ohgodrunningoutoftime

It's almost Thursday and I have no idea what to write for my MC 231 paper on M. Butterfly. I'm freaking out, yes.

Where I will be this summer

I started this blog in part to keep track of my adventures this summer, so I am now making the official announcement about my plans:

I will be a Policy and Government Affairs intern at AIDS Alliance for Children, Youth & Families, an non-profit in Washington DC. (I'm going to Washington!) AIDS Alliance is an advocacy group particularly for women, children, youth, and families with and affected by HIV.

As a Policy and Government Affairs intern, I will research policy, legislation, write letters to policymakers, and maybe even go to Capitol Hill. I think I'm going to learn a lot about domestic policies about funding, prevention, and education for HIV/AIDS.

I'm leaving Memorial Day weekend and won't be back until the weekend before the fall semester starts, so pretty much the entire summer.

I will be posting my weekly essays here and uploading photos of lovely Washington DC. I hope someone reads this so my efforts are not soley for my own archives.