#ADULTING, Part 3: On Burnout

And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? (Matthew 16:26, NLT)

As I've said before in the last few posts in the #ADULTING series, I wrote this series as a means of self-analysis, in order to regroup after a lackluster first semester of second year. I had many problems in December: I ate like crap, I didn't adhere to my morning routine or night routine, I spent way too many nights cooped up on my bed instead of being productive or even doing things I like (like exploring places and seeing friends). And part of the process of making sure that I didn't eat like crap or violate my morning routine this semester was to write the vision of what I wanted my diet or exercise or general self-discipline to look like, and then to make it plain (via the blog). But that didn't solve all of my problems. Last semester, I wrote out goals for the block each semester and put them on my door. I knew what I was supposed to be doing, and I knew why I was supposed to be doing it, but I just...didn't do it. I didn't feel like doing it. I could motivate myself to do just enough to pass all of my tests and honestly not much more. I figured it was just due to my general laziness.

When I was young, I honestly preferred cartoons, video games, social media, sports--really anything--to actual homework. Thank God, I had parents who pushed me to do my best and focus on my studies. My parents were the ones always getting me up and ready and pushing me to do everything and nothing less. That impetus, along with (some) intelligence, got me into college. College was the first time that I had to find motivation to work on my own. And to be honest, that was hard! I had been used to getting good grades without working super hard to get them, and when I'd flagged, my parents had always been there to push me. But that situation became untenable after a while--I had to find motivation and fast.

In the middle of college I hit rock bottom. I was deeply depressed and thought I'd lost myself. But then somehow, I got a hold of God and his Word, and he pulled me out of my abyss. I spent the rest of college in catch-up mode, regaining what I should've had freshman and sophomore year. My grades skyrocketed as I learned to apply myself for the first time. During my senior year, one of the academic highs of my life was studying for the MCAT. I knew that I had to do well because I didn't have the academic record to carry me through medical school. For a month, I studied from 10am to 12pm with 15-minute breaks for lunch and dinner, every single day, without getting distracted. To this day, I look back at myself during that period and wonder, "WHO IS SHE?" I proceeded to smash that test and the rest of senior year. By then I thought I had the work ethic thing down. But the problem with work is that you have to keep doing it.

My first year of medical school was kind of a continuation of senior year of college. Despite the gap year I took, I still had my college mentality of "catch-up time", and I worked very hard. As time went on though, I got tired, and I realized that I didn't need to do as much as I was doing in order to pass my tests. I had the same mentality that I'd had senior year: "you HAVE to do well! You weren't brought this far just to barely get by! You have to do the best you can, or else you've wasted everyone's time!" But as 2018 wore on, I became less and less capable of living up to those expectations. With every month I seemed to be "getting worse"--getting distracted more often, sleeping off earlier, not working as hard. I knew I was tired, but I also saw it as myself getting lazy again, just like I'd been in high school and early college.

I had a two-month summer break that was very restful. Then med school started again, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I attributed it to a summer hangover...a summer hangover that lasted for two months. I knew I had to work, but I just wanted to rest...like, all the time. I didn't really take interest in the material like I had first year; a lot of it seemed boring to me. And it wasn't just academic either. Despite everything I learned in the summer about making friends (see the post "No New Friends"), I hardly ever made plans to see any friends; it just felt like too much effort in comparison to sitting in bed and watching Netflix. I did not like my extracurriculars at all; whenever I had to do something for my clubs, it always came as a surprise, like, "oh GOODNESS, I have to do yet another thing for this club?" It felt a lot of times like I was being dragged along by life. There was a bright spot in the middle of the semester, right after my two-month "summer hangover", where I hit a block of material that was interesting to me, I was motivated to get out of my "summer hangover", and I also had the good sense to plan a weekend trip for myself. That block went well, but after that, I sank right back into the abyss until Winter Break freed me from my troubles.

All the while, I never thought that it could be burnout. Burnout, I thought, only happened to actually hardworking people. Burnout happened to the people who studied until 1am every night and did seven extracurriculars and were going for AOA, all at the same time. Burnout, I thought, could never happen to lazy old me--I liked watching YouTube and Netflix. I actually slept every night. How could I get burned out? But as I was writing and self-analyzing this past January, I looked up the definition of burnout, and found this:

Burnout is one of those road hazards in life that high-achievers really should be keeping a close eye out for, but sadly—often because of their "I can do everything" personalities—they rarely see it coming. Because high-achievers are often so passionate about what they do, they tend to ignore the fact that they're working exceptionally long hours, taking on exceedingly heavy work loads, and putting enormous pressure on themselves to excel—all of which make them ripe for burnout.

Burnout is a state of chronic stress that leads to physical and emotional exhaustion, cynicism and detachment [and] feelings of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment...

(from Psychology Today, bolding mine)

Though I didn't suffer everything that the article said (thank God!), I saw myself in a lot of the words said merely in those two paragraphs. I couldn't believe it--I, Simi, lover of cartoons and video games and sports, had actually pushed myself hard enough to burn out. And I had suffered a whole year without even knowing it. I soon realized that I was far from alone. Apparently, my generation suffers from burnout in so many ways that people, starting with BuzzFeed News, have dubbed millennials "The Burnout Generation".

Essentially, the BuzzFeed News article argues burnout is "the millennial condition". Rich or poor, regardless of race and social class, many millennials have been raised in some way to be the optimal worker. In high school we take AP classes and do internships (at least in some high schools...I never did one); in college we do more internships and take on lots of extracurriculars and do research and take classes; we go on to grad school in order to make ourselves even more optimal for the workplace. And in the end, if we don't get stable jobs, we take on everything we can to "make it work". The article states:

People patching together a retail job with unpredictable scheduling while driving Uber and arranging child care have burnout. Startup workers with fancy catered lunches, free laundry service, and 70-minute commutes have burnout. Academics teaching four adjunct classes and surviving on food stamps while trying to publish research in one last attempt at snagging a tenure-track job have burnout. Freelance graphic artists operating on their own schedule without health care or paid time off have burnout.

And I can add with certainty that despite the comparative job stability, medical workers (doctors, nurses, MAs, medical students, residents) absolutely get burnout as well. 

The American Psychiatry Association estimated that between 300 and 400 doctors commit suicide every year. It's not the highest suicide rate (apparently that belongs to farmers!?), but it does mean that one doctor commits suicide every day. And coming from a person in the profession, it's not exactly hard to figure out why. In high school, you work your tail off to get the best grades in order to get into the best college. In college, you work even harder to do well in premed classes and get good research and get the best extracurriculars in order to get into medical school. In medical school you study mountains of material in order to pass your test (or get the highest grades if your school isn't pass/fail) and then restudy those mountains in order to get the best score on Step 1. Then you go into rotations (with a Step 2 exam) and that melts into residency, with 16-hour workdays and twice-weekly call where you work for 24-48 hours without leaving the hospital (at its worst--it gets better) for at least three years. And somehow, in there, it is expected that we will never suffer from burnout or feel detached from our work or wonder what the point of it all is, at any time. Yeah, right.

And yet for every doctor who does burn out or ends his or her life, there are thousands more who have gotten through all of the above and have continued into their careers with at least some degree of happiness. Medicine is an extremely rewarding career, and there is a way to do all of the above without losing yourself in the process, or else no one would do it. I am determined to do it that way. I can't afford to be burning out in medical school when I have at least five years left until I become a board-certified doctor, and a whole lot of life to live beyond that (by God's grace). Obviously, I need to work hard and do my best, but I need to do my best in a way that is sustainable. It's better to work at about 80% capacity and be able to keep that up for several years than to work at 100% capacity for one year and burn out the next year. Burnout and recovery from burnout takes a lot of time that I don't have anymore.


The United States National Suicide Prevention Hotline can help in times of crisis if you call 1(800)-273-8255.

#ADULTING, part 2: How To Handle Social Media

I originally wrote most of the #ADULTING series during Winter Break. But in typical me fashion, I decided to unload my thoughts on social media today, and I figured that it fit into the series. Enjoy!

When we millennials were young, social media was completely new. It represented the great frontier of technology, a place where we could communicate and get to know each other on a whole new level. A decade and a half later, it appears to have woven itself into the general disillusionment of our age. There are many, many articles about the pitfalls and evils of social media, and yet platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat are still growing. With social media becoming a fixture of modern life, is there anything we can do to use it in a way that is enjoyable and edifying? People can and have written whole papers and theses on this; I am not one of those people. However, I do have three tips that might help if you keep reading.

Tip # 1: Use social media to ACTUALLY connect with people

The best thing about social media for me has been connecting with people who I wouldn’t be able to contact as much if it didn’t exist. For example, I’m Nigerian-American, and a decent proportion (read: practically ALL) of my extended family lives abroad. In particular, I have three cousins around my age who grew up in Nigeria and who I literally did not meet in the flesh until about 1-3 years ago. But before I met them, I had contacted them and I knew a bit about them. You know how? (..other than my Nigerian parents telling me about their school progress to er, motivate me?) Social media! I followed my cousins on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram long before I met them; in that way, I could at least get a sense of who they were and what they liked, and even chat with them as time passed. 

I also have seven cousins who grew up in London. Just this past summer, I started a group chat on Facebook with three of them about the World Cup. It was so much fun being able to connect with them over an interest that we all share, and Messenger made it easy to contact them at literally a drop of the hat.

I believe that social media is at its most enjoyable when it is used to connect with people. I suggest using it when you want to communicate with people, not just when you want to stalk their profiles. If your friend’s Instagram story inspires you, reply to their story and tell them! If you find a funny video, share it with a friend so you can both laugh at it. If you love a photo or a post from a friend, double tap AND leave a nice comment for your friend to reply to. Start group chats with friends about common interests, whether it’s soccer or The Bachelor. Isn’t that what social media was supposed to be about in the first place?

Tip # 2: Protect your feed

One of the major complaints I hear about social media is that it constantly puts us in a position to compare ourselves with other people, leading to insecurity. In the Passion Translation, Proverbs 4:23 says “Guard the affections of your heart, for they affect all that you are. Pay attention to the welfare of your innermost being…” When you look at the social media accounts of people who portray perfection, on purpose or on accident, and when you spend time comparing yourself to them, it hurts you at your innermost being by making you insecure about who you are. That insecurity, as harmless as it seems, affects your thoughts, your actions, your interests—everything that you are, because you feel like you have to live up to a standard that wasn’t made for you and that may not even be achievable. I have a simple solution for this: you ain’t gotta follow those “perfect” people! Many of them are influencers and/or celebrities who have enough followers that they won’t notice if you unfollow them. And if it IS someone you know? You’ll probably be a better friend to that person if you are not constantly comparing yourself to them. You are a better friend to other people when your soul is secure; protect your soul.

Another thing that can be agitating: if you follow politics and current events to the extent that it continually puts your soul in a state of hurt, anger and/or depression. Please hear me out on this. It is good to be civically involved. It is good to defend causes that you are passionate about. But if it is hurting your emotional and spiritual state more than it is helping or changing anything, you may need to cut back for a bit! 

There is a popular philosophy out there right now that says, “you can’t do everything, but you MUST DO SOMETHING.” Essentially, it means that if you don’t add your voice to things, then nothing will be accomplished. I…only sort of believe this. Yes, every person has a sphere of influence. If you agree with something and make that clear, the people in your sphere of influence are much more likely to take your words seriously than they would take the words of some politician or celebrity who has nothing to do with them personally. And there are some issues where previously we have expected some sweeping law or some nice quotes from a famous person to fix it, when in reality nothing gets fixed unless we actively try to fix it. (One of those issues is racism.) 

BUT…do I feel that I have to have something to say about…every issue…that goes on? Not really, no. Honestly, a lot of times, when some big company comes up or some celebrity does something wrong, I feel there are enough people making comments about it…and posting similar opinions to mine about it…that if I add my opinion, it’s merely another identical voice in everyone else’s chorus, and it does nothing to add to the conversation. It just starts fights on my feed and makes ME upset. iI don’t know about you, but for my emotions’ sake, I can't afford to let every issue or insult or event in the media get to me. I've found that some issues or events are big enough that everyone else will be upset for me!!! In those cases, where I know that looking up that event will do nothing but upset me, I refrain from getting into the conversation. That way, I can keep my joy and focus on what I’m created to do rather than focus on every single thing that’s happening in the world. I am not God, and I cannot deal with every single tragedy that goes on every day. Sometimes I simply have to hand it over to him and move on!!!

I’m not saying that you should close yourself off to the world around you or put yourself in an echo chamber. But it’s no secret that what we look at on social media affects us mentally, emotionally and sometimes even spiritually. If your feed is yours to control, why don’t you follow accounts that inspire you, lift you up and make you feel better? It can only help you.

Tip # 3: Limit your time on social media

Even at its best, social media can be quite a big time-waster. A success coach i listen to, Terri Savelle Foy, once described TV as “watching other people live their dreams”. I think I would include social media in this category as well, except often it’s watching people pretending to live their dreams. In both cases, there is a point where it becomes less productive to spend time watching other people live out their stories than to live out your story. There is value in watching other people live out their stories; it provides inspiration and connection. But the only story you get to live out is yours. Don’t spend your entire time looking at other people’s lives while yours passes you by.

There is also value in living life as it is, uncurated and unfiltered. If you’re at a concert, do you really need to Snapchat every single moment? You spent your own money to be there in the flesh and enjoy your favorite artist; take time to enjoy that concert for yourself, and sing at the top of your lungs. If you’re out with your friends, it’s great to take photos in order to preserve memories, but it’s even better to spend time with your friends and create memories so good that you don’t need a photo to remember them.

The best way I’ve found for limiting social media time? Delete the app off your phone, and download it back from the app store when you want to take a look. Your account will still be there for you when you come back, and in this way you can resist temptation to look when you shouldn’t be looking.

iOS 12 also has this wonderful app called Screen Time, which allows you to set limits on how long you use apps. The only problem is that you can always extend your limit 15 minutes more, meaning that the temptation is always there.

Hope this helped somebody!

#ADULTING: Tips To Get Organized and Get Your Life Together! Part 1: FOOD

Am I the type of person who should be writing a post on how to adult? Maybe not. I have some credentials that make me look like my life is perfect, but anyone close to me knows that I do NOT always have my life together. This past semester, to be honest, was one of those times. I did okay in my classes, but by the end of it I was drained mentally and emotionally, I was physically far from my best, and my spiritual life was not exactly doing the greatest either. I started this post mainly to tell myself what to do in the event that I find myself spinning out of my own control again. I share it because I’m pretty sure someone can relate.

As I wrote this, I realized that the topic of "adulting" and of "getting one's life together" has far too many facets to just be put in one post. So I present to you my newest series, starting with part 1: practical tips to get your FOOD together. 

******

On Eating Healthy…And NOT EATING OUT!

Here’s the thing. I know what to eat in order to be healthy: fruits and vegetables, healthy protein, some carbs (not too many carbs), and keep away from fried foods and candy. I was raised by a health nut (AKA my mother) who barely allowed sugar and salt to even exist in our house, let alone be put on things that we ate. And even if I didn’t learn everything from her, I could learn everything I need on the internet. For how obese we tend to be, Americans have so many fad diets and other diets and tips and tricks in order to eat healthy. Vegetarianism, veganism, macros and micros, ketogenic diet…those are just a few of the trends right now. And all of those things are good, but my problem isn’t finding what foods to eat. My problem is preparation.

My favorite method of procuring food is the grab-and-go: find something that is on the shelf and consume it. The problem is, because I don’t always take the time to prepare healthy food for the shelf, I find myself doing the next fastest thing: eating out, or even worse, using Uber Eats, which is like eating out but nearly doubled in price because of delivery fees. The result is a guaranteed drained wallet, and either gaining or losing weight depending on whether I eat too much McDonalds meals or only subsist on one meal a day plus snacks in order to sustain the Uber Eats habit.

What I need to do this year. Also, there is an actual site called stopubereats.com. The magic of the internet!

The solution is meal prep. Meal prep is when one takes an hour or two out of the schedule every week to prepare large amounts of breakfast, lunch and/or dinner. That way, for the rest of the week, when my hand is reaching to the shelf, it grabs the healthy meals that I made myself instead of grabbing my phone. And ideally, I don’t have to meal prep more than twice a week. I like cooking, but not THAT much.

For breakfast, lately, I’ve been buying instant oatmeal from this brand called Better Oats, which has oatmeal with flax seeds. Whenever I eat that for breakfast, I feel very energetic and ready for the day. Since I’m kind of a hungry horse, though, I need more than one packet!

For lunch, I like sandwiches, so ideally I'll prepare four or five sandwiches with cheese, turkey, spinach, red onion and spicy mustard. Delicious, healthy, and (importantly!) very portable for school. I usually supplement this with snacks such as clementines, strawberries, carrots, or (maybe) a fruit snack packet or two, though I’m currently weaning myself off the latter.

Dinner is probably my most creative meal. As I said, I actually do like cooking sometimes, and the amount of food shows I watch (Chef's Table, Worst Cooks In America, The Great British Baking Show...) has sparked an interest in finding new recipes. My favorite recipes have four things in common: they are absolutely PACKED with flavor (not necessarily spicy), they don’t take too long (a med student’s got to study), you can make lots of it in one or two goes, and they have three food groups in one dish: veggies, protein and carbs. My two favorite recipes for dinner so far are coconut chicken curry with rice from Epicurious, and Moroccan chicken stew from Plated. (The recipes are linked—thank me later.) As I get ready to publish this, however, the last dinner I made was even quicker than those two: fried rice with spinach, onion, eggs, soy sauce and sesame oil. 

For hungry horses like me, snacks are very important. I usually try to buy fruit—strawberries, oranges, apples, grapes, and nectarines when they’re in season. Fruit is not the cheapest thing on the planet, but I find it a lot more filling than cheaper, carb-filled snacks such as chips or even Nature Valley bars. For vegetables, I find carrots to be the most accessible, mildly tasty, and cheap (I've never seen a bag of carrots, even organic carrots, above $3). Whenever I bring a pack of carrots around my friends, they always want to take some! As far as carbs, as I said, I have a slight addiction to fruit snacks and sugary cereal that as I publish this, I am in the process of breaking (pray 4 me), and I like popcorn and some type of crackers (Club crackers, Wheat Thins). For proteinaceous snacks, almonds remain my favorite, though they’re also not exactly cheap.

Okay, you say, you’ve given me food suggestions, but WHEN can I find the time? That’s the real question. Again, ideally with meal prep, you should only be preparing food once or twice a week. For me, it’s lunch and dinner, so I have to split that into two days. Five sandwiches takes me much less than an hour. Dinner definitely takes longer; with preparation it can be as short as an hour, without it can be over two. The thing is, in order to study, you need ATP (energy), and most ATP comes from food. So meal prep time is not wasted time!

ADDENDUM: This January, I've been able to mostly follow my own food advice (I wrote most of this post during Winter Break), and where I've really seen a difference is in the way I feel. Last semester, when I was eating out a lot, I felt lethargic a lot of the time. My chest hurt, my stomach felt loaded down, my legs ached, and I would get chest pain whenever I ran a short distance. Now, having been eating pretty healthy for most of the month, most of those symptoms have gone. I still get mildly achy if I haven't exercised in a long time, but compared to last semester, the aches have gone down considerably, and I feel like I can sprint if I need to (for example, to catch a bus). 

For me, eating healthy hasn't really been about getting my "ideal body"--it's about feeling better and having more energy for the day. Part of adulting is dealing with the fact that our bodies aren't getting any younger, and that as we get older, our bodies get less tolerant of crappy fuel (i.e. junk food). I'm not planning to NEVER eat junk food again (doing that nearly guarantees that I WILL eat junk food again), but I hope to keep following my own advice, because I am literally feeling the benefits as I write this. 

Good news to talk about at the Thanksgiving table this year

Okay guys, before you jump on me for being too much of an idealist...I know the world sucks right now. The year is chock-full of bad news. Heck, this week is full of bad news. As I sit in my room writing this there are three huge fires burning in California, and one is about an hour away from me. These fires come on the heels of two mass shootings 11 days apart, one of which happened in the same area where one of the aforementioned three fires is burning right now. (Please pray for the town of Thousand Oaks!)

We could talk about the rise in suicides this year, which took the lives of multiple well-known people as well as a 30-year-old pastor. We could talk about other deaths of influential people: Aretha Franklin, John McCain, Mac Miller, Stan Lee, Avicii. Pick your sphere of influence; there's probably someone! (I found out about Stan Lee while doing research for this post and audibly shouted.)

We could go on and on, and that's what most people are going to do; go on and on focusing on and talking about all the negative things that have gone on this year. But as much negative as there is, I am a firm believer that there is a silver lining in every cloud. And I figured that since the earth hasn't come to an end (yet), there must still be some good stuff going on.

So, I searched for some good news. And turns out, I found some. So here are a couple of cool things that happened in 2018:

1. We all hear about police officers who are really, really bad at their job: who shoot unarmed people for no reason. But most people don't hear about police officers like Jennifer Maddox. Hailing from my hometown of Chicago, Maddox started working for the Chicago police force 20 years ago and was assigned to the South Side. After getting called to one housing complex one too many times to deal with kids who were getting in trouble, she took a side job working in that housing complex, and eventually created a space for the 1,200 children who live there. The nonprofit is called Future Ties, and it provides homework help, life skills training, resume workshops, conflict resolution workshops, yoga, tutoring and field trips, among other things. For her efforts, she was nominated by L'Oreal Paris as one of their Women of Worth for the year, and if she wins, she gets another $25,000 for Future Ties. You can vote for her here! (story from MSN)

2. As a newly-minted medical professional, I often hear about pharmaceutical companies that work more for profit than for people. Emergent BioSolutions is apparently not one of those companies (or at least, they're fighting that stereotype with this initiative). They bought out the company responsible for producing Narcan (naloxone), the only drug known that can reverse opioid overdoses, and they have decided to provide opioid overdose reversal kits for every single U.S. public library and YMCA, making about 19,000 public community spaces with free opioid overdose reversal kits. They are also working to provide opioid overdose reversal kits in high schools and universities as well. You can read more about the initiative here (story from Good News Network) and here is a link to the company's statement.

3. One of the longest, most bitter conflicts on the African continent ended this July. In 1993, a year before I was born, Eritrea voted to separate from Ethiopia. Subsequent border conflicts led to a full-scale war that left 80,000 people dead on both sides. On July 8, 2018, the new prime minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, went to Eritrea to meet with their president, Isaias Afwerki. When the two presidents met at the Eritrean border, they hugged. Ahmed announced that the Ethiopian government would accept the terms of a peace deal made in 2000 that had been ignored previously. And with that, twenty-five years of war came to an end. To celebrate, many commoner Ethiopians called random Eritreans on the phone to say how happy they were that the war was ended, and the Eritreans responded with similar happiness. On September 19, the two countries officially opened their border and celebrated their new year together. The whole thing is astounding, and it reminds me of this verse: "He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire." (Psalm 46:9, NIV)

4. July in general seems to not have been too terrible. Besides the aforementioned East African war ending, and the rescue of 12 Thai boys from a cave, the World Cup happened, and it was the best World Cup I have ever seen. The most entertaining thing about it was the fact that for the most part, the teams that people expected to win didn't do so well, and the teams that were expected to rock the bottom punched well above their weight. Russia, the hosts, were the lowest ranking team going into the tournament, but they beat 2010 winners Spain on their way to the quarterfinals. England, the country that invented soccer but had been quite mediocre at it since 1990, went on to become semifinalists for the first time in my life. (They also conquered a penalty shootout for the first time in 28 years, which doesn't sound big, but believe me, it is big.) No other country defined the World Cup of underdogs more than Croatia, a country of four million people that had rarely gone past the group stage before going all the way to the finals and nearly taking it all. In the end, a well-established team did win the World Cup (vive la France!), but for their win, France can thank seventeen (!!!) men who are ethnic minorities, including thirteen (13) black men. I will leave that there. ;)

5. Continuing with the theme of ending wars and sports, North Korea and South Korea are enjoying the best relations they've had since the two of them split back in 1953. During the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the two Koreas actually unified some of their sports teams so that they competed together under one Korean flag. Two months later, in April, Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in (the president of South Korea) met at the border between the two countries for a historic summit. There they came up with the Panmunjeom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unity on the Korean Peninsula, where among other things, the two countries agreed to denuclearization, to formally end the Korean War (which never officially ended, though nothing major happened after 1954), and to move towards unity. The two countries have started removing troops and landmines from the NK-SK border. Obviously they aren't done with negotiations yet, and there are many, many questions to be asked as the two Koreas move towards unity. But for as long as I live, I will never forget the image of Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in walking over the 38th parallel--a symbol of seventy years of war--as if it were a mere pothole, or a jump rope.

6. As I mentioned before, I found out that Stan Lee died yesterday as I was quickly looking up some bad news to begin this post. And while it is sad that he has left us, if I have to be honest, when I leave this world I want to be as baller as Stan Lee was. He was married for 70 years to his wife, he was healthy enough to do what he loved even into his 90s, he had two children...oh, and his comic book company is ON TOP OF THE WORLD RIGHT NOW. 
How do I begin to describe the incredible year that Marvel Comics has had? Let's start from the beginning of the year. In February, they released a little movie called Black Panther. They figured that it would make a decent amount of money, bringing lots of black people along with the usual Marvel nerds. Lo and behold, Black Panther went well above and beyond Marvel's expectations, sparking actual dance parties inside the theater, a bevvy of articles on how groundbreaking it was, a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and $1.3 billion for Marvel Comics. Then the end of April came, and with it, a certain Avengers: Infinity War, a movie that broke so many box office records that Wikipedia had to write a separate article dedicated to its record-breaking, and that gave $2 billion more to Marvel Comics. Then, three weeks after Infinity War, May brought us Deadpool 2, which broke Infinity War's record for the movie that made the highest amount of money on opening weekend, and gave $734 million more to Marvel Comics. And finally, in August came the underachiever, Ant-Man and the Wasp, which only made $622 million for Marvel Comics. Excelsior, indeed. Rest in peace, Stan.

Generally speaking, it has never been a better time to be a geek. Even in the early 2000s, when I was a kid, if you told other kids that you read Marvel comics for fun and played video games, you were perceived as a loser. A decade later, the stories that the geeks grew up reading have now become the most profitable movies on planet Earth, and and even video games are viewed more respectably now with the rise of eSports and childhood nostalgia. How times can change.

7. I mentioned the two shootings that happened within 11 days of each other. Obviously they are unequivocally bad, and they shouldn't have happened. However, tragedies often bring out the worst and the best in people, and this is a demonstration of it bringing out the best. After the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting on October 27, two GoFundMes were started by Muslims, who traditionally have been enemies of Jews; one was started by two Muslim organizations, and the other by one Iranian man named Shay Khatiri. Within days, the two Muslim organizations had raised $250,000; Khatiri's went further, raising over $1 million to help the victims as of November 1. The donors were not only Muslim but also Christian and of other faiths (or none at all). For all the havoc caused by one anti-Semite, it's nice to see that there are many, many more Americans who are willing to support Jewish people (as well as other people) in times of need.

8. Many people didn't make it to the end of this year. I mentioned the many influential people we've lost this year: comic book makers, incredible singers, rappers, fashion designers and TV hosts, as well as normal people who shouldn't have died when they did. But guess who did make it to the end of the year? YOU, dear reader. You made to the end of the year (and the end of this very long post). And I am so grateful that you made it. As Dr. Seuss put it, "Today, you are you, and it's truer than true. There is no one alive that is you-er than you." If you were to die now, there are people that would miss you. No one can replace you, reader. Yes, there are people who are similar to you and have similar experiences, but no one can make the unique mark on the world that you make. You are very important! You are loved more than you'll ever know. It may not always feel that way, but it's true. Thank you for reading my post. I'm super honored to have you here.

I hope this post helped you gain a bit of optimism. It certainly helped me! I didn't feel like it was going to help me, and I didn't feel like there was a point even trying to look for good news. But many, many studies have shown the benefits of gratitude, of the consistent practice of finding things to be grateful about. So, I decided to do my part. Hopefully these topics can spark discussion on a more hopeful note. 

the rougher side of being surrounded by “people who look like me”

I grew up mostly surrounded by white and Asian people. I was one of 3 black people in my middle school and one of maybe 30 in a high school of 2800. There was always this sense that I was “the other”. Whenever I walked into the room, I was the only person of my "category" there, and I couldn’t really do anything about it. 

But the thing is, sometimes I felt that way around black people too. Sometimes I would end up in groups of black people, but I wasn’t like those black people, and everyone knew it. People told me that I “acted white”. The way I spoke, the way I viewed school, the things I was interested in—they didn’t fit the mold of these black people. So I grew up basically never fitting in—too black for the white people, and too white (too much of an “Oreo”) for the black people.

When I went to college, everything changed. There were more black people around me than I had even been around in my life, but that wasn’t the thing. It was the kind of black people I was surrounded by. The black people at Harvard talked like me, dressed like me, valued education as much as me. They were to a large extent, like me. For the first time (at least in a school setting…refer to the “Black Panther” C&C post) I was surrounded by people who looked like me. And it was cool! it was cool hanging out with the other black girls and realizing that I wasn’t the only one of my "specific kind”, if you will.

But sometimes, it wasn’t so cool.

Here’s why.

All of a sudden, I had found my “group” per se. After a whole lifetime of not fitting in, I had finally found the group where I was supposed to “fit in”. These were the guys and girls that I was to look up to…and to set up as a benchmark. If I was not doing as well as them, and if I wasn’t doing the stuff they did or liking the stuff they liked, it made me less of a Black Harvard Girl. And who was I, if not a Black Harvard Girl? 

So instead of my friends they became my idols. If I didn’t think the exact same thing with the exact same perspective on an issue as they did, it made me question my own blackness. If I didn’t do as well in school as they did, it became a stumbling block to me. Why can’t I do as well as her? Am I not just like her?

It took me a couple of years to figure out that the answer to that is NO.

I am not just the sum of the people who look like me. I am ME. And each black girl who looks like me is not just “another black girl” either. Every person is fearfully and wonderfully made. Every person has their own UNIQUE gifts and/or talents. Each person is made to make his or her own mark on the world. Each person has his or her own race to run. I spent a lot of time looking at other black girls wondering why I didn’t run my race just like them, not knowing that my only job was to finish MY OWN race. And as I came into myself, I realized that difference is not an enemy. Other people thinking different, or learning different, is not bad. We can all make it to the other side.

Maybe you’re a black girl reading this, the opinion of another black girl, and you have never had this problem. That’s wonderful! You go be your beautiful black self! You don’t have to relate to me or people like me on everything ever. If you did, you’d be a copy, and that’s not who you’re made to be.

But I reckon I’m not the only person with this experience, which is why this post is public. Let’s help each other. :)

on the death of pastor Andrew Stoecklein and of too many others like him

Four days ago, the pastor of Inland Hills Church of Chino, CA, Andrew Stoecklein, committed suicide. From what I’ve heard, about 400 pastors do this every year. That’s 400 too many.

I don’t think it happens because God doesn’t care/can’t help people with anxiety or depression. That would be an erroneous statement that flies in the face of not only the Bible, but of thousands of testimonies, including mine.

I think it happens, number one, because we have a real enemy that wants to destroy us! He wants us to believe his lies and to be held back by strongholds of fear, sadness, addiction and other bad things, and he goes about looking for opportunities to devour people!

The other reason I think it happens is because of the pedestal pastors can accidentally find themselves on. Pastors have so many expectations on them: they have to preach the word of God at all times, have their behavior in line at all times, be ready to provide a caring voice and hand for their flock at all times...it’s a stressful profession! And I think it is all too easy for pastors to fall into the trap that they must be perfect people and they must be able to carry all the people's burdens by themselves. And because they feel like they can’t express their struggles to anyone (or else they’ll lead the flock astray, oh no!) they struggle in isolation. And isolation is an ACTUAL tool of the devil. It amplifies your internal problems by a lot.

What can we do as normal churchgoing people? I think the main thing we can do is continually pray for our pastors. When I was struggling with anxiety and depression myself (mainly in college), what got me back from the brink was the constant prayer and support of my parents. They were not just feelings that came and went; they were spiritual strongholds sent by the devil to take me out. Spiritual strongholds require spiritual weapons, so prayer is the ideal weapon against these things. If you happen to know that your pastor is in a direct struggle with these things, pray that those strongholds would break in Jesus’ name. If you don’t think they’re struggling, pray that they will be able to continually cast their cares upon God and that the joy of the Lord would be their strength.

Another thing we can do is let our pastors be people once in a while. Many times pastors write of not having a vacation in 10 or more years because they’re always on duty. Even doctors don’t suffer that much! I am a big advocate of pastors getting annual vacations or sabbaticals or what not. We all need time to rest and recharge and to simply listen to what God is saying to us. Other than that, we should allow our pastors to be vulnerable with us when needed. The pastor isn’t just there to serve us; he or she is our supervisor, and we are all workers in the body of Christ. Therefore as church people we should be willing to (collectively) bear our pastors’ burdens as well. Again, prayer is key!

One thing that churches can do that lessens the burden on pastors is to have more than one good preacher or leader. My home church, Christian Life Center, and my current church, Hillsong LA, both have multiple main speakers, and this is very key! At CLC, when my pastors take their annual vacation to the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, the church isn’t left scrambling because we have other trained pastors and leaders who can take over for the week. These leaders can then help the pastor bear his or her burdens and make the work lighter.

All this is to say that as a church we all need to be on guard against depression and anxiety in our pastors and leaders. When you get the chance, do pray for pastor Stoecklein’s family and his church, and also for the other churches that have undoubtedly gone through the same thing this year.

The United States National Suicide Prevention Hotline can help in times of crisis if you call 1(800)-273-8255.

How To Survive First Year of Med School

Second year of med school starts in three days...SIGH.

In trying to mentally prepare myself to start this year, I am amassing tips for incoming first years or gung-ho premeds.

1. You are going to be surrounded by people who are just as driven and as smart as you are. DO NOT FALL into the comparison trap. Other people have their race to run and you have your race to run. Don't judge yourself on the accomplishments of others.

2. Going with the last note, do be ambitious, but please don't be a gunner. Don't ask people what score they got on the test or try and take advantage of people to make yourself look good. People will not like you!

3. Find a study method (or a couple) that works for you and stick to it. If you're like me, this may change from block to block or from week to week, depending on the material and on whether you like to switch it up (like me). This is okay as long as you KEEP STUDYING throughout the block.

4. You can cram in med school...but it's a lot harder than in college. It's a megaton of information, so you have to give yourself a certain amount of time to learn all of it before the test. The best way to do it is to study at least a couple of hours each day after class. Then when you are reviewing before the test, you'll have seen the information before, and it'll be easier to remember.

5. I always felt better studying the information I learned on the day. If I wasn't able to get through all the material for August 7, for example, instead of spending August 8 trying to catch up, I'd just leave the rest of the August 7 material until the weekend and skip over to August 8 material. This way, I was able to keep up with the material pretty well and not fall behind too much. Falling behind is very discouraging, so I try to avoid that as much as I can.

6. You may fall behind. You may violate your perfect study schedule sometimes. You may even unintentionally take a day off because you're tired. That's okay. You're not perfect, and you don't have to be perfect in order to be successful in medical school. If you make a mistake or two or seven, don't dwell on the fact that you messed up. The righteous person falls seven times and gets back up eight times. If you fall, get up and try again.

7. If you budget your time well, you WILL have time on weekends to have fun! People think that med school is the end of all fun...it isn't. You will study a lot, but there will be some free time! (When studying for Step 1 or on rotations where you work on weekends, there will be less free time. But you'll be okay.)

8. For me, talking to patients was a LOT scarier than studying was! A lot of the confidence for that comes with practice. If your school gives you chances to practice, TAKE THEM. You may feel uncomfortable or like you're being annoying, but your grades third and fourth year as well as your future patients will thank you.

9. Don't be afraid to ask for help. No one expects you to know everything yet; you are a medical student, and a first-year one at that. You've barely been inducted into the profession, and everyone expects you to need help at some point. Also, it reflects badly on the med school if the students do badly, so most schools should have plenty of help resources. Take advantage of them. Get a tutor if needed.

10. Try and get on an exercise regimen and to eat healthy. Most people go into med school after their teenage years, and our bodies start reacting to bad treatment as time goes on. At least in my experience, if I go too long without exercising, my thighs start aching and I get super lethargic, which is not something I can afford with med school's fast pace. I've heard of similar experiences with my classmates. You don't have to look like a model; just find a way to be active for thirty minutes or so more than once a week. It's similar with eating; clean eating makes me feel really good and gives me energy.

11. Going along with number 7, find time for at least one hobby that you liked before medical school and keep doing it. For me the thing I did most consistently was learn languages, a hobby I've had since I was ten years old. It engages another part of my brain and makes me happy.

12. Medicine consists of a lot more than learning copious amounts of biology. It also consists of forming positive relationships with patients (yay social skills) and learning how to do research (at least in my medical school) among other things. Don't skimp on these parts of the job just because learning the science is harder! The science is what gives you good grades now, but the other things (especially the doctor-patient relationship thing) will make you a better doctor later.

There is plenty more advice to give, but I don't know it yet, so you get this. Congratulations on medical school, and hope this helps.