I've decided that the first year of grad school has been about learning how to be a grad student. I made a few mistakes along the way, but with the last quarter of the year approaching midterms, I've finally learned some valuable Elyn lessons:

1. I'm 46 years old. I've had some shiny moments that I'm quite proud of. If you want me to write a short story, novel, technical document, or film script, I can pound out a pretty decent first draft, and I can teach you how to do it, too. Being a beginner at something has been very hard. Ego, take a bow.

2. Being past child bearing age implies that I don't have to keep up with those who are half my age. In the beginning I couldn't understand where my classmates found the energy to be in the accelerated classes, work, party, date, and still do well on quizzes and exams. Then, with no small amount of horror, I realized that I was old enough to have given birth to most of my fellow students. Sobering.

3. With age comes confidence (or exhaustion from sludging through a lifetime of BS). There were some difficult social situations that I quickly and firmly extracted myself from. At a younger age, I would have taken a lead role in the soap opera just because I was raised to be co-dependent that way. Thank the Gods for therapy and time.


4. Relationships. I was told repeatedly that most romantic relationships do not survive grad school. In anticipation of this, the man I was with when I applied for school broke up with me. The next guy who came along couldn't hang either.

Grad school demands that you give it your complete focus. There is no energy for doing all the work that needs to be done in a loving, mature relationship. I've come to doubt whether I'll get involved with anyone seriously until after I graduate.

If I do, it's going to have to be someone who either has done what I'm doing and doesn't mind being a doormat, or was born that way (see co-dependent issue above).

In the mean time, I'm re-evaluating my, ah, position on never engaging in the casual hook up...



5. Perhaps the most difficult lesson to learn is how to actually learn. The truth is I'm an artist/intuitive/empath/clairvoyant. Linear thinking is something I can do, but not for sustained amounts of time.

I believed that because I was going into medicine, I had to turn off my intuition and only use the left side of my brain. I tried paying attention with just my thinking brain and memorize everything by rote. Despite hours and hours of studying, I didn't do so well on exams. It made me miserable.

My therapist (I highly recommend having one if you're going to med school--he or she can talk you out of it if nothing else.) convinced me to do what I do best. Today was my first time trying.

 
Instead of leaning forward in my seat and furiously taking notes trying to grok everything coming out of the professor's mouth, I sat back. I let my mind wander now and then. I took notes, doodled, enjoyed sun when it made its fickle appearance through the window.

Then it happened. The answers to the professor's questions came quickly and easily. I was letting my mind work in the strange way that it does--just absorbing information rather than chasing it down. 

In the last few weeks of my first year, I've finally remembered how to learn. Wonder what I'll learn next year...