Oh, to be thirteen again...

I'm starting to really miss being "young". I mean, I know I'm only 19 still, but when did I suddenly become this person who, in three years time, will actually have to be a doctor?? I think it was the combination of seeing a group of little kids touring the anatomy museum this morning, and my mum running into a former high school teacher of mine, but I've started to realize that I've done the very thing I dreaded growing up - I've chosen what to do with my life. What happened to my nine lives? I was gonna be an astronaut; magazine editor; travel writer; professor; pilot; historian; restauranteur; novelist; human rights lawyer... now I'm just a med student. Period. I know medicine is amazing in the way it provides so many different opportunties, but why is it that all of a sudden I feel so... trapped? I don't regret doing medicine; even if I could do the past three years over again, I wouldn't do anything differently. But I miss... reading for pleasure without feeling guilty... not knowing what I'd be doing in five years time... dreaming of possibility...

I shouldn't be surprised; once the excitement, the unbelief and awe, has come and gone, you find yourself knee deep in shite and thinking, they hardly ever show this part on TV and when they do it always seems so damn sexy. But it's not. It's really not. I found myself thinking the same thing three years ago at Harvard, and if that's the price I have to pay for getting older, I'd much rather be thirteen again.

I think I'm just stressed. And tired. I get philosophical when I get stressed. Philosophical and emotional. And confused.

Oh - and when did little kids get so smart? How is it possible that a bunch of eight-year olds know there are four chambers in the heart, and that the main branch off the heart is called the aorta?? Seriously?!