Thanks and farewell

I never could love San Francisco the same way I fell in love with Boston. Those of us who travel with our stomachs along with our eyes have infinite conquests in the bay, both visual and gastronomical. And yet the many delectables and stunning vistas over napa and golden gate did not hold my sentiments, even as they held my attention.

The bay was always his place, not mine – the promise land of Tesla-driving, kombucha-drinking, inventing, and world-changing sophisticates; certainly no place for an ingénue like me. He had dreamed about this place from our dorm rooms in North Carolina, talked about the hacker lifestyle and read about all the up and coming entrepreneurs taking Palo Alto by storm. For him it was always about building something exciting and new, while I was always more comfortable inhabiting the nostalgic and worn.

More than the cold deception of sunny but jacket-required days in the middle of summer, the ego of bay dwellers rubbed me entirely the wrong way. They didn’t appreciate my preference for hard copy books or deciduous trees; they didn’t understand my appreciation for seasons – cold Christmases and hot beaches.

A year ago I showed up in San Francisco wanting to see what he saw, wondered if I was missing something, somehow unworthy of a place so mythologized, even in its name – in Chinese, jiu jin shan literally meant old gold mountain, named for the gold rush of the 1850s but somehow also a nod to the modern day gold rush of ideas and idealisms. I found myself wondering what it was about the urine tinted sidewalks of the Mission mixing with the scent and promise of authentic burritos that appealed to the restless and the brave. In the end I turned down the offer from the bay, and as a compromise, found my new address in its more measured sister city further up the coast.

In general the oversaturation of Amazon and Microsoft against the foundation’s island of global health has confirmed what I have always known – that I crave humanism over technology, history over innovation, perhaps most notably, medicine over business.

But In many ways Seattle has been a pleasant surprise for this too-neurotic, too-serious west coast skeptic. I will miss the scale of these mountains, this nature that demands to be taken seriously, and the ethos of “getting out there,” breathing it all in but not leaving a trace.  I have indulged in your premium coffee beans and your appetite for fresh, real and unassuming food and drink. I have had tremendous opportunity for meaningful and impactful work. I’m happy to have been here, and in 2 more weeks I’ll leave with some bulky hiking boots and a taste for the vast and the humbling.

Here’s to the next adventure.

Leavings

Sitting in a corner of my apartment with all my belongings half packed in a number of boxes strewn all around me, feeling exhausted and sad.

Leaving is always a messy, uncomfortable, and often overwhelming experience. The arriving less so, since during the leaving you have been forced to pack and organize your belongings into sorted, filtered, and transportable packages, and because new places allow for exploration and expanding into which always feels great.

But the leaving. Maybe its because I get more nostalgic about places and things than most. Mark, for example, has no qualms about tossing and giving away everything he doesn’t regularly use. But I hold on to old clothes and battered picture frames and mistended potted plants as markers of experiences I have had and lessons I have learned in the process. Even though I have learned that clutter does not make me happy, and I tend to feel more liberated after getting rid of old knick knacks, the decision to throw things away is always painfully difficult. 

But leaving has another, happier consequence. Over the past few days I have been inspired to view the city I have called home over the past 2 years more from the lens of someone just passing through. I have been volunteering at amazing organizations all around town, and taking every opportunity to meet up with friends. Yesterday, on the way back from an amazing day working in the kitchen at the Boston Living Center, I stepped into the Trinity Church (that I passed every day on the way to and from work) for the very first time. I sat in some pews staring at the glowing, vibrant stained glass, and wondered why we have a tendency to put off exploring beautiful places that we live just steps away from until just before we must leave them behind. As creatures who crave “busy-ness” many of us use our schedules as excuses not to engage in many meaningful experiences. I have certainly been guilty of this, often citing how busy I was at work, or that I was too tired to venture out after a long week (more content to “just window shop” on Newbury street). But if I am truly honest with myself, the behaviors that I default to when I am stressed or busy are not the ones that actually improve my outlook and mood. It would have served me well to spend less time buying and returning ridiculous things from Anthropologie, and more time chopping an entire crate of mushrooms with fabulous and fascinating people that I would have otherwise never had an opportunity to meet. 

So, back to this leaving process that I so despise. I have much more packing to do, but in the interim I’m also determined to preserve this feeling that our time is always limited and fleeting. I am leaving Boston for now, but there will be wonderful new experiences to be had in my next home city. With the help of a less hectic work schedule, I am determined so “put-off” no longer, and engage, connect, and contribute with more intentionality, and always make time for the things that truly matter. 

four years.

My own take on this senior column in yesterday’s chronicle.

At the beginning, you are all a little naïve. You overestimate your ability to write insightful papers and be good at music theory. Wonder if the friends you meet during orientation week are the people you will call and invite to your weddings in ten or fifteen years, and then never talk to them again. Think that you will major in biomedical engineering, biology, chemistry, and actually major in philosophy, music, math. Wonder if the boy down the hall will ever notice you, and then some how catch the attention of an unassuming upperclassman at a café, over lemon bars and James Joyce. Learn that relationships may end quietly, yet still heartbreakingly, no matter how improbably picturesque their beginnings. Then learn that the person you least expected to fall in love with might actually be the person you want to spend the rest of your life with.

Other lessons are more subtle, and some come too late: the importance of building relationships with professors and faculty members who want to share their worlds of knowledge with you, and to work with you, not just lecture at you. The importance of defining your own set of values, and being able to clearly articulate them. The importance of earning credibility with mentors and administrators who value your ideas and your perspectives. Of figuring out what you love, and doing it well.

You will realize that there is so much more to medicine than may be encompassed in talk about scalpels and needles and biochemical pathways - that it is also about empathy, and patience, and appreciation. Own up to the things you are bad at: math, engineering, drinking alcohol without turning bright red, swallowing your ego, and appreciate the things you are not quite so bad at: philosophy papers, befriending older and wiser peers, organizing quirky art competitions, reflecting, writing and cataloging. You will travel to India and Greece and England and France and the world will feel simultaneously smaller, and yet infinitely large. You will alienate those with whom you once spent many Friday nights laughing and cooking and watching Youtube videos with, and replenish those Friday nights with new faces, because people may drift apart for silly and fickle reasons. But forgive yourself. You will surprise yourself when you land jobs that you had long considered out of your league, and then stand in amazement as underclassmen start to look to you for advice.

And then, sometime in early May, you will realize that with one more paper it will all be over. Your thesis will be done and your plans for the summer, and beyond, in place. You will have bigger ambitions than what that naïve 17 year old could have dared to fathom in her wildest dreams. You are suddenly brave enough to email strangers who seem to have amazing careers, and are impossibly talented at soundbites, and ask them for their nuggets of wisdom. And then you will wonder if it has been enough, if it will ever be enough. Someday, hopefully, you will learn the value of contentment when finally, you tire of the upward climb. But for now, and for a while longer, you will remain easily inspired and easily enthralled. For this is how it feels to be young, in love, and truly fortunate. Today, the most you can hope for is just to be a little bit less naïve, and a little more thankful.