I find that med student Jennifer Hawke posts quotations that feel relevant to me. She has also been through the wringer with academic choices. In case her post some day goes offline, I’ve reproduced the quotes she recently offered.
The path to our destination is not always a straight one. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn’t matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark.
~ Barbara Hall
Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.
~ Arthur Rubinstein
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
~ Reggie Leach
To wit, if she and I were to define success as a tidy four-year undergraduate immediately followed by graduate/professional school of your choice and dreams and then earning six-figures by the time we’re 30, then we are woefully failures in life. That is the definition of a different generation. That is the definition that will wreck more lives than it bolsters. The correct definition amidst the above three quotations.
Ironically, I’m reading the memoir of a female neurosurgeon. Two books ago, I was reading another doctor’s novel. A co-worker commented on the theme and suggested that I consider being a nurse.
(Hah! I bet she hasn’t put it all together to know how old I am nor does she know what I’ve been through that I wouldn’t restart with a nursing career.)
I thought I would be horribly depressed reading two medical novels but I must be resigned afterall. I’m just waiting for it to come through the grapevine that The One and his girlfriend got the residency of their dreams, both in Lotusland, and got engaged to make their 2008 most auspicious.
