"Low calorie" birthday cupcakes. Hah.

I’m glad that both my teams, the Texans and Saints, won their respective games on Sunday. I’m glad I’ve survived rotations so far. I’m glad for the friends who have stuck by me. One year from now, I’ll be done with my USMLE Step 1, core rotations, and several electives. Residency applications will be in, and I’ll *hopefully* get some early interview love too.

Wish I had something more exciting to write about, but frankly, I don’t.

As far as reflecting on the past year, I suppose one could read all my MS1 posts since that’s where most of my time went, but as a person, it’s hard to capture how I’ve regressed with mere words. The last year has been very humbling, but in all honesty, a bit depressing as I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m average in every conceivable regard. It’s great to have classmates who make me look like dirt – gives me a mark to work towards and a sense of awe that these are my colleagues. But in the grand scheme of things, I have a greed for self-improvement. Getting smarter, getting stronger, getting to be less socially awkward and more confident… these are some of my goals for the coming year. We’ll see how far I get.

Today was an exceptionally dull birthday spent mostly driving around Houston. Around 11 AM, I embarked on a journey to one of the family businesses to resolve a networking issue with one of the computers. The trip was a success, though it took 90 miles of driving and roughly three hours. Then this evening, my dad (who had just flown in this morning) was notified at the last minute that he needed to fly out to Baton Rouge. After another 100 miles (round trip) and two hours of driving, I’m sitting here writing this post.

I guess it could’ve been worse. I’m looking forward to getting back to school for block 2 – cardiology, respiratory, and renal (CRR). Could a 22 year old sound more nerdy?

I really can’t think of anything. It’s all downhill from here. I’ll be 30 soon. And then 40. And then 50. And then hopefully reaping the benefits of medicare and social security. I still remember the day I turned 10 and was ridiculously excited to finally be in the “double digit” age. *Sighs* We live our teenage years hoping to get older for the aforementioned reasons (driving, voting, etc.), but upon reaching 21, I have nothing to look forward to. At this point, everything that transpires in my life will be due to my own actions rather than a legal privilege. I can only imagine what will happen by the time I’m 40.

I want to thank everyone for going out of their way to Facebook, text message, and call me on this important day in my life. I consider myself to be more of a product of my social circle than others, and therefore take it as a sincere privilege when I’m remembered for something as “trivial” as a birthday.  You all remind me how lucky I am to have friends like you.