15 May Reflections on the Coastal Starlight Train

Three seagulls skimming the ocean’s waves, kelp forests swaying below—when life was feeling like it was going by too fast, taking an 11-hour train ride up the coast was exactly what I needed: slow. 

Everything was in bloom en route to San Francisco. Hills filled to the brim with yellow and pink and cliffs with wildflowers tilting into the ocean, I wish I knew what all the plant species were, but the last plant biology class I took was in Bhutan five years ago. 

Spring is swaying into summer, and I feel like I barely got a taste of California winter. The last few gals I knew at Duke graduated last week, and I can’t believe I’m turning 25 in a few weeks. It feels like everytime I stop to take a deep breath, a month has already blown by. 

I’m nearly a year into medical school, but I feel like a freshman in college again: the whole world ahead of me and no idea where I’ll fall into place while on a treadmill that’s set just a little too fast for comfort. On one hand, I can’t wait to get one foot back into journalism; on the other, I’m grateful to have ended up in medical school this year.

People always ask me about my career change, but to be honest, journalism and medicine are two sides of the same coin. Both are professions that force you to examine the painful scars of injustice on the daily, in situations where most people choose to look away. It’s been hard to see in the clinic, but at the same time, I’m inspired by the doctors who show up and provide the best care they can in a world that is broken and full of pain. I’m also terrified of how I’ll be in a position to care for patients soon.

When I get anxious and scared of next steps—whether that’s stepping off the anchor on a big climb or figuring out what I want out of my personal and professional life—I try to think about what one Wuhan physician told me from the frontlines of COVID in February 2020. Like bungee jumping, it’s only scary standing on the bridge, but once you jump off, you can appreciate what is actually happening and take the scenery in instead, she said. 

In the last month, I’ve been running on two times speed with endlessly entangled thoughts on my mind, feeling like I’m standing on that bridge looking down into the unknown. I’ve been leaning on my friends a lot; they make me feel lucky and deeply appreciated every day, even as we’re all losing sleep and hair while chasing our dream careers and ideal lives.

A family physician I shadowed yesterday joked with one of her young HIV patients that everything feels hard and dramatic in your twenties and that we should try to be as zen as we can in these hectic times. Because cortisol is truly terrible for your health. 

If I could go back in time, I would tell 18-year-old-me that you’re going to find so many people, places and passions that you love and to take the time to cherish the suck even if it sucks in the moment. I think 32-year-old-me would be just as kind, forgiving and proud of first-year-med-student-me. 

I might feel lost wading between past, present and future, but for now, patches of flower fields meet the sand and foamy water, so blue and so beautiful.