Entry:

I will remember 1998 as the most fruitful and eventful year of my life.  In May, I watched my dear friends graduate and leave Berkeley to continue with the rest of their lives and careers.  Linh and Kris (of my lab), started medical school at UCLA and Baylor respectively.  Ling began the long and arduous road in MD/PhD program at Mount Sinai.  Charley's will have his M.A. from Northwestern by the end of next spring.  Eileen is busy as a grad student at Penn St.  Now that I've covered the future doctors and scientists of the world, there are, of course, the future lawyers.  There is Sylvaine at Columbia and Crystal at UCLA.  Brian, from my old high school,  stayed right here to attend our great Boalt School of Law.  Others like Jeff in Boston and Livia down in Southern California are now full-fledged members in the job market.  With so many people doing so many great things for the future, I was left wondering what I would do for the future...

By the second semester of my senior year, I realized how totally unprepared I was for the road ahead.  I couldn't motivate myself to do anything even as I watched everyone forge ahead without any reservations.  That being the case, I made a conscious choice to delay taking the MCAT last April and wait and additional year before applying to graduate school.  This plan out me two years behind the others, but it was the right choice  choice for me. 

The summer was quite calm and relaxing.  I worked in lab and gathered data to use for my senior honors thesis.  Although I longed to see my friends and spend time with them before they departed, it wasn't always possible because everyone was getting ready to move on.  I did what I could to help, helping people pack their belonging and driving them to post office to ship their boxes.  Of course, inheriting things that people don't want to take with them is a great perk.. not that my helping out had any ulterior motives.

Next came my little car accident.  I've run all of the possible scenarios through my head countless times.  I could have spent the rest of my life trying to figure out why things happened the way they did.  But in the end, I had to move on and live my life.  The accident was indeed a profound experience that has and will impact the rest of my life. 

I'm able to put things in their proper perspective now.  The clarity that comes with being knocked-out is amazing.  I'm not afraid to hide from the truth about myself.  There are still so many things that I need to do to grow and mature.  There have been too many opportunities that I've let slip through my fingertips because I was too scared to try.  Change is hard, but at least I realize now the extent of the changes I need to make.  What's the first stage?  Denial?  Well, I'm finally getting out of that stage.

My accident also helped me find a piece of myself that was missing for a long time, the motivation and desire to learn.  If I had to guess, I'd say that I lost my passion for learning in high school.  At that time, my entire life centered around school but that was empty without everything else.  I felt no sense of belonging or sense of identity.  It's much easier to get away with being apathetic in high school, but it's a whole different story in college.

I managed to get by through my years at Cal without doing too much.  Now that I look at what I was supposed to have learned, I realize that I didn't put in the time and effort to truly understand and appreciate the information taught in the courses.  I'm grateful that I was able to retain the most relevant concepts so I can say that I didn't spend my last four and a half years in vain.  I missed my goal of getting staight A's (4.0) by getting one A-, but I won't complain because it was a great was to end! 

Knowledge comes with the desire to learn about ourselves and the world, and now that I have that passion again, I can finally be honest with myself and live my life.
 

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