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themedmail-blog · 5 years ago

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001 | I'm a farce, but so is everyone

Hello there!

How are you doing? I hope you’re doing as well as I’am. As this is my first Post, I won’t be writing about my past week, but about the entirety of my last semester, which was filled with adversities, due to COVID-19, but also with self-knowledge and improvement. To be honest, I had the idea of writing this Newsletter after a couple hours of Grey’s Anatomy reruns, so feel free to read this as a huge Meredith Grey monologue, and to set the dramatic tone, song of the week is Your Song - Elton John.

Well, let me start by introducing myself for those who don’t know me yet, i’m Melissa. Here are ten facts about me:

I love coffee.

I’m in my second semester of medical school.

i’m very interested in gastro hepatology.

My favourite football team is Ajax Amsterdam.

I have great leadership skills.

I love to speak in public.

Writing is a great passion of mine.

I went to medical school because of the immense possibilities of doing many different things during graduation and career.

I’m very adore to learn new languages.

I’m a farce.

Yes, I'm a big farce. And I will tell you why. But let me walk you through my first semester as I do that.

My University has the culture of organizing a whole welcoming on the week that precedes the beginning of classes for the newcomers. Until the day before, I was certain I was not going. I didn't know anyone but two friends of mine with whom i went to high school with, and they weren't even going. On introduction day, one of my friends called me and asked me to go with her, as it would benefit the both of us to make friends and to know how things functioned around there.

I asked her for a minute to think about it and gather courage to change clothes. I sat on my bed and listed about 10 reasons why i shouldn’t go, one of them being the fact that i didn’t know if i could be social in that space. However, I have the ultimate worst habit of thinking a little bit too much into the future, so here’s how my thought process went:

“I'm going to be a Doctor very soon in six years, I will need the best communication skills. If I can't go through a week of getting to know my future colleagues, how will I be able to communicate to my patients?”

And using the old forced extroversion strategy to deal with shyness, two hours later I found myself inside a room full of a hundred future doctors. I must say I was really well dressed, but nevertheless a bundle of nerves who fidgeted her fingers and followed her company around like a lost puppy. This friend of mine is the definition of social butterfly, a very charming short girl, strong personality and party life history.

I know you must think i’m an introvert, but here’s the plot twist, i’m not. I have quite good communication skills, i was mostly just scared to use them. But I had to overcome that, i was going to be a doctor. What would I do if I couldn't communicate with my patients?

The first day went really badly: all the activities were kinda boring, and everybody seemed to have their own group of friends, including my company, who gossiped nonstop with her other friends. I felt lonely, and decided not to go the other day, but made a deal with my friend that on the third day we would go together.

The day came and I woke up with the full conviction I was going. Again, i was going to be a doctor, i NEEDED to get used to socializing. And also, it’s kinda hard to survive 6 whole years without friends.

Anyways, what could possibly go wrong…

My friend bailed on me. I went to the third day of the integration week. Alone On my own. And how lucky I was (don’t miss the sarcasm) when I got there and the whole class was separated in groups of 10 people to practice tutorial groups. Great! I was now locked with strangers in a tiny room, sitting at a round table with a mission to speak about things I didn't know, like life in University.

Again, it was hell and i can remember clearly calling my mom at some point just to rant out. I didn’t want to tell my other friends I was sitting by my own in the cafeteria, that was just embarrassing in my view. So I came to a realization: I couldn’t just sit still and hope people would simply come talk to me for no reason I had to go for a hunt.

And I did. I have to thank my impulsiveness sometimes because it can give me the chance of jumping in on great opportunities, like writing this Newsletter, or, in that case, actually having someone to talk to. I got up my chair, paid for my food and sat by the side of a girl I noticed was looking kinda lonely too. I started with the basics like “What’s your name?”, “are you enjoying?”, “what are your expectations for MedSchool?”. It went smoothly and we sat by each other until the end of the day.

I went home with a fulfilled feeling in my heart. Maybe it wasn’t so scary to talk to people after all. I mean, I can still list around a hundred reasons for bad things that can happen but, i mean, what are the odds? Well, we aren’t friends anymore, she missed the next day and up to date I've only seen her two other times at university. But, still, I made a friend for a whole day.

On that last day, I was rescued by my friends from High-School. The great thing about having extroverted and non-shy friends is that they can put you in great situations, like going to the mall with your vets, having lunch with them and buying cookies on the way back while singing Justin Bieber in a car.

The thing about motivation is that it doesn’t just come magically your way. Usually, it takes something to happen for you to be motivated, and that something to me happens to be progress. I wanted to be that person who has a lot of friends and who had no fear or problem in talking to people to get into the best opportunities. I wanted to succeed, and to accomplish success we ALWAYS will need people. The fact that I had just recharged my motivation by having a very successful social interaction during a whole day made me get home and look after actually doing things to become the person I wanted to be.

I remembered a friend of mine from school (where i had already gone through this whole process of becoming the shiny colorful butterfly I wanted to be) told me an old friend of hers was in my class. I followed her on Instagram and thought “What have I got to lose if I send a message to make a friend?”. That feeling of having nothing to lose (besides my nonexistent reputation) is a great one when you’re shy, because deep down, it may not be all about the attention, but about getting it and then losing it or make it be a bad thing. So I texted her. Guess what, we clicked immediately and ended up in the same groups. She is still my greatest friend there and we are natural born geminis who can connect about everything.

I am a farce because I am this bubbly person, who’s bright, smart, charming and charismatic, a great leader and a lover of the public attention, but whenever I get the slight thought of being perceived as something bad I turn to my coocum and hide behind this shy person who doesn’t run after her dreams. That’s not me, that’s fear.

Anyways, the semester started and I was still a farce. My university works with a PBL method, and that means making us sit in that tiny room in groups of ten discussing our topics. But there was a detail. Some people left the class and my group was the most affected by it, leaving us with just six people and our tutor to discuss the magics of alcohol. The conversation went smoothly, and on our next meet up, with the full 10 people, I wasn't so shy anymore. First I tried answering our first question, and, not wanting to brag but, I nailed it. And that gave me confidence to answer another, and another, and another. Because, again, that’s what makes us go, motivation does not come from the wishful thinking but from the idea of progress, and the concise hope of actually accomplishing something.

Through the course of a month, my coocum started to open to release the beautiful butterfly. Of course, it didn’t come out from day to night, but it was a slow nice process. The fact that I was doing really well academically helped a lot.

And then he came.

You know who I am talking about and I didn't even say his name, but you know it. Our little virus friend Corona came. We started having remote classes and, to be honest, I don't know what happened. I guess it was maybe the lack of social interactions that make our accomplishments actually mean something, but I was just, you know, unmotivated and with very low energy. My grades were still great in my second module, but my social and vocal performance didn’t please me.

The thing about communication online is that it always makes me feel as if it’s beyond easy for things to be just misunderstood. We don’t communicate only with pure words, communication is this whole stage play of words, scenario, body movements…

I was again a farce.

Being a farce is not only bad to you, but it’s bad to everyone around you. It doesn't matter how small you feel, you always have something to aggregate to a group, and the moment you decide to close yourself to expressing your thoughts or to just participate in what is being proposed to you privates people from great contributions to their own projects and learning.

But we are not blind to the fact that we are farces. We now know the characters we put ourselves to be. Knowledge is not all power, but it can be once you put action to it. Knowledge is that sole step that separates the ones who don’t have the chance to do something about the problem and those who do.

I didn’t know if i was going to act, but i preferred the idea of having the option to do something to not having a chance at all. Things won’t come to you, you must come to them, and you must fight all the barriers you have to get to them.

My trigger to action was a TV show. Yes, unlike in the movies, in life most of our life changing moments come from the most mundane experiences. I started watching Mr. Robot, a thriller about a hacker that gets involved in some crazy schemes to take down a huge money corporation.

SPOILER ALERT!

Be careful about what you read from this point because I'm going to need to tell you the very end of the first season. Well, long story told shortly, after the main character takes down all the debts from this company, making people live freely, the president of the enterprise is faced with many problems. One of the women who works for him then asks him “are you not scared?”. He then answers her “It’s just people, the people who did this, like you and me”. This quote stuck to me. It’s just people, like you and me, with fears like you and me and the repulse for rejection like you and me. People who want to be loved and who are most times too caught up in themselves to pay attention to you.

END OF SPOILER!

We just tend to direct our sights to the extraordinary and to ourselves, there is no need to fear the eyes of people because they will mostly not be directed to you, and if they are, well, they can be analysing you just like you are analyzing them. And, doesn’t matter how small you are in the business chain, you still have an opinion that nobody can take from you. This power alone can make most people frightened.

From that moment onwards I started to put people into perspective and I realized one thing.

I’m a farce, but so is everybody else.

Everyone has traits and potentials they don’t live up to. Everybody has a coocum, the difference is what and how much you’re keeping there. You see, if you’re shy you’re probably thinking about that super social butterfly guy in your class that always talks to everyone and always has an answer to everything. That guy is amazing in your eyes, but maybe, if we put into perspective, what if that is actually trying to prove himself all the time, constantly fighting to show off so he can have a better image of himself. We are all fighting against ourselves one way or another, even when we’re winning. That's what makes life fun. We are not born being who we want to be, life is all about becoming it, and, even though we tend to believe that happiness is in the crossing line, the rush and excitement in the uncertainty of winning is what actually makes us happy during the path. Crossing the line is collateral damage.

This reflection is a little bit more directed to shy people like me. I know we sometimes try to make ourselves believe that we don’t need people and that is ok to be just “in your zone”. That’s a lie. And I know it is hard to hear that but we need to acknowledge that in order to act on it. Remember the benefits of knowledge. In the first season os Grey’s Anatomy, Meredith Grey is learning to deal with the responsibilities that come with being her mother's daughter and of being a doctor. In an episode in which she starts to close herself to people, she comes to the conclusion “lines do not keep people out, they fence you in''. People are not being harmed by your lines, YOU ARE. You need people, and people need other people. Read that well, they need people, not necessarily you. So go, be this person, talk to someone and don’t overthink.

I had the great fortune of making amazing friends who got me to amazing projects, like writing a book on public health and ethics, and I made sure I am as indispensable for them as they are for me. We had to fight for it to happen, talk to people that could help us. And even though we started thinking it wouldn’t be possible, it only worked because by the end we believed in it, and we put every strength in it to make it work.

We are all a farce and that’s alright, as long as you put action into not being one. My second semester started last week and I found myself being a farce again. We relapse, we have set backs and we grow out of practice. Never apologise for learning and don’t beat yourself for not accomplishing something from day to night. The crossing line is promising, but the feeling of happiness and accomplishment only lasts a few moments after the rush of winning goes away and you realise you need to pursue something new to feel excited. I’m a farce but, hey, the ride is quite enjoyable.

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