Life Happens

Hello crew!

I've been home for about three weeks now and I've had lots going on in my personal life - academic wise it's been on the back burner.

After two weeks at home I had the unfortunate experience of losing my grandmother. She experienced a quite sudden death so it came as a shock to my whole family. As for me it also came with a bit of frustration because as I looked back at her care over the past few months I saw so many systems errors that could have been prevented that would have allowed my grandmother to be much more comfortable as she was passing and would have given my family much more closure as her time was coming up.

The week my grandmother ended up in the hospital, for what would be her last time, I had begun an online course to help with step prep. With everything that unfolded it wouldn't be an understatement to say that my mind was all over the place. All of my plans for studying and attacking step had flown out the window.

I was almost in a state of shock.

I just remember a wave of panic overwhelming my whole body and the thought, "Jen you cannot screw this up".

I thankfully have some amazing, beautiful friends (you know who you are) who sent loving messages daily to make me feel like I wasn't going through this alone and I would get through it.

But there was still that panic. "You have eight weeks to study for comp... you can't mess this up".

Not only was I dealing with the loss of my grandmother and the frustrations that had attached to it, but I knew I had to keep moving forward. I instantly thought back to third year university, September 2013, first week of classes when my grandfather passed away and three weeks later my dad having surgery. I thought about how I dealt with those family stresses then... and how that ended up hurting me in the long run.

I tried to act tough and pretend it never really happened. Never letting myself actually process what happened. Sure that was great at the time... but I barely got through orgo chem 1 leading me to fail orgo 2.

NOW THAT WAS ROUGH. Big huge blow to the ego. How the heck was I going to apply to medical school now that I failed orgo 2.

Flashforward 3.5 years and obviously I got through it and made it to the medical school side. Now I'm facing my "medical school application" of medical school... step one. And I do not want to make the same mistakes I made the first time I had deaths in the family. I owed it to myself to learn from my previous mistakes.

And I want you all to learn from my previous mistakes too... Life happens while you're studying. You need to learn to deal with both.

So if you have a traumatic event happen to you or someone close to you and you feel like you need to take a step back for a little to recharge and reboot then do it. Take some time and process. Trust me when I say I've tried ignoring it and it doesn't work.

I'm currently trying to take my own advice and it's hard to not get frustrated with myself when I can't stay focused.

Believe me when I say if you're dealing with something similar you aren't dealing with it alone.

- Jen

Our family before the viewing

RIP my new angel

Getting ready for 3X

Hello my friends!!

I sit here the day after the heavily spoken about and internationally known boiling lake hike and let me tell you... muscles I didn't know could hurt are hurting.

As some of you may have seen on the news we're getting hit by a tropical depression Gaston. Winds are strong and there is a significant amount of rain falling. The weather wasn't as bad yesterday therefore we continued on with our hike.

The base of the hike is about 6.5 miles east of Rosseau (the capital of Dominica) so approximately 1.5 hour drive. The first part of the hike is through a heavily wooded area, with little steps for you to walk on guiding you to a small river where we had our first break. We sat there to cool off, hydrate and eat some food.

Next we hiked 1 km (1000 m) up. That was probably the most tiring part of this whole hike. It allowed me to do a lot of thinking (on my many breaks) - hiking is a lot like schooling - its beautiful when you take a step back and look around but when you focus in on yourself and lose sight of the beauty of the journey it turns into something a little more painstaking.

So, we finally made it to the top of this brutal summit. Our guide told us to start going back if we felt too tired but myself and two of my friends said we were going to make it to the lake.

Then our tour guide continued on...

The three of us caught our breath and continued down the other side of this summit. It didn't start off too bad, still more steps down - a little more difficult on this downward side. We then reached a point where there were no more steps and just a mountainous wall. The three of us saw our lives flash before our eyes countless times as we tried to figure out how to get down this mountain.

Once we finally made it down into the sulphur spring areas we took another break, and tried to bring down our adrenaline and calm our shaken nerves. We saw another guide leading a small group into a valley so we figured we should follow them. Once we actually made it to the valley we couldn't see where they could have gone but we followed the stream flowing down into boiling lake. Again, this started off not too bad but as we travelled deeper and deeper into this valley it was much more difficult. There were no places to put your feet, no rocks to hold on to, nothing. And I started to panic.

For the first time in a very long time I thought I made a completely wrong decision. We didn't know where we were, we had no one behind us telling us where to go and we had no idea if we were even heading in the right direction. We were yelling, trying to see if anyone could hear us... we felt so alone and lost. My one friend said she was going forward to see if she saw anyone and my other friend and I waited until we decided to try to head back from where we came from.

My legs were shaking, arms so sore, I was literally COVERED in sweat. Looking back and seeing where we struggled through was oddly beautiful. I could honestly say we got through all of that by ourselves and as much as I wanted to cry I turned back and tried to be as logical as possible to get back to an area where we knew where we were going.

That was probably one of the most mentally and physically challenging days I've had in my life. But do I regret it for a second? No.

I was scared for my life, I was tired, I felt weak and I felt so alone but I got through it (with the help of some friends). Although that may sound like a pretty scary way to start third semester I think it is beautiful. There are going to be ups and downs in your life and there are going to be times when you feel like you're lost and alone and you're so very close to giving up hope. But if you push through and persevere you can do ANYTHING you put your mind to.

Now even though my body is the most sore it's ever been I feel 100% ready to tackle M2!

- Jen

School Recovery

Hey Guys!

I'm finally done my MCAT and online course finals. It sure has been one hell of a summer. I feel like I've been consistently busy and unable to sit down and breathe. Now that I'm able to it feels surreal. I've pretty much moved into my couch with my laptop, snacks, tea and coffee! Sounds like heaven to me.

I find that after I've been busy for such a long period of time I always like to be alone to bring myself back down from wherever I am. I like leaving my cell phone in my room, staying off of social media and enjoy sitting in peace and quiet with a good book or a new TV series I'm watching (Chicago Fire and Chicago PD). By the way, I am looking for more shows so if you have any suggestions let me know!

In my own personal experience it's very difficult to balance the scale of social life and school/medical school applications. Some people understand the hard work and the amount of hours you need to put into just getting ready to apply while others don't. I don't know if the rest of you have dealt with the same problems but your friends will come around to understand.

Especially now, in my case, where we're all going into fourth year and everyone needs to figure out what they're doing with our lives. Do you go for your Masters or another Undergrad, do you pick a type of post grad school or apply to a college to specialize? It's a lot to bear on your shoulders at only 21 years old. Then once you decide what you want to do you need to find schools that offer it and that you would like to go to.

I remember thinking how stressful it was applying to university, thinking it was the end of the world. Now that I'm applying to Medical School I realize how silly it was to stress about that.

Hindsight is 20/20 friends. Just enjoy the ride,

Jen