There used to be a little grove of trees by the physician's parking lot at Dominican Hospital where my father would leave my little brother and me while he would see his patients. The idea of leaving elementary school aged children alone in a landscaped parking lot seems ill-advised now, but I remember feeling safe. Dad would go over the passcode procedure, if he needed to send someone to pick us up or, and I won't repeat the code in public to this day.

He would sling his stethoscope around his shoulders and stroll into the hospital, and my brother and I would dash into the grove of young redwood trees. The whole area was surrounded by thick feathery bushes that obscured a view of the adjacent street. We would dig our way through it and peer at the approaching ambulances and service vehicles. The grove itself was heavily shaded and the dirt was soft and bouncy. My brother would leap over the plastic sprinkler heads that were scattered to water the shrubs. We were completely oblivious to the kind of work my father was doing inside the hospital. As far as we were concerned he could have been a banker or a lawyer, we were just waiting out the time while he was gone.

I can't remember the games we played, but I can say that they involved a lot of running. We must have had some inclination I no longer have when I see a nice, well-shaded area. We grew up in the dense Santa Cruz Mountains forests, where the ability to sprint was hampered by long fallen branches and dense bunches of poison oak and prickly bushes. This kind of space was a relief from that.

The hospital itself was a series of tall white concrete buildings with sharp, modern angles and large glass windows covered by heavy steel shutters. All of the doors slid open with a gust of air conditioned breeze. When we would follow my father in, I would expect everyone to know who he was, and to some extent I'm pretty sure all the staff did. If we were lucky our waiting spot would be in the cafeteria or the doctor's lounge. There would be newspapers and magazines, and if there was a scrap of free food we were on it. Anyone who knows me knows I love food for all occasions. Dad would often return to the car with a bagel, lox and tomato slice wrapped in a paper napkin or maybe a bran muffin. If we had been waiting around after school, which was most often the case we would find a vending machine to stare at.

You see some pretty disturbing things if you sit in a hospital hallway for too long. Fully grown adults bursting into tears and moans, hospitalized patients collapsing in seizures, and those really eery gift shops I was afraid to step into, even though I wanted to look at their stock. Maybe these are the sorts of memories that discouraged us from wanting to becomes doctors when we were young. We rarely saw my dad providing care, but we often saw highly unstable adults doing things usually reserved for children- like crying.

I wonder what will come of these memories. I don't think there's anything advantageous about recollecting the plots we concocted involving those doors that open with button push and the floors that were perfect for sliding. But what about my kids someday? Will they come to the hospital with me?

Again it's been a cold snap of non-writing lately. Even tonight I didn't really feel like signing on, it was either this, write some emails to people that deserve them, or watch a movie. So this is somewhere in the middle. They really deserve those emails though. Correspondence is probably one those matters of civility that is losing it's spot in my generation, so not only do I owe to those 4 people that have helped me out tremendously the last six months, but I kinda owe to the good of us.

I'm still working at my father's office, and the last few months have fallen pretty much into the regimen that I expected earlier this year. It really wasn't much of a prediction, since I was just modeling it on what was happening then. That's not to say not much has changed!

I have a few more weeks to get the last scraps of my work done before I can fully immerse myself in post-bacdom. I've been wondering how my writing will have changed since I'm no longer a grad student. I'm a little pleased to have realized that my troubles in graduate school are not unique. I don't want to say vindicated, but something along the lines of having a better vision of what kind of people function well in that type of environment, and what kind of people they become if they choose to remain. Of course, without much modesty, I don't consider myself wholly one of them, but the phrase of I have my mind is more "phew" than "ah-hah!".

Things that get started get finished, so hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be writing about slow but sure progress.

My mom and I have been having a running dialogue about family/ancestry/genetics and why my brothers and I are the way we are. Everything from my tendency to leave things them a mess and then frantically clean up to my struggles with gout has been commented on. There's something in a family with three boys that is the material of adventures or at least novels. None of us can be the same, and we'll all live our own lives at wherever we end up. Our differences are probably as interesting as our sameness. It's the kind of thing I see myself tearing up over when I'm rigidly old and stiff.

I wonder if I'll ever make it to that point, or if I'll die young. I've had doubts the last few days about how long my body will hold out, no matter how well I take care of it. I recall in High School not being able to imagine what I would look like if I grow old. Even when I think of my mother's father the only picture I can remember clearly is one of him in a college portrait for his university's debate team, he was my age. I'd like to grow old, I love this world more everyday.

I can count the last few days as the beginning of my work towards becoming a physician. My decision to become a doctor was solidified over the Christmas break. It’s something that’s always been in my thoughts to a varying extent—ranging from, “I’m pretty sure I would have made a good doctor,” to “Maybe I can still sign up for classes.” Though, there was a moment when it clicked. My mom and I were on the phone talking about some difficulty with my unemployment or living situation, and she asked why I didn’t think about going to med school. I knew while I was formulating a response that it was that moment would be a catalyst for a lot of change in my life. Since then the whole idea has taken on a stronger constitution. It’s the sort of endeavor I can really be proud of. It will involve an extremely difficult body of work; I will have to dig deep into a field that hasn’t been my expertise since 8th grade. I have to admit my ambition is satisfied for having a lofty goal again. I could go on, but one thing that does strike me as notable is the hint of recklessness in the choice. I feel like an adventurer who has suddenly got it in his mind to climb K2 or sail across the Pacific. Law school would have been a difficult stretch, but I wouldn’t have been nearly as vulnerable as I will be in the coming years. Very soon I could be in over my head and struggling to make it through, and that’s when I’ll know I’m in the right place.

I’m working in the same office and doing pretty much the same work I’ve done since I was in middle schools—pulling charts and making minor notes in files. But now everything is just a whole lot more interesting. For the first time I’m taking ownership of this body of knowledge, and every little thing I can catch will help me. I’m excited to find out how things work and what things mean. I’m trying to think how long this sense of wonder will last, if it at some point will I be pouring though an anatomy or pharmacology book and just not care, but I’d rather just be content with the way it feels be to so new to something. I do hope it lingers.

Having a goal makes such a vast difference in the way I engage my surroundings. I imagine I would be miserable if I was in this same spot without my present aspirations. I would just be typing in a room that doesn’t belong to me, overhearing a conversation through walls that are too thin, in a town where I don’t belong. But Instead I can think—here I am, doing what it takes to become who I want to be.