Discipleship with Sam

Sidenote: 6 new posts tonight! Also soon to come, open-heart surgery! :)

But back to discipleship:

My friend Sam and I are doing a discipleship program together, as a way to grow closer to God together and to each other. God drew us together through the fact that we both have similar stories of how God has called us from research to medicine, and our common love of medicine and possibly the medical mission field, God willing. We are studying an awesome book, Dr. Jesus, by Dr. David Stevens. It takes a look at Jesus's life as the Great Physician, and how a doctor's life, in part, can model what the Christian life should be. I've recommended this book to anyone and everyone I can! I'm really excited about what God's been doing in each of our lives individually, but also how we are learning from each other. Sam is just a little bit farther along the path than I am, and will be going off to med school in the fall, yay!!! And it has been awesome to share this passion of mine with a friend, and to talk about it and analyze it from a Christian perspective. It has been so encouraging, and although we are not yet doctors, we can apply a lot of his insights to our life now, and also look forward to the time when we, God willing, will be doctors :)

Now

Doctors spend a lot of time focused on the future, planning it, working toward it. But at some point you start to realize your life is happening now. Not after med school, not after residency, right now. This is it. It’s here. Blink and you’ll miss it. Even though I'm not a doctor right now, everyone is just thinking about and living for the next step. For example, "I'm only here so I can get into med school, so I can get into residency, so I can be a doctor." I'm working on constantly trying to live here in the now, but balancing that with the fact that I will be trying to get into med school after next year. I want to be content yet striving for more (Thanks Emily!) in all aspects of my life. In the words of my friend Linnea, "be here, now."

Interview Style

So, my roommate just got back from an serious set of interviews for a summer internship, and we were discussing some of the questions she was asked in those interviews or in her mock interviews (fake practice interviews) through CMU. Having been thinking about myself, in terms of being a leader, and understanding who I am, which will last me much longer and have more of an impact than what I do, I decided to compile a list of some interview-style questions and my answers.

Q. What are your strengths?

• I work well under pressure/deadline/full schedule
• I am organized - I love calendars, lists, etc. But it's to an extent - only things that need that, such as school. My room is a mess.
• I'm big on the details
• I am pretty good at multi-tasking
• I am a leader. I'm not afraid of stepping up if the situation calls for it and taking the lead on projects and in life - planning, making decisions, finding out information, etc.
• I'm not afraid to seek help when I need it and to admit when I'm wrong.

Q. What areas are you working on improving (aka, what are your weaknesses)?

• Being more outgoing and welcoming and more open, an honest; interdependence.
• I have some perfectionist tendencies
• I am quite critical of myself, and set high expectations for myself which are sometimes unnecessary or even hurtful to myself.
• Trying to escape the schedule and be more flexible, patient, and gracious.
• Being confident in myself and my abilities and being bold in those things, both in class and in life.
• Stepping back from the details and having a more global, big picture viewpoint. My classes have really helped me improve this lately.

Q. What characteristics do you want to define you?

• Humility
• Compassion
• Patience
• Justice
• Kindness

> It turns out these are a combo of Colossians 3:12 and Micah 6:8!

Q. What would you define as your learning style?

• visual - a combination of pictures and visualized words
• White - not lined - paper -> free style, great for biology pictures and math/chem
• many colored pens - this goes along with the visual aspect
• teaching others
• reviewing daily

Q. Which classes have been some of your favorites and why?

• I have some favorite professors, some favorite topics
• Music & Mind - it was so cool to take an in-depth look at music from a biological and psychological standpoint, and yet to still see how amazing it is that all cultures have music, and humans have such an appreciation for music. Even the rocks cry out :)
• I really love my developmental biology class. I find the topic so interesting, and I love the lab that goes along with it - we got to make teeny baby tadpoles from just egg and sperm! I would also like to take developmental psychology to complete my developmental kick and round out my knowledge.

Q. What motivates you?

• I am motivated by the desire to succeed, to be better, and to not fail. I am also motivated by a desire to help others succeed.

Q. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

• In 5 years, I hope to be in my fourth year of medical school, hopefully going through the match process to find a residency program. I want to be involved in my church, wherever that is, teaching others and continuing to be taught. I want to be content with all aspects of my life - friendships, relationships, family. I will own a cat. :)

I'm sure there will be more on this after med school interviews, but those are a very long time away.

¡Mexico Happenings!

I will be officially going to Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico this summer to volunteer abroad in a hospital!! I'm going through Projects Abroad and am soooo excited. I also won a scholarship which basically paid for my whole study abroad! Although my Spanish class right now is kicking my butt, I'm optimistic and know I will learn so much more when I get there.

May 23-August 7 :)

Lack of Passion?

So, this blog is all about living with passion. What happens when you lack passion in your life? I'd call that apathy. But I know in my own life this is the weakness that I struggle with most, that leads to other problems. When I feel apathetic about school, I start to slack off, procrastinate, and complain. When I am apathetic towards people, I tend to just stay in and isolate myself from my friends. Finally, when I get apathetic about my relationship with God, I don't feel like reading my Bible or spending a lot of time in prayer, even though I know that is the best thing for me. As of yet, I'm not sure how to overcome this apathy, other than just naturally rediscovering my passions.

Restore

Yesterday during young adults group, we sang the song 'Restore.' NERD ALERT! It gets way more nerdy from this point on! Read only at your own risk :)

I got to thinking about what the word restore actually means. All I could think about were computers. You can create a 'restore point,' a place to go back to if you ever need to reboot your computer. This is most often needed after a lot of gunk and possibly a virus. So you go back to that point, like it was right when you got it at the store, and 're-store' it, to remove all those little things or big things that build up from even just daily use. God wants to do that with us, to give us clean slates, to restore us, to remove all that junk that builds up in our lives that slows us down, so He can set us free to run as fast as we can in Him.

Thinking about viruses took me back to my immunology class. Viruses not only slow down computers, they slow down our bodies while our immune system tries to fight off the outsider that keeps replicating on its own inside of us. Our body recognizes the virus and shows it to certain cells in the immune system, called B cells, which activate the immune system and turn into mature cells. These mature B cells produce antibodies which fight the virus, and also make memory B cells, which will remain in the immune system and are able to respond faster next time the the system comes across the virus. This reminds me of the way we can choose to respond to temptation: it might take us a while to get over it the first time, but after that, we can respond faster, quicker, cut it off before it escalates the next time.

All of these are just ways God wants to restore us back to His original perfection, which will only happen when we see Him again.