What happened to this blog?

Well, it disappeared before it even got started.

But now it is back and ready to start, officially.

I am three weeks shy of finishing the first term of coursework. I am tired. I am only really enrolled in two courses, but lab counts as half your life during a 10 week term, so it is technically a full load.

I remind myself constantly that none of this is anything severe. This is only the warm-up, you know, like “Hello hybridized orbital, I can’t wait until I have to think about your nodes in three dimensional form next semester…or imply your relevance to cancer cells in a histology course.”

The hardest part is relearning how to work. If I have advice for anyone entering the world of science and math after a long hiatus from a tenuous relationship in the first place, it is this: Hit it hard in the beginning. Sign yourself up for tutoring, do the practice problems, go in for office hours. DO NOT just rest on the laurels of being “competent.” DO NOT neglect math homework because you find the concepts intuitive. This work is all about the mechanics. It’s easy to understand the big picture and still fuck things up because you get lost in the tedium.

And work. Every day. Diligently. If you are anything like me, figure out what to do about the fact that from Algebra-Calculus, your head was some place else. If you address this without having to realize it, your days will feel less like some version of: “OK, so we’re taking derivatives here. I remember how to do that. Fuck. Now what do I do with this square root?”

Also, listening to obscene music really helps. On my walk to class I neglect all forms of Ipod etiquette and play Kanye West and Nelly Furtado really loud. And I have no shame. Listening to hip-hop really helps with affirming personal missions. It’s easy, while The Roots are playing in the background, to proclaim to the high heavens that nothing’s gonna bring you down. (Life’s a quest!, Get over the water!, etc.)

You make a decision and you set your mind straight and you do it.

This is what I’ve chosen for myself, why choose it half way?

Cold Feet.

It’s been a while. In the meantime, I’ve put in my notice at work, conducted an elaborate organization scheme for the next 18 months, alerted all extended family that I am about to be Very Poor, and begun to worry. And worry BIG. What I’m embarking upon is not some kind of half-assed Master’s program that I can easily spin into something else when after two years my interests change. Nor is it a PhD where I am poor but without debt, living off 18k a year and allowed to redecide for 6 years straight about the most important pedagogical ideology. Nor is it a job where I’m being paid 50k to do something buffoonish but safe, and easy to let go for, say, a yearlong jaunt through Sub-Saharan Africa.

I’m on the Go Big or Stay Home Plan. It plays to the tune of private loans and PB&J. It doesn’t include a back up plan and it’s stupid by any logical assessment. And the kicker, the real kicker is that it’s going to be a hell of a long time before I can even talk the talk. This is starting over — and it is about fucking time, it is exciting, it makes the past 12 months of living in my head feel finally real, finally tangible and active……but it is also scary as hell.

I know that I am a capable student, that science really isn’t as unintelligible as it seemed to me as a 16 year old, that money isn’t in my main bag of priorities, that I can probably break 30 on the MCAT, and that through all of this, if I still want it, psych residency will be there for me in 7 years. . .But shit. When the fucking head chatter starts, I can’t blink an eye without worrying that one morning I’ll rise from the bed and everything will seem clear and still and this vision I have for myself, this goal, won’t be there….that I just won’t want it anymore. That I’ll wake up and realize that my whole life, for all of time, the only thing I’ve wanted is _______. And that I’ve had it all along, or that it’s impossible to get, or that I don’t have the tools to build it. That worst of all, I still won’t know what it is except to say that medicine isn’t it. There must be something bigger! Or maybe there’s nothing at all. Whatever it is, I’ll be indebted to it, and deflated and very sad. And old. And without a lot else to show for myself. Maybe that’s the point at which you move to LA, throw the loans at a plastic surgeon and get the hell on with happily ever after.

God, this is dismal. I need a quick slap in the face, some kind of sting. A harder edge. I’m jumping on a plane to New York in a few hours. That’s a very good thing.

Not the preliminaries.

corporate speak

For some time now, I’ve been amassing a collection of Bits of Corporate Lingo I Actually Have To Respond To in my head. Because one of the nomenclature consultants from work went apeshit this week reading an old WSJ article detailing the etymology of the word, Bucket, I thought that it would be as good a day as any to post. First, let me recount this morning’s events:

*Arrive at my desk at 7:45am

*Begin to read emails that have rolled in from Boss over the last twelve hours because he sleeps Blackberry In Hand

*Start jotting down “progress” to present at my 8:45a new business meeting

*Encounter NC (nomenclature consultant) reading over my shoulder

Me: Whoa. Hi there. What’s up?

Him: I’m taking your last Tuesday’s paper. It was sitting in your mailbox.

Me: Um, ok—

Him: I’ve been battling the bucket for months now and this, er (glancing down at the WSJ), this Chris Rhoades, agrees.

Me: Oh yeah?

Him: Yeah. I am not alone in this.

Him: I have HAD IT. (Beginning to now emphatically gesticulate) A bucket is a vessel for piss and puke. Our work is not vomit! It does not belong in buckets! Why can’t we use “area?” “category?” I am making it my personal mission to stamp this word out of our corporate literature. Hey, Ava, do you know where I can find some letterhead? I am going to turn this into a memo—-

Explanation from same nomenclature consultant after yours truly inquired about his exaggerated limp:

“It’s sprained and I didn’t “DO” anything. My wife got hot and threw the covers on me, the sheer gravity of the blankets strained my ankle. I’m going to head out at lunch and buy one of those lace-up ankle braces at the Sports Authority. Can you let Boss know I’ll be remote from 12-2p?”

Notable excerpts from the Wall Street Journal article NC was referencing (which I post with concurrent props to the staff writer, who somehow manages to maintain a sense of humor amidst the stodginess of his paper’s content):

Suddenly, the humble bucket has become a trendy fixture of corporate boardrooms and PowerPoint presentations. It is pushing aside other business-speak for describing categories or organizational units, such as silo and basket.

“People are using it everywhere now,” says Tom Rath, a management consultant and author of “How Full Is Your Bucket?” His book, which has been translated into more than 20 languages since its publication in 2004, advocates praise in the workplace. Mr. Rath’s consulting firm has even begun selling readers metal buckets to place on their desks. Their purpose: to receive “drops” of praise from colleagues for a job well done.

…Mr. Prindiville has heard bucket transformed into an adjective too. When a trader wants to sell a large block of stock, he looks for a buyer interested in “something bucket-y,” says Mr. Prindiville. “It means something chunky, with some girth to it.”

Philip Evans, a partner in the Boston office of Boston Consulting Group and a native of Plymouth, England, says he hears the word all the time, including as a verb to describe younger associates’ potential with the firm, as in, “How should we bucket this person?” “Visually you think of someone being thrown into a pail of water,” says Mr. Evans, an avid reader of Joyce and Shakespeare who describes himself as a word collector.

From: Business Types Get a New Kick Out of the ‘Bucket’ Executives Utter the Word To Describe Groups, Units; ‘Silo’ Pales in Comparison By CHRISTOPHER RHOADS March 27, 2007; Page A1

Corporate speak — the lingo, the gestures, AND actual subject matter to which it all refers (ahem, Ava, don’t you mean bullshit?) has been on my Most Laughable list since almost a year ago when I was first trying to decipher what the hell people were talking about around the office. Since my time with it is drawing neigh, I think a tribute is amply due, if for nothing else than, a Thank You. These laughs have made the last year tolerable.

. > . > . > . > . > . >

“Ava, dear, I’m sorry. I went dark on the look and feel. Can we circle back for a postmortem at, say, noonish? After that I’m out of pocket.”

Translation: “I haven’t responded to the twenty emails you’ve sent because I had a fight with my wife last night. Now since I am looking at this PowerPoint with no fucking clue what we’re doing, I’m hoping you can sit me down and walk me through the work. Then explain what you’ve said to me in the last 20 emails. Then answer people’s questions when I leave early for a “personal day.”

Our retainer clients are in this week and I am tasking you with coordinating an office-wide clean-up. It looks like people have moved in here with the mini fridges and crap all over the front studio. Can you please work to get a process implemented?

Translation: Ava, come immediately and console me. There are people showing up day after tomorrow who carry 70% of our business. And I can’t spell “terrified” or locate a slide projector.

Follow-up gravy from office admin, CCed on the note:
I may be from Puerto Rico, but I aint nobody’s maid. Tell Boss to blindfold the clients and throw them in an upstairs conference room.

“I spoke to the client, and they’re literally chomping at the bit to work with us, we’re going to reconnect after he’s had some noodle time.”

Translation: The potential client knows our reputation but really can’t afford to spend $800,000 on something called a “brand purpose platform.” I have an actual figure for what they can afford, but I myself am still “noodling” on how best to break the news that what they want is twice the work for 50k. And I have a million dollar monthly target.

“Ava, you may not think this is in your job description, but what we really need you to do is push back on the knowledge sharing requests and step up your efforts to drive the business.”

Translation: If you think we appreciate weekly updates from the Strategy Council, forget it. You better get busy building spreadsheets. I need to see function cells and pivot tables. And I need to see dollar signs for what you can bring in by cold-calling 30 people a day for the next 6 months. Please keep up with this until we have Intel on retainer.

Something like a weekly conversation with Boss
-You know, we have to look at this as an opportunity.
-It’s probably better that they turned us down.
-I have heard from multiple sources that that woman is literally bi-polar. This is a blessing. We are in a position to be choosy about who we work with.

same day, afternoon:

-We are still in proposal hell. What have I done in past lives to deserve this?
-Now is NOT the ideal time to take a vacation, but it’s never the ideal time for a divorce.
-Can you call my wife and tell her I’m on my way home?
-What do you think of hosting some more Presentation Skills Training? I thought that gal’s Central Questioning Model was really effective.
-You know, what we need to do is go from Used Car Salesman to Trusted Advisor in, like, a matter of minutes.
-Until we are on one P and L statement, I don’t give a rat’s ass about our “global offices.” I’ve got a 14 million dollar target to meet. Our clients can be in San Mateo or Bangladesh.
-What do you mean Big Bank (Who Would Be An Ideal Client Were It Not For The Fact That We Work With Their Primary Competitor) has a non-compete in place? Why would this come up now?

Miscellaneous phrases that continue to make me laugh:
-”Rolling out”
read: In the process of doing something that is actually useful. But not quite there yet.

-”Drank the Kool Aid”
read: “On Board”
read: Buying an idea that you couldn’t have conveived of on your own.
read: Endorsing the idea you conceived of and Boss presented

-“Let’s prioritize resourcing”
read: Get set for some serious micromanagement. Nose to the grindstone…
read: We have an annual $14 million target that we are already missing in March
read: If we can cut three Account Executives at 100k each, that’s like one bi-polar client we don’t have to deal with.

And my personal favorite:
-JUST EXPENSE IT.
read: Charge whatever you want to the AMEX because we’re on billable time, baby.

-
-
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Huh?

Did I hear someone say “Interdigitating care units?”

glad for it.

It’s been a delightful evening. D_ was in from D.C. with his little girlfriend of two years who I hadn’t met until hours ago. They’re cute. She’s just the right kind of able-minded Midwestern keen to balance his narcissistic, obscenely motivated personality. D_ and I know each other from college, from the brief romantic mingling that we each knew wouldn’t ever work because we were a. too similar and b. not sexually compatible. But we learned that lesson quickly and when he moved to D.C. for a job I helped him pack the U-Haul. Kind of nice, a purely platonic relationship.

Now that D_ comes to Mt View once a month for work, I get to see him regularly and we typically meet for dinner and talk about all the could-bes and maybes that we both cast in present tense. Neither of us is a liar but we’re both easily excited and tend to be struck with a feeling like “there is really something big going on here and we see it and something has to be done immediately.” So conversation is fun. This time, however, was slightly more subdued because D_ likes the west coast, has an offer with relocation in writing, and is trying to convince his girl that the Bay Area really is the best place on earth. In any case, they both work for a healthcare consulting firm, so it’s good for me to spend time with them and learn about healthcare as an industry and listen to rants about which surgical specialties will be phased out by technology in the next ten years….. Actually that part makes me want to swallow a little bit of my own vomit, but nonetheless, better to stay abreast of business. They don’t catalog industry projections for shrinks and couldn’t really give me a good reason why, but I’m gonna put it to rest by assuming that people aren’t getting any saner. We (and by “we,” I am throwing myself into the future contingent of zany psychiatrists) will always be in demand.

But back to D_ and Midwestern Girl. I sat there tonight at NOPA, one of my favorite restaurants in the city, and I felt glad. Glad that I was there sharing a meal with a friend, glad that we could be friends, glad that I liked his girl, and most of all, glad that I was sitting on my own side of the table. There are so just many more-likely places I could find myself right now. There really are. I could be married to my high school/part of college boyfriend with a huge rock on my finger, gallivanting around my least favorite city in the country as some kind of stupid arm candy. I could be battling with my pedantic demons in a PhD program. I could be single and broke, writing for some zine out of a shoebox in Alphabet City replete with coffee, cigarettes and the occasional afterglow of a good fuck. Or, I could have decided to invest myself entirely in my current job, stick with it for two more years, and then throw myself at MBA admissions committees hoping to postpone the overhaul of my own priorities until at least 30. God, I am so pleased not to be faced with any of these lives right now. I am so pleased with the life that I have.

Tonight was a good night because I realized that the life I AM living, (especially the one in t minus two months) is just what I want it to be. The decisions I’ve made are mine and they’ve been chiseled out through a hell of a lot of hard contemplation. I used to often joke about marrying a pediatrician, just to end the saga of complicated relationships and agonizing love, to tie a bow around the version of my life that my parents can digest, can happily morph into wedding registries and china patterns. But I have decided that it is better to strive to be what I admire — to become the physician — than think about playing hard at Wife. Plus, pediatricians, at this stage of the game, strike me as not a little boring. In any case, I look at my parents, my mother in particular, and think to myself what a sad life she leads. That after a half century of living, she is still hesitant to have an opinion, that she is roaming around a house that will be remodeled 12 more times before she understands that no one is ever going to give her the permission she’s waiting for. Sad, yes. It’s sad. But it is not my life. I am going to be wonderful. I’m going to give Lacan a run for his money and treat the worried well and the indigent crazy and little boys and girls will read my books and be pleased with me the way that I am pleased with Winnicott. Ah! My hubris. I always get too much ahead of myself.

I hope I actually have a reader or two who can console when I’m inundated with MCAT flashcards and pushing hard to break 30 on that fucker of a test. I hope I have someone around who will remind me that I really am wonderful and that the world needs me to do this. And I guess, most of all, I hope that in two years, beyond the terror and sweat and anguish of this hellish process, I will know that this becoming is still something that I absolutely want. Cause there’s only more to come. For now though, for tonight, I am glad.

find your chops.

This week has been a wash of interviews, actual pro/con lists, birthday debauchery, and, ultimately, decisions. I’m going to do all this post-bac nonsense at less expensive, local, State University. And that’s fine. It was a relief, two weeks ago, to sit in the audience at UCSF’s med school admissions workshop and hear one of the deans, Dr. Wofsy, say that at least at Cal schools, more weight isn’t cast in your direction if you do your post-bac work at Hopkins or Bryn Mawr or Goucher. That doesn’t discount the fact that I’ll be lucky to do med school in California, that ultimately it’s going to be one big crapshoot of a process, that I could be here or Iowa or Dominica or Mexico City. But when you have that underlying desire to do something, it just needs a little bit of oomph to be fully justifiable. And I want to stay here in my little apartment with crazy roommates and terrific bookstore on the corner and the Best Coffee in the Universe…. So hooray for this gem of a city on the water, for being in Much Less Debt Than I Would Otherwise, for putting off reacquaintance with east coast pretensions for at least another two years… And, just, hooray. This week I am happy with that feeling that this is life and I am right there swimming along. Plus the Chair of the post-bac program I will be attending mentioned Biology and Right Livelihood in the same sentence, so double, triple, quadruple smiles. The ultimate gravy is that I am sitting midday at a scenester coffee shop on Valencia Street while the Carpinteros Union marches with floats, signs, and drums right through the middle of the road. I’m going to cash in my chips on my one-year work anniversary and jump on a tour of the calculus and gen chem June 11th. I can’t fucking wait.

I guess partially motivated by the thrust of decisions, something that’s been tickling me for a while now is this idea about change and linearity. Ask any comparative literature student about linearity and you’ll get a good ear full of postmodern hogwash. Which is not what I want to engender here, but nonetheless. We grow up thinking that things happen 1,2,3 without any back-peddling or full-on circus jumps. And the various professional paths you can tread in this life would also lead you to the same conclusion. College, 2 year consulting gig, venture-capitalist differentiation, MBA, start your own thing, fail, decide it doesn’t matter anyway because you’re married and about to pop out two chubbies, work for the man, buy a vacation home, second mortgage your house to send the chubbies to college….blah blah blah. Then there’s the boat I’m now attempting to board mid-sea. It goes something like: College (where you dream of dispensing AIDS drugs in Africa and treating indigent populations for the herp), med school, realization that Lifestyle is important, full-plow into normal person residency in, like, ENT, same rant about popping out two chubbies, the vacation home, the second mortgage. Whoopeeeee! Life. That’s not what this is about.

I hope I find my people during this swim. My train has derailed enough times that I know I am good at problems and jumping back on, but I still feel a little scared, sometimes. That there’ll be a day that comes, just like in the stories, that there really will be some kind of pivotal moment where everything matters. And I just won’t have what it takes. That all the time I’ve spent looking at myself could have been better served by a stiff prescription and a kick in the pants. That all my future classmates, well groomed and 6 years my junior, will be better equipped for the profession. That their blindness will be an asset, that I’m too sensitive, that I’ll cave when I realize during internship year that the hospital feels just like the work I’m leaving……….this is the head chatter that I battle day in and day out. But come on now, where are my chops?

Of Nodes and C Underscore.

I finally got in touch with C_ yesterday about the keys of his I’ve intended to return for the last six months since we parted as roommates. Everyone in San Francisco lives with roommates. It’s just how it works. C_ was my first one. He’s 27 and from the hills of California and drinks Whiskey out of a dispenser that looks like a mini fuel pump. I lived for two months in a Quaint Little Neighborhood in a house with him and J_, who left Frisco for Boston and pretensions and a boyfriend she swore she would ignore. Our little family broke up in September 2006, after which I spent two months bouncing between friends’ couches and sharing a residential hotel room with a 42 year old Taiwanese woman named Ping who woke up at 4am every day for kalestineics and face scrubs. Anyway. six months ago C_ decided to fulfill his dream of renting a studio in the Tenderloin with a twin bed and a view. In quintessential C_form, he invited me to his apt with warning, part disclaimer:

C_: We are totally still on for this evening but a horde of girls showed up at my house last night and puked everywhere, so just make sure you don’t come over and vomit.
Me: ew.
C_: Don’t worry, I’ve had the windows open all day.

And so I made it over to the loin, passed Luny Lady number 38 dancing down Geary St in a pink nightgown and clogs, and rang his building bell in full anticipation of an obscenely inebriated C_ accompanied by his impressionable 23 year old neighbor who I know has been spending most evenings smoking his cigarettes and teasing him about the possibility of getting laid. And yes, I arrived and 23 Year Old was there, and they’d just lit a joint, and no amount of my own coercing could ease the party to the Irish trivia-and-peanuts pub downstairs. But when 23 left, it was just C_, me and Johnny Cash, and we easily lapsed into conversation about the malleable public and potential for political voice and real Truth and the signified and (yes!) this is the C_ I know, love and have been missing…… the pedantic banter, the Lacan references, the affirmation, the silliness. And after all, “This is life! This is life!” And it is almost like two little Alyoshas marching hand in hand toward pancakes and rainbows and joyful infinity.

But with C_, always, comes that node, that point where it turns, where the alcohol hits me and the who-knows-what-else hits him and I realize that this is as useful as a midday dream, and I have to be at work at 7am for a conference call. Even if I didn’t though, even if tomorrow were June and my earliest commitment was noon class, that node is also the recognition that I am different from him, with a plan and a vision for my life and a way of being that doesn’t sway well with Tuesday nights drunk and high in the Tenderloin.

He tells me I am smart, that that is my “thing.” And I have no response. And then I leave and laugh because there really is something uniquely humorous about C_ and his refusal to pick a San Francisco genre, his insistence on living in a shoebox on the corner of Crackhead Avenue. And I think of our Quaint Little House for a second and feel nostalgia. I flash back to last July and the scotch rituals and porch lurking and groggy mornings and I remember sitting out back with my journal while C_talked about WWII, and I remember crafting the different possible scenarios for my life. There was the corporate consultant track, the professor track, and the most outlandish one of all, the physician track. And I smoked J_’s cigarettes and mapped out pros and cons for each of the three options all in the middle of C_’s eloquent ramblings about totalitarian regimes and the Hitler Charisma Factor. And I remember distinctly facing my page of scribble with awe, noticing entirely how simple a decision can be if you JUST FUCKING GO AHEAD AND MAKE IT. Decisions can be the once only, nip-it-in-the-bud kind of easy when you already know the why. And I’ve known the why about medicine even before the thought crossed my mind to become a physician.

What I do has gotta be consequential.

It’s gotta matter, writ large, even when it doesn’t feel like it does.

I’ve found the “so what” factor to be so pronounced, so severely a part of business that I can’t go on with that life, no matter the money.

And I know medicine isn’t absolved from this rant, and I know I’ll be hardened and embittered about it. But I don’t have to embrace those parts quite yet. I’ll get into medical school, eventually, because I want it THAT BAD. And I’ll be able to create space for myself. I think if I’d had better parents, they would have somehow led me to this conclusion at an early age. Not necessarily the doctor-thing, but the idea of cherishing a vision of yourself. Of thinking, seriously, about structure, about priorities, about plans and how to live with yourself crawling into bed at night when you’re beat up and pulpy and pretty much alone — of what makes it all feel worth it.

All told, I think it’s the Great Ambition that is cursed. It’s certainly the one that gets tortured. If not attached to something big, to something personally meaningful at a young age, it veers hard toward the doldrums, through indecision, into madness… and a baseless critic takes over upstairs. Here I am. Creating a purpose, seeing it, living it – that is tremendous. But starting at the beginning and feeling like it’s late –that is a pride-swallowing task. Ambition doesn’t like slow beginnings.

I’m told reentry into science is like learning a new language.

whopper.

Sometime during the last year I decided, “This is it.” And it is. I am 24 and have not taken a science class since my freshman year of college when I proclaimed in virgin-like tones after watching Patch Adams that I was en route to becoming a physician. That was a life plan number 1 for me, before I actually funneled energy into cultivating life plan numbers 2-37. I switched my major from Pre-med-Psychology-Economics-Spanish-Political Science-Comparative Literature. I have twiddled jobs as a bar tender, a public art research cog, an executive assistant, and now something between an executive assistant and a new business associate. Yes, I wish I had stuck to the first plan…if only I had realized, at age 18, that decisions really could be that easy.

Anyway. Long story short, I am heading back to school, starting over (with trigonometry, for Christ’s sake) and Bio 101. I am giving up my job at 50k a year, assuming 30k in loans, and planning to spend the next two years in relative misery, eating macaroni and sweating over organic chemistry and 3 x 5 index cards replete with MCAT review material. Anyone, ANYONE in his or her right mind might ask me why? And I would easily reply that it’s because I missed my stint as a sadomasochist street performer…. and want to even out the score with 10 years of life as a general peon, that at some point become worth it because of a comfortable salary, long coat and credentials. By then, I’ll be invariably numb to feeling responsible for anyone’s life. And at about the time my friends are married, having babies, and buying beach houses, I’ll be lugging a monogrammed flask through some emergency department, writing myself alternating prescriptions for Valium and Adderall (if I’m lucky…if not it’ll be the Seroquel milieu).

By all those great lines–”in the long run” and “at the end of the day”– I know that becoming a physician is never going to be worth it. I cannot explain this drive beyond the pragmatic words I will use during med school interviews. But I am en route. And hell bent.