10 years or so.*

Tonight, I was scheduled for a desk shift from 10 pm to midnight - basically, sitting in an office and answering the phone, if it happens to ring. So far, not much has happened, outside of one or two pizza deliveries and a lot of small talk about logging onto the internet, delayed flights, and dinner plans. But, every now and then, my soundscape has consisted of snippets of discussions that seem like windows to my future, if I were to become a clinician, that is. It's odd how your professional aspirations can catch up to you in the places you least expect.







I did a little research, and, apparently, the group of physicians in the lobby have come here from around the country for an event on "Therapeutic Targets in CMD". For the less clinically-inclined, CMD stands for Congenital Muscular Dystrophies - they're basically a group of muscle disorders that strike early in development and cause generalized muscle weakness, among other symptoms. You might have heard the phrase on television before, since Jerry Lewis is the national spokesperson for the organization that raises money for CMD. The underlying cause of disease is a genetic mutation, so rest assured that you probably don't have a CMD if you weren't diagnosed with it at birth.

Emory Commencement photo from Emory Alumni Association albums

Summer's a little more than half-over, and most of my friends, all recent college graduates, are poised to start their first year of medical school or graduate school in different cities around the United States. A few others are about to dive into the intimidating field of entry-level business internships or philanthropic teaching positions like Teach for America, both of which pay modest salaries but offer the possibility of life-changing professional experiences.

I wonder where everyone will end up in a decade or so - it would be ironic if I ended up at a conference like Cure CMD, especially since pediatric rehabilitation is the specialty that I've always been interested in pursuing.

*10 years is an alternative rock band from Tennessee that released a digital bundle of their music about a month ago. I haven't had a chance to hear all their songs, but a few of them, especially their singles "Beautiful" and "Wasteland", are pretty good.

Sometimes beginnings aren't so simple.*

College was good. College was bad. College was easy and college was difficult. College was crazy and apathetic, exhilarating and boring, surprising and predictable, painful and reassuring. It was nothing and it was everything.

As humans, we have an often-unrealized desire to define our experiences with labels, to assign singular categories to pluralities, and to endeavor to simplify incomprehensibly complex phenomena. Classifications bring about a superficial sense of stability, but they often fail to provide a truly accurate representation of the events in our lives.


I remember freshman year like it was just yesterday: the boys crowding into our iconic Smith 114 room, never ceasing to exasperate, entertain, enlighten, and, ultimately, endear us all through the unpredictability of their actions; the late-night conversations about love long-lost and life lessons learned and all that the uncertain future might hold; and, most of all, the ways in which we allowed ourselves to fall, to tumble to the ground in uncontrollable laughter and collapse into each other’s arms in irrepressible tears, because we knew we had a family of friends that would find a way to pull us back up in the end.

And, yet, at the very same time, it feels so long ago.


It’s as if yesterday was both a recent present and a distant past – composed of a million unforgettable, undeniable memories – memories that continually resurface when I least expect it. The nostalgia hits when I unconsciously breathe in the pages of a newly-published book in true Namrata-fashion, when the off-key recordings of Ashwin’s guitar-playing and singing randomly come on my iTunes, and especially when someone yells “EXPECTO PATRONUM” in a Harry Potter movie.

For me, the smallest things have always held the strongest meanings; and now, more than ever, they give me something to hold onto until we see each other again. College was more than the sum of my classes, and definitely much more than my GPA and my GRE or MCAT scores. It was four years of intricately intertwined, unquantifiable moments – moments that defined me even though I can’t define them.

In the meantime, I can look forward to detecting honesty in games of mafia, spending an amazing six weeks in Paris, and adjusting to new modes of communication to keep in touch, regardless of where we are or what we end up doing post-graduation.


*"Shadow of the Day" by Linkin Park (Minutes to Midnight Album)