Study to LOTR soundtrack and cosmic post-rock on Pandora. Dance in your room to The Weeknd. Listen to pop on your shower radio and sing country in your car at the top of your lungs. Third Eye Blind still works for every possible mood. And their new single kills it.
Get over your Vampire Diaries addiction by substituting with Once, Portlandia, House reruns, Call the Midwife, OITNB II and HOC III. Watch Walking Dead for the adrenalin rush when your own life is a little too calm. Enjoy Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt despite the problematic cultural appropriation, but remind yourself that it's comedy and that's what happens sometimes. Watch too much Arrested Development and ultimately download a computer application that allows you to speed up Netflix and watch episodes in 14 minutes.
Try to read before you go to bed. Surprise no one by loving The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, a collection of feminist fairy tales from around the world, Drown by Junot Diaz, and All Eyes are Upon Us: Race and Politics from Boston to Brooklyn.
Don't stop there. Continue your predictable patterns by going to see The Skeleton Twins, Into the Woods, and Selma. Go to the Manlius Art Cinema and sit in a moldy chair while crying your eyes out to Boyhood. Fight off the feminist crisis that is brought on by Interstellar and try to have some fun. Go to see Pitch Perfect 2 with your sorority sister from college and totally get the jokes going over the tweens' heads.
Take walks around SU and remember your days as a collegian with fondness and nostalgia. Stroll along Marshall Street and get fro yo and Starbucks and try to avoid strangers who want something from you. Drink at Faegan's after a big test with the rest of your class and eat Varsity salads when you realize you haven't consumed a vegetable in a week. Get Thai take out when life gets you down and when it's really bad just go sit at the bar at the Thai place and eat curry and it will make everything a little brighter. At first you may be discouraged by the selection of restaurants in this somewhat worn down city, but you'll find gems like Lofo and Modern Malt, Lemongrass, Small Plates, Pastabilities, Empire, Recess, Alto Cinco, Tang Flavor, and Dinosaur BBQ. Order root beer when they have it on tap and make everyone try fried green tomatoes.
Take a Medical Humanities class taught by a bad ass emergency room doctor who also loves plays and finds a way to make everything relate back to medicine. Go to see The Piano Lesson and leave at intermission due to looming homework. Sit through Vanya, Sasha, Masha, and Spike in total confusion. Go to see Hairspray on your birthday and realize you should see a happy musical every year on your birthday. Sit with your classmates at The Vibrator Play and judge by their reactions that nothing much has changed. Read the first half of The Yellow Birds and go see the author, Kevin Powers, speak at SU. Die and go to heaven when Eve Ensler comes to speak about how her battle with cancer connects to the universal struggle for sexual liberation of women.
Go to concerts. Funk brings people together. If you know the band, show up early and cheer loudly. The Westcott Theater and Funk n Waffles will not steer you wrong.
Join the debate team. Get put on the side opposite your natural opinions. Then prove yourself wrong.
If you get the chance to sit it out or dance...
Dance at the Diwali festival and discover your true calling is Bhangra. Get five girls together and make up a dance to Bye Bye Bye, call yourselves The Back Door Boys, find some fake mustaches, and wow the crowd at the school's benefit Drag Show.
Step up your hygiene game. This isn't college. The infinite joys of daily showers will be revealed to you in time. Make your bed every day and wonder why you didn't start doing that earlier. Wash your sheets more often than you think you need to, because you need to. Decorate your room intentionally with a color scheme and forethought. Put letters from friends up on your bulletin board. Occasionally write back because it feels so wonderful to receive real mail. Emails can be fun too if you get a pen pal and discuss topical articles from the unexplored depths of the internets.
Sign up for a rabies vaccine study and make a little cash while you're advancing science. Pay no mind to the hematoma lining your cubital fossa. It will fade, and the nurse that misses your veins every time is also the one who brings you apple juice and nutter butters.
Get involved in the community. Join Reading Buddies and go to Dr. King Elementary once a week to read with a third grader. Try to explain why the Pinkalicious series books are creating damaging and inflexible gender scripts for young girls. Notice that the library at an almost all-underrepresented-minority school named after Martin Luther King is filled with stories about white kids.
Volunteer at the foot clinic at the men's homeless shelter downtown. At first you will be scared to use the dermablade but soon it will become second nature. Learn that taking a medical history is as much about giving a listening ear as it is extracting data for a record. Things that used to seem gross don't seem so gross when you think you might be helping someone.
Join the White Coats 4 Black Lives movement and participate in the silent protest at school. Learn why #blacklivesmatter matters. Learn from others at the student-led forum on the social determinants of health.
Go home for the holidays. Nothing says Rosh Hashanah like finding people your own age at Temple Beth El and whispering through mussaf. Learn to like lox enough to not be shunned at community events. Admit you have a problem when you experience symptoms of withdrawal from your cool mint cliff bars during Passover.
Be continuously awed by the amount of information you have learned and will learn (and forget, and learn, and forget, and learn again). Take microbiology, cell biology, immunology, neurology, physiology, histology, anatomy, pathology, and maybe some more classes you can't remember. Learn how to take a history and do a physical exam and that it is not as easy as it looks. Succeed in gross anatomy with your secret weapon: an anatomy coloring book. Spend so much time doing this that you have a favorite muscle (gastrocnemius--because it looks like a whale's tail), a favorite tendon (extensor digitorum superficialis), nerve plexus (brachial), and artery (iliac and its branches). Make the histological slide of the female ureter your iPad wallpaper because it looks like pretty pink antlers.
Experience the great outdoors and the fermented fruit of the earth. Ride a horse and feed the fish at Mary's. Taste hard cider at Beak and Skiff orchards. Visit Green Lakes with mom. Take in the views from the Seneca Lake wineries on the class wine tour. Personally uncover the hidden diamond that is Cazenovia and Owera Vineyards.
Purchase a killer black jumpsuit and wear it dancing.
Roll 30 med students deep whenever you go to a* bar or a** club.
*the
**the
Become a fiend for trivia. It's okay if you're on the B team most weeks because it's about the journey not the destination. Coleman's gets rowdy and you might get riled up. Remember to use your big girl voice when telling your team the answer, otherwise they won't believe you. Saltine Warrior is lower stress and they also have fried spicy raviolis. Win-win. Well, win-win-lose. Your team isn't that good.
Salsa. Bachata. Merengue. Cha-cha. These may not all be verbs but they are when you're at Johnston's Ballybay with DJ Machina and the Upstate crew.
Bear witness to the miracle of life. Shadow on the delivery floor on your 24th birthday and welcome a baby girl into existence. Take an elective that pairs you and a classmate with a couple expecting a baby. Get paired with the best classmate and the best moms and the best twins the world has ever seen. Follow them through months of pre-natal visits and the birth and check ups that follow. Feel a wave of instincts rush over you when you hold and bounce the baby girl while her brother sleeps peacefully.
Make new friends but keep the old. Visit Cornell for O-week and Homecoming and the Big Red Bar Mitzvah. Celebrate Elysha's graduation and come back for big-little reveal. Surrender to the inner fangirl at the Maccabeats concert. Never miss an Amy Siskind appearance in Ithaca and make a brief camio over Slope Day Weekend. Squeeze in one last Table Minyan, Shabbat Dinner and sunset on the slope complete with lukewarm champagne.
Rediscover Dashboard Confessional in anticipation of their upcoming tour with Third Eye Blind. Prepare your body and mind and soul for June 20th.
Make the most of winter. Go skiing. Get back to your roots and whip out some moves at the old ice rink. Visit Lake Placid and watch synchro at the 1980 rink. Skate on Mirror Lake and shop on main street.
Struggle with the hints of a quarter life crisis. Ask your advisor about a nose ring and she'll tell you that your patients might get distracted by it. Settle for a cartilage piercing instead. Swear to yourself you'll clean it twice a day for four months. Live up to that promise for a full week.
Go see Nico and Vinz with Chelsea at the free Pepsi concert in Rochester. They only have one song and you're not sure what Pepsi is doing about the Superbowl a week early in Rochester, but it's cool anyway.
Find yourself at a dinner party turned bluegrass jam in your hometown with kids you've known since second grade and their parents. On your way out, pass three Priuses. Get into your Prius and drive home to your cats and the other Prius waiting in the garage.
Visit New York and remember why you don't live there. See dear friends and "watch" a Cornell hockey game. You will not see a single goal in real time because you will be engrossed in anything besides watching the hockey game.
Get a massage. Celebrate Holi and spend the next three days washing it out of your hair and ears. Drink wine with your friends while trying to get through 50 Shades of Gray. Celebrate Galentine's Day with a brunch. Play an icebreaker using weird medical information about yourselves. Make time for your friends when they visit, because this is Syracuse, and if you don't show them a good time, no one and nothing will. Attend house parties and themed parties. Go bowling with your class and manage not to bring shame to your family. Rewatch The Heathers and try to incorporate some of those golden lines into your daily use.
Spend a little too much time summing up your year in a bizarrely constructed second-person command blog post. But you'll be glad you did.
