Winter break 2013 in Maryland: ebullient times & significant life lessons

Managua, Nicaragua

Early in the semester I started making plans to go abroad over this winter break to Nicaragua but that fell through for a few reasons. I think my mother told me to take a break from traveling and to stay home for the holidays with the family. It also didn’t work out because I couldn’t pinpoint an organization (an inexpensive one) that would take on college volunteers for four to five weeks during the holiday season. The funding from sources on campus would also take forever to come through. I missed Christmas & New Years last year with the family and went to Guatemala instead because I was hungry for more international and medical experience.

With my sister at a mall in DC

I’ve been crashing at my sister’s apartment in MD for the past couple of weeks, and it’s been pretty awesome. She graduated from Cornell in 2012 and is now working at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) while at the same time studying to get her Master's in Human Resources from Georgetown University. I'm so proud of her. So so proud. The time we’ve spent together has been laid back and convivial at the same time. We watched a few movies (including “Best Man Holiday” and “The Switch”), laughed our heads off while reminiscing on the past, went out shopping, and talked up a storm about any and everything.
I’m leaving tomorrow to go to NYC for a week to complete a shadowing program at the NY Presbyterian Hospital. I’ll be shadowing a gynecologic oncologist and, yes, I am super excited. After next week, I’m going back home to NJ, and after that week classes start again.

I made a list of goals I hope to accomplish over this break (which is a measly five weeks).

Three main goals:

1. Read 7 books. I picked these books below (most dealing with health and medicine) because they received very good ratings. I finished the first three so far. Here’s the list:


· "Everything I Learned in Medical School: Besides All the Book Stuff" by Dr. Sanjay Kansagra

· "The Devil Wears Scrubs" by Freida McFadden

· "From a Name to a Number: A Holocaust Survivor’s Autobiography" by Alter Weiner

· "Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story"

· "The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green

· "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot

· "How Doctors Think" by Dr. Jerome Groopman

2. Learn the songs for my acapella group’s (Baraka Kwa Wimbo, Swahili for "Blessing through Song") spring concert at the end of next semester. In reality, we’ll be learning them together at rehearsals, but the more we learn and know on our own, the more productive the practices will be. Our concert is going to be great. Feel free to check out our group on YouTube.


3. Start preparing for the MCAT. I don’t plan on taking it until 2015, but because I’m an excessive planner and I really want to do well on this exam, I want to start as early as possible. One afternoon, as I was going over some practice Organic Chemistry problems on my sister’s dining room table, she came up to me and said, “This is ludicrous! Stop studying. Your exam is over a year away!” True. But what's wrong with giving myself ample time to prepare?

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A couple of nights ago I finished the third book on my list, “From a Name to a Number: A Holocaust Survivor’s Autobiography” by Alter Weiner. I have never before been so touched by a book as I have by this one. I won’t think the same way about life again. Everyone needs to read this book. Several themes from his story resonated with me, and I’m going to share them with you:

· Gratitude. I’m extremely grateful for my life in the United States as an African American female in this day and age. Yes, I face challenges now and again, but they come nowhere near to equating with the adversities the Jews experienced during Hitler’s reign. Hitler was an unstable megalomaniac. Al Weiner, the author, was forced into starvation, suffered from emaciation, lost every member of his immediate family, witnessed the murders of thousands of his counterparts, and was beaten mercilessly for asinine, groundless reasons embodied by German society. This also made me consider other pogroms, mass genocides, and events in history where people have experienced the inconceivable.

I never had to go through any of this, and if you’re reading this, you likely didn’t have to either. We certainly face challenges and hardships in our lifetime but they pale in comparison to what others endure(d), so we should be grateful for what we do have and are blessed with.

· Forgiveness. This was another salient theme for me. The fact that Al Weiner was put through so much suffering, heinous treatment, and wanton cruelty and still had no retaliating bone in his body after WWII is unbelievable.

We hold so much bitterness in our hearts over dramatic situations (like he said/she said nonsense, getting hurt by a boyfriend/girlfriend/person you like, etc.) that seem huge to us but totally pale in comparison to the nefarious circumstances Weiner and other victims of the Holocaust suffered. Some people are even intent on killing or seriously hurting someone else over petty things (Sharkeisha is one prime example, a young man in NJ was shot by his neighbor over a parking spot – seriously?? - and more sad, sad situations). Let’s learn to forgive and forget. We'll end up feeling like a load’s been taken off our shoulders anyway.

· Indomitable character. Al Weiner preserved his faith and values even after the Holocaust. He saw the bloody corpse of his father as a child and was torn away from his family by demented Nazis…regardless, he continued practicing his Jewish faith and maintaining the values that his parents imbued him with even after his egregious experiences in the camps. Amazing.

If someone can go through so much and still have tenets of forgiveness, gratitude, respect, and other values that many Holocaust survivors may have lost, then this should inspire people to stay strong in their own beliefs and principles.