Wonder. What IF?

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, 

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, 

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, 

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, 

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: 

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster 

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken 

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, 

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, 

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, 

And lose, and start again at your beginnings 

    And never breathe a word about your loss; 

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew 

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you 

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, 

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, 

    If all men count with you, but none too much; 

If you can fill the unforgiving minute 

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

-Words Lifted from the Great Rudyard Kipling's poem "IF"

(What a Great Find for Motivation, Doctor Banzuela! Kuddos to Topnotch Medical Board Preparatory Review center)  

Mute. An ENT Clinical Clerk's required reflection.

Ever since I could remember, I wanted to write for a living. I eat and breathe literature. But then, things turned differently when I passed the most prestigious high school (so they say), the Philippine Science High School, Main Campus. My parents did not force me (in fairness to my dad and my mom, they respected my decision just in any case), the circumstances forced me. Life was not always a silver spoon for my family. We had our ups and downs. That moment when I saw my mother cry because her head was spinning where to get the means to provide for her children was my turning point. I gave up my dream and signed that f* up contract to have a science course 4 years from that day, May of 2001. Having finished it on October 2009, after graduating from UP Diliman B.S. Biology made me feel accomplished; however another opportunity was knocking on the door--medical school.

Life was not easy. No one has it smoothly. When life throws you a ball, you throw it back. Why? Because you just got to. Nothing else to say. No more excuses. No words left. You just have to.

Easy as that. I gave up writing. I also lost the eloquence of my words through the years. Writer's drought as they call it. But bit by bit, I found my words by coming to terms with myself and I was able to live out with the decisions I've made.

TIME OUT!

GUILTY. I told myself to get rid of any distractions for the upcoming finals in 2 weeks, but here I am blogging. DISCIPLINE!

I guess I can't help it because I am so fueled with passion and inspiration which I haven't felt in the longest time.

At present, I am reading "The Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell, and THUMBS UP. Everything I every questioned about in my life is there. 

I will blog in detail soon. But one quick food for thought that I want to share in that book: "There is no direct correlation between intellect and achievement." You need a little bit more to excel. The ingredients for success is summed up in: passion, hardwork, talent, grabbing opportunities and entitlement.

Still in the first chapters but WOW... it gave me that extra boost to work harder in my studies :)

One quick advice for incoming medical students, don't let the day pass by without reminding yourself why you have chosen the path to become a doctor. Read inspirational books and fuel yourself with passion. Intellect, high IQ and high grades wouldn't matter that much in med school (I mean hello, will your patients ask you if you had high grades in med school?). Personal skills, compassion and personality goes a long long way, not just in med school but beyond this field we all dream of.

CHOW. :) Need to do my orthopedic paper :)

Someday.

Someday. I can't contain this passion inside of me. I have been reading the book by Robert Greene entitled, "Mastery," and wow... all I can say is wow. It is such a wonder on how one book can give me so much profound knowledge and understanding.

My mind is racing with thoughts and dreams of the future. I am filled with tears with the knowledge that my passion has come back to me. Ever since my brother died 3 years ago, I felt different. As if my world changed and that everything in my life had no meaning... pointless.

Bereavement at it's finest, you may say. Many would have suggested that I should have took another year off from medical school to relieve oneself from the trauma and depression but the agony of not doing anything and the thought of not distracting myself from my grief was unbearable. So, I entered medical school even if I was in deep bereavement, which I have hidden so well with a poker face for years.

School was a routine, just to get by and I lost my vision, mission and my passion for my work. I lost sight of my goal and you may say... yes, I was indeed lost. Many asked me how I persevered, in an atmosphere where the competition is tough, where you do not know who your real friends are and where you must be cautious to trust who.... I guess, what gave me the strength was that I knew in my heart that becoming a doctor is my life's task, my calling, my vocation, my greatest achievement in my life, and my life's sole purpose.

Something to Remember Me By.

"You and I have both struggled and stumbled and in truth not always given our best but even then it was our effort... Know that you EARNED the right to be here..."

DAMN RIGHT.

Mother Teresa on Life

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. 

If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.

If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. 

For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.” 

― Mother Teresa

Letters to a Young Poet: Letter One

Paris February 17, 1903 Dear Sir,      Your letter arrived just a few days ago. I want to thank you for the great confidence you have placed in me. That is all I can do. I cannot discuss your verses; for any attempt at criticism would be foreign to me. Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsay able than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.      With this note as a preface, may I just tell you that your verses have no style of their own, although they do have silent and hidden beginnings of something personal. I feel this most clearly in the last poem, "My Soul." There, some thing of your own is trying to become word and melody. And in the lovely poem "To Leopardi" a kind of kinship with that great, solitary figure does perhaps appear. Nevertheless, the poems are not yet anything in themselves, not yet any thing independent, even the last one and the one to Leopardi. Your kind letter, which accompanied them managed to make clear to me various faults that I felt in reading your verses, though I am not able to name them specifically.      You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must", then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. Don't write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes a great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty Describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world's sound - wouldn't you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attention to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. And if out of , this turning within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear Sir, I can't give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to, the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted.      But after this descent into yourself and into your solitude, perhaps you will have to renounce becoming a poet (if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn't write at all). Nevertheless, even then, this self searching that I ask of you will not have been for nothing. Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say.      What else can I tell you? It seems to me that everything has its proper emphasis; and finally I want to add just one more bit of advice: to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your whole development; you couldn't disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to questions that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer.      It was a pleasure for me to find in your letter the name of Professor Horacek; I have great reverence for that kind, learned man, and a gratitude that has lasted through the years. Will you please tell him how I feel; it is very good of him to still think of me, and I appreciate it.      The poem that you entrusted me with, I am sending back to you. And I thank you once more for your questions and sincere trust, of which, by answering as honestly as I can, I have tried to make myself a little worthier than I, as a stranger, really am. Yours very truly, Rainer Maria Rilke

Enjoy the Moment with American Idol.

I feel refreshed.

With all that stress in my neck, I really needed that break last night.

Enjoyed the American Idol Live Tour with my family courtesy of my brother, who got Patron passes from his job. He works for History Channel and I am so enjoying the perks that comes with his job.

I'm so proud of my brother for his accomplishments :)

Even if I needed to study, I chose to support him and to cherish the family bonding.

Medical school is not just about studying, you know.

There can be life aside from Med school, if only you have mastered the art of time management in your pre-medical years.

I KNOW I PAID THE PRICE BEFORE ENTERING.

I had one tough pre-med course.

Many witnessed that. 

Haha.

When in Doubt, Remember these things.

You'll need these motivational quotes in medical school.

It serves as a remembrance that positive thinking goes a long, long way.

It differs from various students however.

I, on the other hand benefit so much from reading these.

It makes me want to persevere more.

THIS TOO SHALL PASS.

*sigh*

"If only I sought the easy way out."

Don't Quit Medical School

Last week, I had all the intention to quit medical school.

Personal reasons, I hope you don't mind that I keep this to myself.

But then, I realized that I'm half way there.

It's really just a long, long, long journey and I am getting impatient.

Keys to ponder on before entering medical school.

Get ready for a roller coaster ride of emotional turmoil.

You will encounter a lot of frustration, a lot of competition, a lot of disappointments, a lot of emotional attachment with the patients (and how to cope not to get affected when they die), a lot of readings, etc...

And that's just the beginning.

So if I were you, please.

DON'T ENTER MED SCHOOL.

I have no more choice since I have already invested so much in this field. That's just me.

But for you aspiring med students, think twice, think thrice--THINK.

And If you do DECIDE on BECOMING A DOCTOR, PREPARE YOURSELF.

You got to be emotionally strong.

It's not JUST GRADES HERE YOU KNOW.

IT'S BALANCING YOUR IQ AND EQ.

BOTH WILL BE TESTED.

TRUST ME.

Jump Start your Day.

“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.”

- Lance Armstrong

Find Ways to Motivate Yourself

My room is filled with little notes so that when I get depressed or burn-out with medical school, I am reminded on why I even did this in the first place.

Luckily, I have prepared my mind and soul for what awaits for me in this field. 

I guess, my one year break before med school was worth-it after all.

It taught me how to manage myself and how to stay focus despite the tough academic load. Maybe this is the reason why despite I have so much things to do for tomorrow, I find time to do what I want to do such as writing, hence the existence of this blog site.

I have pictures of people who matter the most to me so that when sh*! happens, I am reminded that they would be there for me. No matter if I would be at the lowest point of my life or at the highest, I know that they would back me up without judgment, without being too critical and without a single word that would hurt.

Thank you.

You don't know how your mere existence propels me to withstand this unbearable test of strength.

We will be doctors one day, and you wouldn't want your primary care physicians to be the first one to panic when things get rough. Maybe that's why they make things harder for us in order to be that source of strength.

I guess.

....

Like what my board says...

                                                                                                                                                 

"When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile."

                                                                                                                                                 

And so.... you are mine. Thank you. :)