too many stars and not enough sky

Fridays are good days these days even though I do not have the kind of schedule that means Friday is the end of the week. If anything, Friday is kind of the beginning of the week for me these days. But on Fridays, I get a little reassurance that this road I am on is not completely, insanely misguided.

Still. There were things today that pulled me down from the high. I hesitate to mention this, because I do not think it's a legitimate thing to be too concerned about. The broseph once told me that he wanted to get out of IT because 'there are no cool people in tech'. Now, while he's entitled to his opinion on the quality of IT folks, I think that is a flimsy reason to get out of a profession.

Sure, it is important that you can establish a work environment that is tolerable enough that you can do your job without going into therapy. But do you really need to be BFF with your coworkers? I think not.

Or I hope not. At first, I said it was because I was older that I could not say I would have lasting friendships from school. Now, upon further reflection, I do not think my age has anything to do with it. There is a lot about medical students that I simply do. not. like. at. all.

Mostly, this past year has been a lesson in making lemon juice from lemons. Most of the time, I am thinking of ways to see classmates in a light that allows them more slack. It's slack they do not really deserve and have not earned. But it's slack that's necessary to give to make another three years with them tolerable. That is how I know I won't keep in touch with most once I am out of here- when you're basically tolerating people for convenience sake, there's a low likelihood you will continue to tolerate them when you are no longer thrust together at all times.

The worst part, I'm finding, is that whenever someone emits those crazy medical school competitive gunner-manic behavior, my instinct is to just get as far away as possible. And while it's been a successful method of avoiding getting sucked into that kind of neurotic sparring, it's robbed me of a lot of opportunities. I realized it today because, on Fridays, I get to do something I really enjoy and it is 100% to do with medicine. But then, one of the crazy I will shank you if you show any interest in my specialty people showed up and invaded the sanctuary. Later, another classmate-purported-friend emailed me and wanted to come along with me next week, simply because I had told her that I had enjoyed it.

And that's the whole problem. When you tell a friend in school that you enjoyed something, they do not process that as ah, she found something she enjoyed. Instead, their crazy Babelfish speak translates it to OMG, she is doing something that I could be doing and enjoying instead. The thing is, in the past year, I think every time anyone has come at me with that sort of craziness, I've backed off and basically waved them through, with an it's all yours, crazy, all yours.

But if I continue to do that, I will miss out on the things that might actually make me feel I am in the right place. I used to be better at this, but I feel past it now. My instinct now is to just avoid it. But that is strange, because I don't think that anyone who knows me would describe me as someone prone to getting trampled. Trying to reconcile these two aspects of my personality is something I am finding difficult.

Anyhow, sorry. That's a lot of complaining for a Friday evening. But now that I have got some of this out of my system, perhaps I will have something of substance to say.