"Even if things get heavy, We'll All Float On"...Almost 26 and Figuring Out the Game All Over Again

Foreword 
        So between a heavy 14-credit course load, 10-15 hour/week time commitment to my internship, entertaining out of state visitors, and diving into my new leadership responsibilities at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, I have not had much time to breathe and write a meaningful blog entry until now. As you can probably tell from the title of this blog post, my relationship with graduate school could best be described as a love-hate one at this point in time. Transferring from school to school in my undergrad and moving to Washington DC without any support network, I'm not one who's foreign to the idea of "starting over". In fact, I view the task as a challenge, and always in time I fully adapt to my new surroundings, and conquer the experience in all forms.

A New Experience, A New Perspective

       As I pinpointed in an earlier blog post, the way that I view education is a night and day difference from how I did so during my undergrad at the University of Miami and UNC-Chapel Hill. Naively, I was so focused on my grades and overall GPA during my undergrad, while not really concerned with mastering the course material. In no way does this imply that I put in the least amount of work in order to get the grades I wanted, because many sleepless nights occurred in the UNC Undergraduate Library (UG) and Davis Library, and many hours were fully devoted to academics. When you enter the real world and begin your hunt for a 9-5 job, you quickly learn that people do not view you in terms of your numbers. Unless you're looking to be a robot and get recruited by highly selective technology companies, financial powerhouse and management consulting firms, no one cares where your degree came from, and if you graduated Summa Cum Laude or were inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Honors Society. Those place markers add value, though not as much as the actual experience that you've acquired in internships, volunteer opportunities, and leadership roles you may have served in for student organizations.
   
         Cracking that academic nut is taking longer than I anticipated for me. In high school and during my undergrad, I was able to train myself to spend multiple hours at a time in the library and stay as focused as a prepubescent boy who is realizing the beauty of females for the first time, without any additives such as Ritalin and caffeine pills. For the most part all of the material is extremely interesting and appealing. I mean don't get me wrong, there are those introductory core-level courses like Biostatistics and Epidemiology that are not especially of interest to me. Though we must do what it is required of us, play the game, and learn the so-called skills that we will use later in our careers. Right now, I roll my eyes, though hopefully I will put this knowledge to use in my future.

          Before committing to New Orleans, I knew that with any decision that there would be opportunity costs. As it has been presented in the media and basic common knowledge, New Orleans is not the safest place in the world. Being one of the more economically-challenged metropolitan areas in the South, it is home to a high crime rate. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, this factor definitely places limitation on my activities, including my study habits. At Miami and UNC-Chapel Hill, I felt entirely safe walking around campus all hours of the night. I cannot say the same about Tulane. The School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine "campus" is not located in the same vicinity as the undergraduate school, which arguably is located in a better area than the SPHTM. With that said, I'm still not sure I would feel safe walking to my car after a certain hour, which in turn affects my study habits. In addition, the libraries at Tulane are not very aesthetically pleasing. I've had conversations with other students who've expressed the same concerns to me. "It feels like a prison," as many have put it. There are no windows, there's a lot of construction taking place which makes it hard to access the facilities, and so on and so forth. All in all, the conditions and resources available to me to aid my ability to study safely and peacefully are not up to par, which is fine. Now that I know this, I'll just have to use my creativity to devise a new plan of action for study environments.

A Small Fish in A Big Pond

     Now I know we've only been here a little over a month, and while one might say that I do have a lot of friends, I'm still not at a place where I would feel comfortable for the next year and change. Do I have a lot of friends? Sure. Since I do not typically place labels to define my friendships, i.e. I do not have anyone that I'll ever address as a best friend, I take the term friend very seriously. I do not mean to offend any of my friends here in New Orleans, though I do not feel that I have really met people who I could confide in, and trust to be there to support me and rely on when I'm in need, and vice versa. I've taken a lot of blows to the face, as have others, and learned the hard way who my real friends are. I do not expect to leave graduate school with a posse of true friends. I've collected a couple of friends at each stage in my life, and have built a nice support network, and I would of course love to meet one or two people, who I can call groomsmen on my wedding day and so on, though it is not the sole reason or a motive of mine in graduate school.
     
     The nature of the beast is that I'm in a program that is dominated by females, similar to the conflict that I faced as a minority in the nonprofit development and event planning world. I have no problem with working with women and believe in equal rights for men, women, and those who identify as transgender and other gender classifications. Though, I would like to have some male camaraderie; a few brothers to share a beer with and watch some sports. I know, I know. I'm being very stereotypical and sexist right now, but just go with it and don't question me, :). Piled that on to the fact that graduate programs are much smaller than undergraduate, which makes it that much harder to find your niche in a small student body, especially one that has a small margin of males.

        I'm incredibly grateful to have the moral support of so many people who trust in my ability to create a memorable and meaningful experience for them, and look forward to doing my best in exceeding everyone's expectations with the collaboration of my co-chair.

Keep Paddling On

     It might seem that I've reached a point between a rock and a hard place. As should be expected in every experience and new adventure, there are going to be obstacles that you must not let slow you down and affect your optimistic outlook. Even if you fall in the river, you must use your strength to pull yourself up, get back into the boat, and continue paddling. That is just what I'm going to do. Nearly 26, and I'm still in my floaties.