7:30 a.m. Wake-up
The quiet of otherwise bustling Kimball halls awakes a certain peacefulness in me. Empty bike lanes bring me to morning lectures. My roommate and I jabber away, pedaling side by side in the chilly, crisp air. Dark-eyed juncos greet us from their perches overhead: they see this scene every morning.
A pre-med has a schedule. A pre-med has a plan. Every day of my sophomore year (favorite year of college), I woke up knowing where I would be and what I would be doing every hour of the day. The predictability of my schedule oiled the motors in my machine, driving me toward a clear destination.
9:30-10:20 a.m. HUMBIO lecture 1
10:30-11:20 a.m. HUMBIO lecture 2
Auditorium seats squeak as classmates file into our Geology Corner classroom. The door bangs shut to announce each arrival. iPad fully-charged, screen brightness dimmed, I scramble to keep up with the heart’s pressure-volume loops and the kidney’s filtration system as we move onto a new key concept before I can dwell on the one before. The rapid pace of content keeps me laser-focused on lecture slides. Nothing else matters at this moment.
There was something special about sinking deep into a task that sat before me. This appreciation for investigation and discovery brought me to journalism, digging for perspectives on a renowned pianist’s return to his alma mater and student experiences with the university band. To me, both the arts of my articles and the sciences in my classes carried an intricacy that encouraged careful dissection as a reporter and student. I could plan my approach to both.
11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. HUMBIO office hours
Main Quad buildings make their age known through the heat that incubates in a room with window latches unlocked, panels wide open. Sweat gathers at the base of my hair, but I keep noting down clarifications to questions that my sub-conscious brews in lecture. I love this feeling of finding the answers to questions. It brings everything together.
I ask for nuances in class topics like I grill my interviewees. My monthly allotment for 300 minutes of recordings on Otter.ai is filling up and I will transfer my transcripts to a personal hard drive. As an editor, sharing my experiences with writers fills me with a hope to convey the same magnitude of support that my editors offered me amid confusion about policies for draft review and interviewee pushback.
12:30-1:20 p.m. Lunch
My mind runs on information dumps for the bulk of the day, so I try to empty it with musings during breaks. On busier weeks, I open my computer to edit reviews about the most recent Bay Area concert, profiles of Stanford authors. Editing is calming; I can let go of the structure I exert over the rest of my schedule. Writers will make the final decisions. Interviewees will guide the article angle. I didn’t always have a plan going into my edits, in contrast to my reporting and the pre-professional plans I pondered every day.
The summer before sophomore year, I visited family in China given the expectation that subsequent summers would get busier and busier. There, halfway around the world, a book sat in a bookstore and foreshadowed the next few years of my life: “I used to have a plan.”
The English words glared at me amid a sea of Mandarin titles, daring me to accept the challenge. I refused. I took a picture, smirking to cope with reality.
1:30-2:20 p.m. Biochemistry lecture
My friends and I settle into our four-seater table in the STLC classroom that we say we have grown sick of. Maybe I’ll miss this place someday. We ask each other in hushed voices whether one of us caught the last arrow-push that was drawn before the professor flipped to the next slide. I know lecture insight will be critical for my MCAT and future career. But soon, the questions that arise in my mind are driven by more than a desire to understand exam content. I just want to know.
3-7 p.m. Lab work
I’m grateful I can explore my out-of-scope curiosities through research. At the same time, making progress in the lab tests my patience like wanting to live as a “real adult” tests my plan to apply straight-through to medical school. Lab finances, spurious experiment results are constant enemies I face. Along the way, I discover the feeling of creating my own answers beats the gratification of finding answers to my inquiries.
After my MCAT, I began daring to question my path a little more. It was like overcoming this large hurdle permitted me to reevaluate my plan, untouchable before the exam. My research mentor told me that I should “stick to my goals, but be flexible about how you get there.” Maybe I can take the time to immerse myself more deeply in the society that I want to support as a physician after all.
7-7:30 p.m. dinner
7:30-10:30 p.m.: study in Packard
Perhaps it’s a wistfulness I feel while biking toward west campus to study, when everyone else goes back to east campus where most of us live (save for GovCo folk). I bike toward the sun as it illuminates water droplets of the fountains along Jane Stanford Way. The sun’s beams entice me to catch up, taunting me on its descent behind the tall pines. I am the cop and the sun is the robber, who’s taken from me nothing but time.
When my eyelids droop, I close my tabs of chemistry mechanisms and lecture summaries, and send a last nighttime reminder to writers over Slack.
Gripping my bike handle bars, my right hand protests slightly from the day’s strain. I brake with my left hand, fingers numb in the sharp night wind.
10:30 p.m. Sleep
My night routine is simple. My hope for the end of my undergraduate career is too. I close my eyes, replaying the singular moments I want to remember amid the blur of Packard study nights and weekends in Green basement. The tiny droplets of mist that reach me atop Casper Dining when sprinklers turn on at night (aren’t we in a drought?). My friend’s birthday picnic on Kite Hill. Trekking through the rain to go containering at The Container Store. The sandwiches I packed into five Ziplocs for a San Francisco daytrip. Grinning through my frustration when another blade breaks while I carve triangles into silver plates with a jeweler’s saw. Dish hikes as it drizzled and a free golf cart ride. Blistered feet only felt at the end of Stanford to Sea. The glee when dining halls served honey crisp apples.
These are the scenes that I never could’ve planned. And even as I come to terms with that reality, I know there will always be a charm in entering a library when it opens and leaving when its lights dim, working toward a future vision like I always had a plan.