I Will Survive

I just re-read my last post and realized how utterly depressing it was. Love is a beautiful thing, and I don't think that it's meant to be understood. So all my negative ranting about it was just that - ranting.

In other aspects of my life, I honestly think that I've had it with my job. Sure it sounds cool to be a dialysis machine designer. In fact, it's even cool to think that my designs impact someone's life every single day. But all the politics and poor management of my company is killing me. It makes it very frustrating for me to go to work everyday and to have to deal with it. I see so many opportunities for improvement, but it's hard to get my opinions across, because my company believes in the elder system. If you're gray and old, then your opinion is highly valued. I don't understand that at all. Now don't get me wrong. Experience is very valuable in every realm of life, whether it is work experience, love experience, or just plain life experience. This is why my parents and Ben will always be smarter than me. This is not to say, though, that young people with little experience are clueless as to what happens around them. The youngest members of my company are the work horses. We know every design and every aspect of the system. Without us, the company would get nothing done. So when we see that a process is inefficient or just plain stupid, we're not saying that just because we like to hear ourselves talk. We all have the best interests of the company in mind. At my company, however, your opinions are valued only if 1 of 2 things occurs -- either you have white hair or you have 20 years of dialysis experience.

Maybe this is why I feel like all signs are pointing towards me leaving this place. I've always wanted to go to business school and now just feels like the right time to start the whole process. Sure, I don't have as much work experience as most other applicants, but I've had over 3 years of experience at the same start-up company. I've seen the whole gamut of mistakes and management errors.

Now if I could only ace the GMAT and score myself some killer recommendations. Well that and convincing Stanford that I'm the best thing since sliced bread. Strangely, I'm not too scared yet about everything. Maybe I really have grown up. I've finally come to realize that everything does work out and everything in my path is something that I can handle.

Aside from trying to conquer the GMAT, I'm slowly realizing how different life will be in the next couple of weeks. Everyone is leaving Chicago for the next stages of their lives. Adrienne is off to Ann Arbor to become a big, bad lawyer. Vivien is headed for the Big Apple to start a residency in internal medicine. Along with her, Jim is also headed out there to start his urology residency. In addition to that, Law McGraw is going to be in San Francisco for 3 months. I'm going to miss him terribly, but I know that it's just temporary. And for that, I am happy.

What is Love?

Is there such a thing as being too nice? When you love someone, don't you do everything in your power to prevent them from being hurt?

For me, loving someone means accepting all his faults, respecting him, and doing everything in my power to prevent him from being hurt in any way. But does loving someone come at the cost of me? Does loving someone mean that I have to end up being the one who's hurt? Does it mean that I have to be the one who's always compromising what I want and giving in to what he wants? Or is that just because I'm too nice and I would rather that I be sad than him being sad?

Someone once told me that I was too selfless. I give in to others too easily to ensure their happiness. I'd rather that I be unhappy and disappointed than them. Maybe this wise person was right. Maybe I do need to be more selfish sometimes. I'm not strong enough to be disappointed all the time. Sometimes, I need someone to love me and to give in to what I want.

Maybe I don't understand love as much as I thought that I did. Maybe things are too good to be true sometimes. All I needed was a slap from reality to wake me up from my fantasy world.

Still Alive...

I swear to y'all that I'm still alive. I've just been sort of MIA. The dialysis community has kept me super busy with all kinds of projects. Sadly, there has been no out-of-town trips, but the in-house projects are still sucking up all my time. In addition to that, I've been attempting to do loads of strength training at the gym since I took a body fat analysis test the other day and was told that I needed to build some muscle mass. And in between these moments of lifting weights and analyzing dialysis data, I've been trying to brush up on my sentence correction and critical reasoning skills. Did anyone know that it's correct to say "I prefer rice to pasta" and incorrect to say "I prefer rice over pasta." Color me purple. I always thought that the latter was correct. So if I haven't responded to your emails, voicemails, phone calls, or actual invitations, I'm sorry. Once I ace the world of standardized testing, I will resurface.

Before I return to the world of subject-verb agreement, I will leave you all with a nice close up of my face that Law McGraw took of me this past weekend. Note: an update of our weekend jaunt to Milwaukee will soon be published, complete with pictorals. I promise to get to it once I've mastered the art of verb tenses.