Sunday, September 9, 2012
Random Law School Update 35
Last Locations-
Washington, DC: July 9 - August 14, 2012
Tucson, AZ: August 14 - August 20, 2012
Boulder, CO: August 20 - August 24, 2012
Frankfurt, Germany: August 25 - August 26, 2012
Present Location: Barcelona, Spain
Arrival Date: August 26, 2012
Departure Date: December 22, 2012*
Next Location: Lelystad, The Netherlands
Arrival Date: September 13, 2012*
Departure Date: September 18, 2012*
I presently live in Spain. I arrived here two weeks ago from Denver via a delightful 20-hour layover in Frankfurt. I like it here.
I love my apartment. It is a five-bedroom, three bathroom spot on the segundo piso (third and a half floor) of an four-apartment complex that is very old as evidenced by the dark and disheveled wooden stairway that is barely wide enough to accommodate a piece of luggage. The apartment itself however looks like it came out of an IKEA magazine. It is clean, simple, and stylish. The kitchen is always clean. My four flatmates keep a low profile and I often have the place to myself. And the one that owns the apartment and is most present doesn’t speak english, so I get to practice spanish, which is wonderful. She, also, is wonderful.
I love my neighborhood, Barrio Gotico. It is right in the center of Barcelona’s old city--an incredible place filled with tiny stone streets where only pedestrians can pass. It is special. The buildings are all about four or five stories and are all connected to one another so that the city is comprised of small streets and plazas winding their way like a maize through a field of impressive old stone buildings. There are “supermarkets” on every street, which look a lot like convenience stores except that they sell awesome things: like fresh vegetables, a half-dozen types of soymilk, lentils, brown rice, and gluten-free products. There are plenty of health food stores including a vegan shop with bulk grains 150 meters from my apartment. Restaurants here are open past midnight, even on weeknights, but no one who lives here goes out to eat much.
I think I may have discovered why it is that Europeans stay so thin. I was at a friend’s apartment around meal time and, unexpectedly, it became time to eat. After assuring them that I was full so as to avoid any sadness about not being able to cater to my dietary restrictions, they brought out a beautiful macrobiotic stir-fry of sautéed vegetables and brown rice and start chowing down as if it was normal to not have any bread, processed foods, meat, dairy, eggs, or sugar in a meal. After dinner, one of the roommates grabbed a peach out of the fridge to snack on. Not a pastry, not ice cream, just a peach, which you can get here as easily as a bag of chips or a Twinkie, because they are sold at every market on every street. Brilliant. Having a lot of tiny markets everywhere means that what is healthy also happens to be what is easy, cheap, and quick to make at home.
In less happy news, our wonderful apartment in my delightful neighborhood was broken into last week. I was the first to discover the damage; as I went to insert my key into the lock the door swung open revealing two broken hinges and two locks busted out of their sockets. The feeling was the feeling that something had gone either wrong or very wrong.
**Interestingly enough, as I was just writing this my cell phone was stolen. A young boy came up to my table at Starbucks with an advertisement for contact lenses pretending to be deaf and holding out his hand as if asking for money the way they do in India and other third-worldly countries. I didn’t think too much of it--though noticed as he left that he had the same color iPhone case as I had. Twelve seconds later, genius struck, I threw my computer in my bag, and bolted out of the cafe. By the time I located the kid with my eyes, he had already managed to start crossing the street a block and a half over. I approached him quickly and subtly, gave him a look of death, and retrieved the phone.**
That makes two lucky close calls in one week. Nothing was missing from our apartment either.
I have been taking spanish classes since I arrived. Law school exchange classes start this week. Our first public holiday is Tuesday. I think I might go here.
Photos will be available in the usual place as soon as I figure out how to convince the new version of Picasa to save my captions. They are also on Facebook. Archived RLSUs and RTUs can be found at: http://randomtravelupdates.blogspot.com.es.
Love,
Melissa
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Random Law School Update 34
Last Locations-
Washington, DC: April 3 - May 22, 2012
Miami, FL: May 22, 2012
Grenada, The Caribbean: May 23 - June 2, 2012
Miami, FL: June 2, 2012
Washington, DC: June 2 - June 7, 2012
Boston, MA: June 7, 2012
Wolfsboro, NH: June 7 - June 10, 2012
Boston, MA: June 10, 2012
New York, NY: June 10 - June 14, 2012
Washington, DC: June 14 - June 30, 2012
Stone Harbor, NJ: June 30 - July 8, 2012
New York, NY: July 8 - July 9, 2012
Present Location-
Washington, DC: July 9 - August 14, 2012*
Next Locations-
Tucson, AZ: August 14 - August 18, 2012*
Boulder, CO: August 18 - August 22, 2012*
Washington, DC: August 22 - August 25, 2012*
Barcelona, Spain: August 2012 - December 2012
*Tentative
It has been 11 days since I had my spleen removed. I had intended to write from the hospital, and had in fact started writing, but the constant flow of intravenous pain medication rendered me into a dreamlike state from which the inhibition to not stop writing was alleviated.
Hospitals are interesting places. They are like hotels in that they contain rooms away from home where your sheets are cleaned for you. They are like jails in that you are not allowed to leave without the permission of the medical authorities. They are like insane asylums in that you are surrounded by a bunch of other equally drugged up people who moan at various intervals throughout the day, and night. They are like luxury resorts in that everything you want or need is brought to you at the push of a button. I can get someone to deliver me food, snacks, drinks, plug in my computer, hand me my bag, search for my iphone. They are like the future in that I don’t have to lift my hand or lower my head to drink. A machine plugged into a vein on my arm takes care of my hydration needs.
As a general rule, hospitals and I do not get along. I have a (only slowly diminishing) fear of blood, needles, and sitting in one place for long periods of time. They had to try twice to insert my IV, which meant four sticks because they insisted in inserting a numbing solution before each try. "This IV is bigger than the ones you’re used to." I was under a few minutes later so none of it really mattered much.
I was released last Monday morning, in time to make it to my 9:30am Spanish class which meets for three hours a day, Monday through Friday. I’ve managed to mostly carry on with my daily life. I commute 35 minutes each way to class every day by bus, I meet friends out for meals, I go to movies. The doctors didn’t offer a ton of guidance for what to and not to do. So I go by what hurts. If it hurts, I try to avoid it.
The worst part has been the medication. The pill they gave me to cure the pain causes nausea. The pill they gave me to cure the nausea causes constipation. The pill suggested to cure that causes more pain. And no cure is absolute, so at the end of it I am left with a little mix of pain, nausea, constipation, and more pain.
I cured this by quitting the medication. That has fixed just about everything except for the initial pain, which is, in all, quite bearable.
I can talk about spleens and why they are removed later. I can also talk about the rest of my summer. It has involved some travel, including a few trips to the beach which have left me with a tan that helps when it comes to soliciting comments regarding how healthy I look for having just gotten out of the hospital. I have also used the travel to connect with family and friends, including several of those on this list. Those trips are probably best described by photo.
Thank you to all who have sent kind thoughts by mail, email, facebook, telepathy, or in person. They have been received.
Love,
Melissa
As always, let me know if you would like to stop receiving these emails, or start receiving them if you are reading from the blog. All Random Law School Updates, past and present, decent and awful, can be found at: randomtravelupdates.blogspot.com.
Monday, May 7, 2012
Random Law School Update 33
Last Location: Koh Samui, Thailand
Arrival Date: March 26, 2012
Departure Date: April 2, 2012
Current Location: Washington, DC
Arrival Date: April 3, 2012
Departure Date: May 15, 2012
Next Location: Grenada
Arrival Date: May 15, 2012
Departure Date: May 28, 2012
Arrival Date: March 26, 2012
Departure Date: April 2, 2012
Current Location: Washington, DC
Arrival Date: April 3, 2012
Departure Date: May 15, 2012
Next Location: Grenada
Arrival Date: May 15, 2012
Departure Date: May 28, 2012
Sometimes I am overcome by nostalgia.
Today it came as I slid my mouse down my gchat status window, causing a profile photo to appear for each one of my friends. One of my friends had posted a verse that read, “a baby sleeps in all our bones, so scared to be alone.” And this got me thinking, as I reflected carefully upon each photo, that we all used to be children.
I think that we were scared then. At least I was. I must have been scared of all sorts of things. Though, in retrospect I can only really remember one: I was scared of not being liked, of not being able to make friends.
I think that we were scared then. At least I was. I must have been scared of all sorts of things. Though, in retrospect I can only really remember one: I was scared of not being liked, of not being able to make friends.
It was a fear that consumed me. The more I wanted friends, the more impossible I found them to obtain. The intensity of my desire had ratcheted up the stakes in my young psyche to such a level that I would panic under the pressure each time I was presented with an opportunity to succeed in my endeavor. And so I didn’t. My anxious presence repelled even the lightest-hearted people and I found myself utterly unliked.
I failed to make friends, even a single friend, for years of my childhood. I remember feeling desperately alone. I would walk to school each day, my stomach in knots, the breath shallow in my lungs, and my heart hovering a few feet away as if hoping for an opportunity to sever itself from my body in search of a less socially awkward home.
As I scrolled through my gchat list, I spent some time looking carefully into the expression of each of my friends and acquaintances, trying to catch a glimpse of what had scared them as a child. And it occurred to me that perhaps I was not the only one. That there were many of us scared lonely children growing up all over the country. That, in fact, I was never as alone as I thought I was.
I took a moment to explain this to my younger self when she was having a particularly bad day. I remember it making her feel a little bit better. Better enough that she grew up just fine. Just fine, if still stricken on occasion by a fear of not being liked.
As a reminder, I am always happy to remove you from or add you to the RLSU email list. I keep an archive of my updates here: http://
Love,
Melissa
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Random Law School Update 32
Last Location: Hong Kong
Arrival Date: March 18, 2012
Departure Date: March 26, 2012
Current Location: Koh Samui, Thailand
Arrival Date: March 26, 2012
Departure Date: April 2, 2012
Next Location: Washington, DC
Arrival Date: April 3, 2012
Departure Date: Undetermined
Today I saw a sunset. I wanted to photograph it but was in the middle of doing some law school related things and thought that perhaps it could wait. But then I remembered that the colors of the setting sky do not stay the same for long. So I went out to the beach with my camera and enjoyed it.
I am in Thailand. I took a week off of school to come. It occurred to me that like the setting sky, life’s opportunities do not stay the same for long and one must occasionally sacrifice some productivity in order to pay attention to the most important things.
The circumstances that led to me being here now began about five months ago when I won the Georgetown International Arbitration competition. That led to me competing in the Vis East International Competition in Hong Kong last week, and that led to my mom convincing me to take the short three-hour flight to Thailand for a medical retreat.
It is cheaper to come to Thailand for a week than to spend one day in the Georgetown University Hospital. And there are more possibilities here. So after much deliberation, and having spent my entire Spring Break working, I decided to come.
I have been fasting for six days now. Who would have thought I could go one day without solid food, let alone six? But I have, and I feel fairly incredible. I hope it is a good sign.
I leave tomorrow for a 32 hour journey back to DC. The last two weeks have been important. Being back in Asia has made me quite sentimental. Sentimental for Meghan, who passed away two years ago this month and who I met in Seoul five years ago this July. Sentimental for a hundred beautiful memories that I made with her and our mutual friends who have since scattered across the globe. I miss you all dearly.
Love,
Melissa
Arrival Date: March 18, 2012
Departure Date: March 26, 2012
Current Location: Koh Samui, Thailand
Arrival Date: March 26, 2012
Departure Date: April 2, 2012
Next Location: Washington, DC
Arrival Date: April 3, 2012
Departure Date: Undetermined
Today I saw a sunset. I wanted to photograph it but was in the middle of doing some law school related things and thought that perhaps it could wait. But then I remembered that the colors of the setting sky do not stay the same for long. So I went out to the beach with my camera and enjoyed it.
I am in Thailand. I took a week off of school to come. It occurred to me that like the setting sky, life’s opportunities do not stay the same for long and one must occasionally sacrifice some productivity in order to pay attention to the most important things.
The circumstances that led to me being here now began about five months ago when I won the Georgetown International Arbitration competition. That led to me competing in the Vis East International Competition in Hong Kong last week, and that led to my mom convincing me to take the short three-hour flight to Thailand for a medical retreat.
It is cheaper to come to Thailand for a week than to spend one day in the Georgetown University Hospital. And there are more possibilities here. So after much deliberation, and having spent my entire Spring Break working, I decided to come.
I have been fasting for six days now. Who would have thought I could go one day without solid food, let alone six? But I have, and I feel fairly incredible. I hope it is a good sign.
I leave tomorrow for a 32 hour journey back to DC. The last two weeks have been important. Being back in Asia has made me quite sentimental. Sentimental for Meghan, who passed away two years ago this month and who I met in Seoul five years ago this July. Sentimental for a hundred beautiful memories that I made with her and our mutual friends who have since scattered across the globe. I miss you all dearly.
Love,
Melissa
Monday, January 30, 2012
Random Law School Update 31
Current Location: Washington, DC
Arrival Date: January 08, 2011
Departure Date: Undetermined
I have set myself against doing any more schoolwork tonight so I may as well write. The topic of this email is something that makes me unhappy and so I will start by talking about the things I most like about my life.
It has occurred to me that life is wonderful by default. That is, if I just lay quietly somewhere with your eyes closed and endeavor to think about nothing in particular, or about some simple thing, like the color white for example, that sensation is marvelous. Since traveling, I have developed a profound appreciation for just sitting in my temperature controlled room, or any temperature controlled and mosquito-free area really. It is truly incredible to sit somewhere for as long as you care to without being too hot or too cold or constantly bitten by small animals. I really love it. When nothing else is going particularly well, I bask in how happy it makes me. I even giggle to myself when I go to sleep at night when I remember how outrageously lucky it is that there are institutions out there willing to loan me enough money that I can afford to live and go to school in such comfort.
On top of that, there are probably far too many good things to mention. I have very good parents. Much better parents I think than most people have. Then again, I don’t know most people’s parents. But I suspect that not all of them are as good. Mine care about me a lot and they never fail to show it. It is very lucky. I also have an amazing best friend. He has good parents too. I miss them.
The last many days have been difficult. I am upset with my hematologist. My anger is magnified by a bunch of steroids that she had me taking in promise that it would bring my platelets high enough to undergo a procedure to stop my over-abundant bleeding. Five days into the steroids, when my platelets were high enough to perform the procedure, she refused to write a note of approval, stating that it was perfectly okay with her that the procedure be performed but that it was up to the other doctor to decide whether to perform it despite the fact that my counts, though five times as high as normal for me are still less than a quarter as high as normal for someone else. The other doctor, not knowing anything about ITP, hematology, or my specific situation, demanded affirmative approval from my hematologist. I had spent over 20 hours and a lot of emotional energy making and preparing for the necessary appointments, five in total, and the disappointment of being denied care was devastating.
The worst part of the whole experience by far though is the withdrawal. The steroids themselves make me feel awful; they fill me with the sensation of anger and make me prone to outbursts of emotional irrationality and unkindness. They caused me incredible problems my 1L year and I have nothing but sincere hatred for them. Steroids are also one of a few truly physically addictive substances and the process of weaning off of them is incredibly painful. The symptoms are like that of a flu or cold—chills, body aches, congestion, headaches—combined with random outbursts of hellish emotion that leave me shaking and gasping for breath. I have to take sleeping pills to make it go away at night and even then, I do not sleep well. Today is the 10th day since I started them. It feels like it has been forever. I keep hoping that today is the last day of withdrawal. Maybe tomorrow.
Love,
Melissa
Arrival Date: January 08, 2011
Departure Date: Undetermined
I have set myself against doing any more schoolwork tonight so I may as well write. The topic of this email is something that makes me unhappy and so I will start by talking about the things I most like about my life.
It has occurred to me that life is wonderful by default. That is, if I just lay quietly somewhere with your eyes closed and endeavor to think about nothing in particular, or about some simple thing, like the color white for example, that sensation is marvelous. Since traveling, I have developed a profound appreciation for just sitting in my temperature controlled room, or any temperature controlled and mosquito-free area really. It is truly incredible to sit somewhere for as long as you care to without being too hot or too cold or constantly bitten by small animals. I really love it. When nothing else is going particularly well, I bask in how happy it makes me. I even giggle to myself when I go to sleep at night when I remember how outrageously lucky it is that there are institutions out there willing to loan me enough money that I can afford to live and go to school in such comfort.
On top of that, there are probably far too many good things to mention. I have very good parents. Much better parents I think than most people have. Then again, I don’t know most people’s parents. But I suspect that not all of them are as good. Mine care about me a lot and they never fail to show it. It is very lucky. I also have an amazing best friend. He has good parents too. I miss them.
The last many days have been difficult. I am upset with my hematologist. My anger is magnified by a bunch of steroids that she had me taking in promise that it would bring my platelets high enough to undergo a procedure to stop my over-abundant bleeding. Five days into the steroids, when my platelets were high enough to perform the procedure, she refused to write a note of approval, stating that it was perfectly okay with her that the procedure be performed but that it was up to the other doctor to decide whether to perform it despite the fact that my counts, though five times as high as normal for me are still less than a quarter as high as normal for someone else. The other doctor, not knowing anything about ITP, hematology, or my specific situation, demanded affirmative approval from my hematologist. I had spent over 20 hours and a lot of emotional energy making and preparing for the necessary appointments, five in total, and the disappointment of being denied care was devastating.
The worst part of the whole experience by far though is the withdrawal. The steroids themselves make me feel awful; they fill me with the sensation of anger and make me prone to outbursts of emotional irrationality and unkindness. They caused me incredible problems my 1L year and I have nothing but sincere hatred for them. Steroids are also one of a few truly physically addictive substances and the process of weaning off of them is incredibly painful. The symptoms are like that of a flu or cold—chills, body aches, congestion, headaches—combined with random outbursts of hellish emotion that leave me shaking and gasping for breath. I have to take sleeping pills to make it go away at night and even then, I do not sleep well. Today is the 10th day since I started them. It feels like it has been forever. I keep hoping that today is the last day of withdrawal. Maybe tomorrow.
Love,
Melissa
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Random Law School Update 30
Last Location: Denver-Boulder-Steamboat-Pagosa Springs, Colorado; Tampa, Florida; Tucson, Arizona
Arrival Date: December 17, 2011
Departure Date: January 08, 2011
Current Location: Washington, DC
Arrival Date: January 08, 2011
Departure Date: Undetermined
This week has been hard medically. I have been inflicted with severe anemia due to an excessive loss of blood. I feel emotional and fatigued, I get winded going up a single flight of stairs, I gasp for air in spin class, and my vision goes black when I stand up too quickly. Not to mention the unsettling amount of bleeding – gentlemen, you don't want to know. My doctors get mad at me, but they don't really have any solutions. They just tell me to find a new hematologist, which is harder than it sounds. Online physician listings offer little more than name and location and I don't come from a family of doctors who would know what to look for in a good physician. And then there is the issue of health insurance, and of travel. I am limited because I don't have a car, or much free time.
One of my general practitioners finally got fed up with it on Thursday and trapped me in the Student Health Office. She called a security guard and made me take an escort to the hospital (I had refused an ambulance for fear that my insurance wouldn't fully cover it). Then I had to wait in the Emergency Room for a bunch of nurses and doctors come in to ask me the same questions over and over again and to take the same panel of blood tests that my doctor got mad at me for ordering just a few days prior – I had come to try to keep the blood in, not to have more taken out! The nurse came in to insert my IV; I turned to look just in time to see dark blood splatter across my arm. And I panicked, for the first time in over a year. The entire wing of the hospital erupted in commotion, the women next to me nearly falling out if her bed to see what is happening. I was mortified. I left several hours later just as lightheaded and groggy as I came in, with even less blood in me, and without any treatment to stop the bleeding. I stopped by the Whole Foods on my way home and picked up an herb know to regulate menstrual cycles. The next morning, for the first time in 12 days, the bleeding was visibly lighter.
Sometimes I get scared. Not the kind of scared-of-death scared that people write about in troubled poetry or confess in their deepest moments of despair. I think that I am pretty secure with my mortality. My scared is more like the type you might get when it occurs to you that there is a chance – however small – that you will fail this next exam, despite your best efforts and despite the fact that you have never failed before. That, mixed with the queasy-sick feeling you get after watching a slasher film where every item of scenery manages to find itself covered in the blood of hapless stock characters.
My biggest fear though, during the hardest weeks, is that I will overburden my closest friends. It happened once, my 1L year, and I have never ceased to regret it. Now, when I am at my most scared, I shut myself in my room alone and lay in bed shaking, until I realize that even at my worst, I am okay. Perhaps I should be embarrassed to write this, but it has occurred to me, at least I think, that most of us have moments like this – even those for whom nothing ever seems to go wrong.
Having a medical condition and being a law student is hard. I tell myself that it is better than, say, had I been a professional mountain-biker or base-jumping instructor – something that I might have to quit outright. This is hard in much more subtle ways. Looking for a job is hard because I am not sure what to tell employers about why I am not graduating with my peers, or why I have decided, after much deliberation, to take a reduced course-load to make time for medical appointments and alternative therapies. It is hard to explain to my peers why I don't go out that often, or why I drink so little when I do. It is hard telling people that I went to Colorado with my parents and didn't ski. It is hard explaining to doctors that, yes, I care about my health, but that I can't submit to treatments that risk making it difficult or impossible to study for weeks on end. And it is hard to admit to myself that my body probably needs more rest than I am willing to give it.
Things are looking up this week. I always hate to end on an awkward, "no I am not better yet" note. You always want to tell these stories in the past tense, like "all of these awful things happened and then after, everything was okay!" Those are the best stories, in part, because you are still around to tell them, but also because they go to show that bad things, by and large, tend to get better and leave our lives richer and more colorful than they were when we began. I have committed to telling my story from the middle though, and with that comes the possibility that things won't end particularly well. Of course that is the brilliance of it all, the suspense. And having an opportunity to care, because you know at any given moment you may be empowered to affect the outcome. One thing I have always hated about reading amazing stories about interesting people who have long since come and gone (or in the case of fiction, never been) is the feeling that I am forever denied an opportunity to be a part of their story. But then I remember that there are interesting people all around me who are right now in the middle of their stories. And I do my best to be a part of them. You all are part of mine now.
Love,
Melissa
Arrival Date: December 17, 2011
Departure Date: January 08, 2011
Current Location: Washington, DC
Arrival Date: January 08, 2011
Departure Date: Undetermined
This week has been hard medically. I have been inflicted with severe anemia due to an excessive loss of blood. I feel emotional and fatigued, I get winded going up a single flight of stairs, I gasp for air in spin class, and my vision goes black when I stand up too quickly. Not to mention the unsettling amount of bleeding – gentlemen, you don't want to know. My doctors get mad at me, but they don't really have any solutions. They just tell me to find a new hematologist, which is harder than it sounds. Online physician listings offer little more than name and location and I don't come from a family of doctors who would know what to look for in a good physician. And then there is the issue of health insurance, and of travel. I am limited because I don't have a car, or much free time.
One of my general practitioners finally got fed up with it on Thursday and trapped me in the Student Health Office. She called a security guard and made me take an escort to the hospital (I had refused an ambulance for fear that my insurance wouldn't fully cover it). Then I had to wait in the Emergency Room for a bunch of nurses and doctors come in to ask me the same questions over and over again and to take the same panel of blood tests that my doctor got mad at me for ordering just a few days prior – I had come to try to keep the blood in, not to have more taken out! The nurse came in to insert my IV; I turned to look just in time to see dark blood splatter across my arm. And I panicked, for the first time in over a year. The entire wing of the hospital erupted in commotion, the women next to me nearly falling out if her bed to see what is happening. I was mortified. I left several hours later just as lightheaded and groggy as I came in, with even less blood in me, and without any treatment to stop the bleeding. I stopped by the Whole Foods on my way home and picked up an herb know to regulate menstrual cycles. The next morning, for the first time in 12 days, the bleeding was visibly lighter.
Sometimes I get scared. Not the kind of scared-of-death scared that people write about in troubled poetry or confess in their deepest moments of despair. I think that I am pretty secure with my mortality. My scared is more like the type you might get when it occurs to you that there is a chance – however small – that you will fail this next exam, despite your best efforts and despite the fact that you have never failed before. That, mixed with the queasy-sick feeling you get after watching a slasher film where every item of scenery manages to find itself covered in the blood of hapless stock characters.
My biggest fear though, during the hardest weeks, is that I will overburden my closest friends. It happened once, my 1L year, and I have never ceased to regret it. Now, when I am at my most scared, I shut myself in my room alone and lay in bed shaking, until I realize that even at my worst, I am okay. Perhaps I should be embarrassed to write this, but it has occurred to me, at least I think, that most of us have moments like this – even those for whom nothing ever seems to go wrong.
Having a medical condition and being a law student is hard. I tell myself that it is better than, say, had I been a professional mountain-biker or base-jumping instructor – something that I might have to quit outright. This is hard in much more subtle ways. Looking for a job is hard because I am not sure what to tell employers about why I am not graduating with my peers, or why I have decided, after much deliberation, to take a reduced course-load to make time for medical appointments and alternative therapies. It is hard to explain to my peers why I don't go out that often, or why I drink so little when I do. It is hard telling people that I went to Colorado with my parents and didn't ski. It is hard explaining to doctors that, yes, I care about my health, but that I can't submit to treatments that risk making it difficult or impossible to study for weeks on end. And it is hard to admit to myself that my body probably needs more rest than I am willing to give it.
Things are looking up this week. I always hate to end on an awkward, "no I am not better yet" note. You always want to tell these stories in the past tense, like "all of these awful things happened and then after, everything was okay!" Those are the best stories, in part, because you are still around to tell them, but also because they go to show that bad things, by and large, tend to get better and leave our lives richer and more colorful than they were when we began. I have committed to telling my story from the middle though, and with that comes the possibility that things won't end particularly well. Of course that is the brilliance of it all, the suspense. And having an opportunity to care, because you know at any given moment you may be empowered to affect the outcome. One thing I have always hated about reading amazing stories about interesting people who have long since come and gone (or in the case of fiction, never been) is the feeling that I am forever denied an opportunity to be a part of their story. But then I remember that there are interesting people all around me who are right now in the middle of their stories. And I do my best to be a part of them. You all are part of mine now.
Love,
Melissa
Monday, December 12, 2011
Random Law School Update 29
Current Location: Finals
Next Location: Winter Break
I was trying to learn how to surf once. My friends rented a surfboard from a shop at a remote beach outside of Kenting in the south of Taiwan. We took turns going out with it. See Random Travel Update 5, and surfboard pictures.
The beaches south of Kenting are known by professionals as being remote spots for catching some serious waves. I went out unencumbered by any direction or advice on how to properly manage a surfboard. And without a rash guard, no less. Luckily, it was truly quite remote.
I put the very large board beneath me and swam, and swam, and swam until I was about as far out as the small handful of experienced surfers in the area. Surprisingly far out. And then I would wait, facing shore, laying with my belly on my board. Eventually a wave would come. And I would swim, and swim, and swim and swim. Paddling my legs and arms furiously to keep up with the increasingly monstrous wave. But my efforts would amount to running in place and I would come to notice that the wave was now on top of me rather than beneath me. At which point I would take a split second to think “hmm” and to suck in a deep breath of air before an incredible force took me tumbling down under the water and I found myself suddenly moving quite quickly towards the shore, my board strapped to my leg, smashing into me over and over again. And then rocks. Sharp pointed sea objects all of which had presumably gone through this process before me. Washed up where the ocean meets the shore. And for a moment, I would be happy to just to feel something beneath me, to know that I wasn’t going to be pushed down into a bottomless ocean forever. But then, the force of the ocean would pull me back, and I would tumble again over and over and over again, for what could have been an eternity. Even now, I still remember it as if it had been an eternity.
I would spend the time in reflection. I would imagine that I was any other rock or shell or sea creature who did this every day. I would relax my body and give in to the ocean. It had convinced me that it was greater than me, and I thought it silly to spend much effort disagreeing. I would hold my breath until it was all over. I would think very clearly during this time. I would think about returning to the shore someday, and what it would be like to stand on land again. I would think about how I might get there. And devise strategies. I would keep my arms up in front of my face, to prevent my nose from breaking when my board smashed back into it. It was very painful being tossed onto shore, so after awhile I actually started to point myself away from shore and swam into the wave. I tried to stay under the water as much as possible, in order to prevent new waves from breaking over me. Eventually I found air. And then there I was, just swimming in the ocean again. Close to shore. My friends smiled and waved. I adjusted my top, regained control of my board and paddled slowly into shore. “That was fun,” I said when I got back. I proceeded to repeat the experience several times.
This is what law school is like.
Love,
Melissa
Next Location: Winter Break
I was trying to learn how to surf once. My friends rented a surfboard from a shop at a remote beach outside of Kenting in the south of Taiwan. We took turns going out with it. See Random Travel Update 5, and surfboard pictures.
The beaches south of Kenting are known by professionals as being remote spots for catching some serious waves. I went out unencumbered by any direction or advice on how to properly manage a surfboard. And without a rash guard, no less. Luckily, it was truly quite remote.
I put the very large board beneath me and swam, and swam, and swam until I was about as far out as the small handful of experienced surfers in the area. Surprisingly far out. And then I would wait, facing shore, laying with my belly on my board. Eventually a wave would come. And I would swim, and swim, and swim and swim. Paddling my legs and arms furiously to keep up with the increasingly monstrous wave. But my efforts would amount to running in place and I would come to notice that the wave was now on top of me rather than beneath me. At which point I would take a split second to think “hmm” and to suck in a deep breath of air before an incredible force took me tumbling down under the water and I found myself suddenly moving quite quickly towards the shore, my board strapped to my leg, smashing into me over and over again. And then rocks. Sharp pointed sea objects all of which had presumably gone through this process before me. Washed up where the ocean meets the shore. And for a moment, I would be happy to just to feel something beneath me, to know that I wasn’t going to be pushed down into a bottomless ocean forever. But then, the force of the ocean would pull me back, and I would tumble again over and over and over again, for what could have been an eternity. Even now, I still remember it as if it had been an eternity.
I would spend the time in reflection. I would imagine that I was any other rock or shell or sea creature who did this every day. I would relax my body and give in to the ocean. It had convinced me that it was greater than me, and I thought it silly to spend much effort disagreeing. I would hold my breath until it was all over. I would think very clearly during this time. I would think about returning to the shore someday, and what it would be like to stand on land again. I would think about how I might get there. And devise strategies. I would keep my arms up in front of my face, to prevent my nose from breaking when my board smashed back into it. It was very painful being tossed onto shore, so after awhile I actually started to point myself away from shore and swam into the wave. I tried to stay under the water as much as possible, in order to prevent new waves from breaking over me. Eventually I found air. And then there I was, just swimming in the ocean again. Close to shore. My friends smiled and waved. I adjusted my top, regained control of my board and paddled slowly into shore. “That was fun,” I said when I got back. I proceeded to repeat the experience several times.
This is what law school is like.
Love,
Melissa
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