Endurance (A Rant With No Paragraphs)

/start rant/

I hate this time of year! As soon as you start counting down to exams in weeks rather than months, the fun is OVER! And now we're supposed to buckle down and start revising things and practising bazillions of OSCEs and blah. I'm so sick of lectures and exams and exams and lectures. I wonder why we all force ourselves to endure so much stuff that we don't want to do and will simply forget the moment we walk out of the exam hall. Sure, yeah, I want to pass my degree, establish a financially secure career, etc. But I used to be motivated for other reasons, too. I think. I can't remember. I used to think medicine would be my life. But now I'm feel like when I'm studying I'm hardly living--it's all the other stuff you do outside that's really living. It's a sort of Natural Law that you can't stand doing what you're supposed to do, and what you're not supposed to be doing is almost certainly the most entertaining activity in the world at that present moment. But then I wonder--in the future, are we going to look back on all these years spent slaving away at our desks and feel like they were an absolute waste of time? When I'm nineteen, spending a couple of decades studying to become a doctor doesn't seem like so much when I've got my entire life ahead of me. But when I'm old and I may only have a few years left to live, a couple of decades will seem like the Fountain of Life. What I'm trying to say, really, is very simple and stupid and brilliantly enticing: I wish I could throw everything out the window and live a life of whims. I think there's a bit of all of us that just wants to be ungrateful and selfish. In fact I wish it were possible for everyone to throw everything into the air and just live. Why do we force ourselves to do all these things that make us unhappy, bored, irritated, exhausted, deflated? And why am I being all idealistic and impossible again? And, why do I keep asking why? I know I say this a lot, but oh-oh-oh...I CANNOT WAIT FOR HOLIDAYS! SUMMER. FREEDOM! BLISS...on second thoughts, though, I'm not sure that a life of whims would be the way to happiness/satisfaction/meaning, I suppose (as my rational self kicks in). I suppose it's not the sort of life we're supposed to lead. Who knows what that is.

/end rant/

Mood: Tired
Watching: Season Three of Friends.
Reading: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. This book is great so far. It reminds me in some ways of Jonathan's Stroud's Bartimaeus Trilogy, which is my ultimate favourite-est most awesomest fantasy-comedy-adventure series ever!
Listening: Kelsey by Metro Station. Go cheap catchy dance-y stuff and whiney emo boy voices!

Yesterday, I went swimming! For the first time in, like, almost two years. I was breaststroking most enthusiastically up and down the lane until I popped my knee. From kicking too hard. I can never find enough ways to fail! Anyway, there was a sharp pain on the medial joint aspect which was aggravated by sudden flailing movements (such as those I perform when trying to breaststroke), so I think I may have stretched that medial ligament. Funfun. ALSO, for anyone who doesn't yet know, the women's changerooms at Monash are NUDE BONANZA. Great if you're bad at holding up your towel/like to flaunt your stuff/like to watch other people flaunting their stuff.

Ooh, what else? Oh yes. I think often I judge people too harshly and too quickly. 'Cause I find that most times when I get to know people better my opinion of them rises almost immediately. So, final note: less judging.

Long post, but I blame it on my sleepiness.