Right now I feel like my life is a multiple-choice question. Imagine you are taking a course where your grade consists of 4 exams and a final. You have been working diligently all semester, always coming to every class on time, appearing attentive and actually studying more that 1 day before test day. You are consistently doing average on every exam with the exemption of that one test that destroyed you. Your grade now comes down to the final and you have been preparing for days. The type of studying that consists of long hours into the night where the only program on television is the infomercial for oxyclean and you are now on your second pot of coffee. Walking into the exam you are at the point where you can’t think anymore and all you want to do is laugh. Right then you are slapped with one of those multiple/multiple-choice exam with options ranging from a-g. Everyone has had that professor that just loves to throw down a multiple/multiple choice question final where every choice seems right. You narrow down the choices to either B or D, but then get down to option F that says, “Both choices B and D.” Shit. Coming to Spain is my option F.
I am at the midpoint with my internship in the hospital and to be honest, it is pretty boring. This experience is the exact opposite of what I expected. Everyday is the same case study, the same treatment and the same emotion from each doctor. For the most part I feel like this is the case for many doctors in any culture. Slipping into a pattern of muscle memory diagnosis. Every experience, good and bad, is a learning experience. Effective reflection and reflexivity does not allow anything to be taken for granted. Students may think they are well on the way to understanding something, and then realize they have to stand one step back and view the matter from a fresh standpoint and begin all over again with a new set of questions (Gillie Bolton 2005). First entering this experience I was expecting to learn how to become a better doctor from a different cultural standpoint. Instead this experience has prompted me to take a step back and look into a self-conclusion.
It always comes at the time least expect when one is blindsided by an experience that opens their eyes to a new set of questions. This experience can throw you from the pattern that so many people can get stuck in. The redundancy of the same life day after day, month after month and year after year makes it increasingly difficult to take that step to view life from the other side of the looking glass. “The past is beautiful because one never realizes an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past’ (Woolf, quoted in Holly 1989, p. 26). At times I can be so sure of something, only to later look back and ask myself, what where you thinking. The past is not something that defines your character, it is countless learning experiences that shapes and guides you into the person you are today. This internship is not discouraging me from a career in the medical field, but has allowed me to live other aspects of my life.
In the U.S. the cultural norm is to go to college after high school, then go to graduate school or get a job in order to be successful before the age of 30. In the first year of college at the young age of about 20, we are pressured into deciding our major. Essentially this choice is dictating what we will be doing for the next 30 years of our lives. There is no turning back from this decision, unless you want to add on another 2 years of schooling and easily 25,000 more dollars. Once we start on the track of one degree it is hard to veer off and explore other options of interest.
Coming to Spain has helped me to look at life fully. In order to live the American Dream it is necessary to race through life. There is high importance placed on life in the work place were ones self-identity is their job. It seems like last week I was entering my first year in undergraduate school. All I have to represent the past 4 years of my life is a list of science courses completed. Twenty years from now I do not want to look back with only memories of long hours in the hospital. Looking back and living with “what ifs” is not living life fully.
Taking yourself out of your element will force you to look at life from a different standpoint and listen to the different voices within ones self. Reflection is emotionally demanding for those willing to be honest with their selves. Letting ones guard down and living with raw emotion is not a step that everyone is willing to take. Yet without letting you guard down you will always be living with the question of “what if?” I am slowing converting from the American mindset of always planning for the future and am living moment by moment. On multiple/multiple choice question exams several answers seem correct, but there is only one right answer. The difference is in the many multiple/multiple choice questions life throws at us, the right answer is constantly changing.
I still don’t understand why people think it is socially acceptable to fart in closed areas. After a six-hour bus ride to Andalucía, I can now identify my classmates by more than just their faces. There was a phantom crop-duster through out the excursion to Al-Andalus. My favorite occurrence was in the presents of Cristóbal Colón’s remains. The professor’s explanation of the tomb was forcefully interrupted by what sounded like an ancient trumpet. Unfortunately the culprit could not be pin pointed because there was an echo in the cathedral. The crop-duster still hasn’t claimed their farts.
All of the churches, gardens and castles are witnesses of thousands of years of history. An ongoing joke the Spaniards like to tell is, “This Church is older than your country!” In order to fully understand what it feels like to step into a piece of history, you need to experience it in person. A breeze of crisp cold air immediately strikes you when you enter a cathedral. There is an overwhelming amount of stimuli that hits you from the intricacy of the architecture. Every last detail from the floor to the ceiling tells a story of the many cultures. La Mezquita de Córdoba was constructed in the year 785 by the Muslim rule in Spain, but was later concurred by Christians. The architecture consists of Muslim influence represented by large windows, mosaic tiles and vibrant red and beige brickwork. Chapels with high rounded arch’s and ceilings covered in hand carved stone angels symbolize the Christian regime. It is hard to understand how these cathedrals where built in a time with out technology.
Every door way consists of perfectly rounded stone arch’s, chiseled with intricate patterns. There are ceiling in the Cathedral de Sevilla as high as 96 meters! It is amazing that after thousands of years these buildings have survived. Al-Andalus holds a significant amount of history in España and in the founding of the United States. Sevilla and Córdoba are some of the most ancient cities in Europe and Al-Andalus said to be the heart of España.