STRIVE TO BE BETTER!

Have you ever felt let down or actually let down a close friend? Am talking about the kind of friend you'd "take a bullet or catch a grenade for". Made or received an empty blank promise void of any sign of actualization. Fucked up in such a proportional way that you couldn't bear to look back at yourself in the mirror. Mistakes may be of varying extremities, from innocently forgetting your best friend's birthday to biblical abominations like "slicing" your best friend ( masticks). Someone i consider wise once told me that friends and family are a reflection of both what we are and what we have in this world. Friends psych us up (chocha), console us, persevere our tantrums, distract us from the harsh/scorching reality that we don't want to face and of course support our uncannily stupid ideas at their own risk. Thus we should never take them for granted.
Its easy to forget the little things that make life worth living, the same little things that wouldn't be possible without friends or family, the warm sense of safety they ooze, the selfless way in which they extend an olive branch in our hour of need, the simple self assuring way in which they tell us "everything is going to be okay" especially when everything seems bleak. Again i repeat, we should never take friends and family for granted.
When was the last time you told them (you know  who :-)  ) that you love them, appreciate them, value them, treasure them or even did something special for/to them to make them believe that indeed you are grateful for their presence in your life. Surprisingly, the grievous purely unintentional mistake that most of us (you and me) usually make is to assume that the other party somehow subconsciously knows how we feel about them. We think being sentimental is overrated or its a sign of weakness hence we are left to silently hope that they will figure out on their own, luckily some eventually do, what of the others who don't?. Love is like a puzzle to us, hidden under layer after layer of  silent, subtle actions.
Take time to show love when need arises, apologize when you are on the wrong and most importantly try your best to be the best you possibly can. Truthfully this particular article was inspired by a close friend of mine (iza mel.B*). Cheers to putting pride aside and trying to be better friends!!

THE STRUGGLE!!!

As an average medical student (referring to the kind of grades i get,of course!), i came or was it more like landed on a harsh reality last semester that ad love to share with the other "struggling" medics out there. The ingenious "eureka moment" is/was that being average just doesn't cut any more. This doesn't by any chance imply that i am dumb or slow ( if u get my drift :-) ), only that i don't put in as much effort or hard work as i should, when you put that statement in context it does have a shockingly similar familiarity to those  like me out there who have an unmistakable "lazy" glow about them.Don't get me wrong, am not implying that i or that most of us don't have that unquenchable thirst for medical knowledge. U should see us, squeezed or hurdled up together into tinny cliques, trying damning hard to explain the unexplainable, debate the unsubstantiated or even more frequently try to move heaven and earth in order to support our vaguely incomprehensible theories, (discussions get heated up, tension almost tangible, suddenly you realize that books like Robbins or Grey's anatomy were made sorely to confuse you) does that image in any stretch of your imagination give u an idea of how passionately engulfed and involved we are in our carrier of calling
The challenge actually comes into the picture when a good number of us try to balance our social, academic and personal life, shit actually gets crazy. Some of us especially the ladies are paranoid about "love", subconsciously they want to experience it before time "runs out", then of course you have to factor in those ladies that have already been "scared" by love and want absolutely nothing to do with it  (casual relationships work best for them). Don't get me started about the "gentlemen", u know how competitive guys can get especially when it comes to who has dated the most number of ladies, the hottest ladies ( socialites) or the most sought after " catches", just because u are a student of medicine it doesn't necessarily mean that you shouldn't chase after these highs and lows of life..we are told time after time.
Oh! Getting back to the realization i made earlier last semester (somehow i think i got off topic), balance is possible but unquestionably hard. Life is all about taking risks, truth be told its my professional opinion that life without risk is not worth living at all!. Be bold enough to attend that talked about party and pull an all nighter if you have to, be bold enough to find that "time" to flirt with that lady you have been eyeing for a while, take those briskly moonlight walks with her, take her out on dates and whisper sweet things to her. (for ladies the vice versa is applicable). And at the end of the day remember being "average" just does't cut anymore...try and be a little more above average. Put in that little extra effort, attend a little more lectures, make time for a few more group discussions and pay just a little more attention in class and maybe, just maybe your life in medical school will be a little more bearable. Cheers to being an above average student!!