What is "Normal" Anyways?

When did it become so damn difficult to get out of bed in the morning? For the past 3 weeks I have had a daily conflict with myself about whether or not I really need to get out of bed, get dressed, get out of my apartment and to school. My friends and I joke that we are all showing at least 2 signs of clinical depression...any time someone comments, "man I can't getting out of bed before 9 a.m. lately"...it's follow up by, "are you feeling sadness? change in mood? have you been eating? how many hours do you sleep? have you been avoiding routine activities?"

We laugh..but frightening as it is, we all display many of those symptoms. Is it depression? Or is it just medical school? Is it normal to feel this way after we work our brains to mush and our bodies past fatigue day after day, week after week, 7 days a week? What is "normal" anyways?

I often wonder how my life will be when I move back to the U.S. Here we are all so isolated. In undergrad I simply had to turn my head towards the university tower to know what time it was and now, if I'm not wearing a watch, the only signal of afternoon or evening is the subtle changes in the Caribbean sky. The sky here looks different every single day, and often the patterns of constellations are noticeably different every night. We have a single rainbow at least once a week and a double rainbow every day during rainy season (we are in wet season right now I think...because it's just as humid but not as rainy).

(Wow what a wonderful explaination about pharmacokinetics! This is super helpful for all consumers of this product! I wish this was on my next test! *sarcasm*)

In the U.S. there are other types of people around, like real humans who have jobs and lives and know more than just studying and reading and memorizing facts. They have routines and schedules that last from 9 am-5 pm. This environment could help me regain my sense of time and space. Maybe.

Here I have to take a few seconds to remember what day it is and often panic about having forgotten to pay rent because I forget what month it is. In reality who cares? We live based on our next exam or the final. Time is only relevant in terms of when we need to be where for our next mandatory whatever. Otherwise our noses are in our books from morning til...whenever we physically can no longer process the words on the screen and/or page. Then we drag our sorry butts to the shuttle (because walking home after 8 pm these days is too risky---string of break-ins/robberies/rapes due to Carnival) We wake up the next morning and our expected to repeat. But now? I just don't care any more. My apartment is like my sanctum...and it's poisonous. If I stay here I will never leave. I have food in my fridge and no access to study notes or books. Where as "out there" I have to face reality again/another day of hard-ass work. Who wants to face that?

Inevitable, due to the profuse amount of guilt that was instilled at me at a young age by my Indian parents, I drag myself out of bed (hopefully before noon), eat something, and head out into reality.

Once I complete the sweaty, humid, uncomfortable journey to campus, set my things up, I'm in gear. I then proceed to bang out everything that needs to be done. But by midnight, the same question appears in my brain cynically, "do I really need to come back here again tomorrow?"

Is it "burn out" or depression? Or is it just medical school? Yea, probably just medical school.