Still ...

It is officially one week that I am living here, and it has been amazing so far, thanks to great people I have met. I have made my very first friends here in the campus, and day by day, I have found it more and more exciting to just be where there is a lot to explore. It just hit me tonight that I have really taken this step, have actually started the journey and have already started to live a life here. As much as I had anticipated the experience, I have to say it is nothing like I had imagined. I keep comparing things to what I used to experience back in Oxford, but this is just a totally different path, with totally different moments and feelings. Thanks to the great timing of the events, I couldn't be luckier to have a great friend around for the very first week of my life here, and I have no words to say how priceless all this help and advice have been to me so far. I also got involved in the orientation events, through which I got to know amazing people who I am sure will be great friends of mine in future. Also, I met new Persian people, thanks to my dear visiting friend again, and I am most grateful for that. Even right now, back from dinner with lovely Touska , Alen and Cameron, I am thinking to myself how smoothly this new chapter started. I am positive it can be a great one, full of wonderful moments, challenges, joy, hard work and friendships. It also feels a bit strange to be among engineers and high tech specialists, and speaking to new people from different backgrounds, I cannot help but wonder whether I really needed a break from the medical world. Good news is No one is going to talk to me about the USMLEs, and actually it does make sense to these people when I talk about my interest in humanities:)

As much as I don't want to jump into conclusions, I am finding MIT an amazing place which could provide me with great opportunites for growth and self evaluation. I have been through one Kooch so far, and I cannot be more grateful for that. May this new journey be a better one, with more to learn and more to explore.. It feels weird when you know you will be staying somewhere for a good four or five years, but it also brings with it loads of responsibilities. This is my new chance to re-define a lot of things, including my own identity, my values and my dreams. As far as dreams are concerned, I am happy to have big ones, even if some of them never come true. It is through just having dreams that life happens to have a meaning. This is why at this very point of my journey, I am holding on to those dreams which dragged me all the way to this beautiful place with huge amount of life floating in the air...

I have no idea what life has to offer me in say five years time. I might end up in an academic career, or else I might keep my hands dirty in medicine in a way. Be it one way or the other, I am glad to be here, and something is telling me that this is probably the best place to make a bridge between medicine/sciense and humanities, to make sense of my dreams, to give dimentions to real life, and to live a life as if there will be no tomorrow.. Yes, it has been a week now, and it just hit me tonight that I have started the journey...