This is probably the longest I’ve been in this blog without posting a post like this. It is the first one this year, which means it is supposed to be a year review, to summarize and ponder what passed in the past 12 months. I should point out, though, that it’s already mid-March and I could write an entire new post just with what has happened in the past 60 days.
Of all that happened in 2022, the most significative was, without a doubt, Medical Physics. It has been, at the very least, a bizarre experience going back to IFUSP as a freshman, after 23 years. Over the course of the year I had flashbacks from 1999, as situations arose, and I reflexively compared those moments.
I thought a lot about the person that I was back in those days. I saw reflections of him in younger class mates. I felt like an absolute impostor, a sad person in search of some self esteem by taking first year courses. Basically, the feeling I had before stood with me. It’s not something easy to dismiss; even more so after all I’ve done and been through, imagining that I would be “back to basics” is a lot to process.
And yet, here we are, a year later. Four more to go.
If I didn’t have to feel the pressure of having means to pay my bills, the situation might be a bit different. But one of the hardest things of being back to College at forty is exactly the fact that I have all this baggage from the past 20 years with me. That means family, household, responsibilities. To be clear, this is not a complaint; I’m just stating a fact.
If you’re reading this and you’re in that spectacular phase of life, in early College, still figuring out so much, learning everything, with that crazy, exhasperating feeling that there is SO MUCH happening, being obsessed with random things, enjoy. Take it all in. Savor every moment, register everything, take pictures, videos, write a log, save it all. I tried as much as I could, and I lost quite a bit, but I still have with me a lot of fantastic memories of weird experiences, strange places, nights out, trips, friends, foods, cold, heat, everything. Feel everything you can. All of it is going to help build the person you are going to be in the future, and that’s gonna make all the difference. Make mistaes, because that’s how you learn to deal with problems. Take knowledge of you own limitations and learn to deal with them, with or without help.
I think that last paragraph summarizes it all, really. The overall feeling is that I took advantage of experience to make things better for myself and – at least that was the intention – for others as well.
Looking back, getting into Medical Physics was such an prescient decision that its developments are mounting and unpredictable.
2023 began in a weird way; on one hand, good news that are going to make life complicated, but in a good way, that will lead to many good things. On the other, facing a petty, stupid disease that we’re going to conquer completely.
And that’s it; maybe I should have made a better register of everything that happened in the past year, for this post. But it would end up way too long and detailed. So, let’s leave it at that.
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