Dear Grandpa,
Merry Christmas! I hope you are doing well this holiday season, and staying warm through this chilly winter. I just got back to Illinois a few days ago and have really been enjoying my winter vacation. It is great to be able to relax after a semester of working very hard.
This semester has been quite a busy one, but it has been better than I ever imagined it could be. It has been incredibly stressful at times - to the point where I had weeks where I would just wake up stressed out, feel stressed out the entire day, and go to bed stressed out. However, it has certainly been worth it. I did well in all of my classes and I think that I've finally figured out how to work more efficiently in medical school, so it's been less stressful ever since. I have made some amazing friends already and they make every day at medical school a lot of fun. They're all so smart and have a great sense of humor, so when we get together we have a great time. I can tell that even though we've only spent a few months together, we already care about each other a great deal. It's great to know that I will always have people to count on during this difficult and long journey.
While I have learned a GREAT deal of information in all of my classes (like the entire anatomy of the human body), I have learned even more from the extracurricular programs that I've become involved in. At my medical school, we have two amazing programs that deal with the homeless population of Boston - one is the Outreach Van Project, where we take a van out every Thursday and bring food and clothing to a small group of homeless people in East Boston. The other is the Homeless Health Project, where we go and interview patients that are at the homeless hospital across the street from our school. The amazing thing about Boston University is that we have such a strong connection and concern for extremely underserved people, like the homeless. Not only does our major hospital - Boston Medical Center - take in all patients regardless of whether or not they can pay, but we also have a specialized hospital for homeless patients, with doctors and nurses that have dedicated their entire lives to working with the homeless. Anyway, both of these programs were very selective. There was an application process at the beginning of the year and many students wanted to participate in them, but weren't selected. I was extremely lucky to be selected for BOTH programs, which has been the greatest blessing at medical school. Being in science classes all the time can be really, really dry and you start to lose that sense of why you wanted to become a doctor in the first place. But these two programs have helped me keep that vision alive, because every time I go out in the van or go to the homeless hospital, I talk with these people that don't have anyone else to talk to. They rely on us to care about them, because nobody else will. They are not bad people - most, if not all of them, have had immense hardships that I couldn't even imagine going through. They have been unfortunate. They have not come from good families. But they try to survive nonetheless, and some of them come out of these terrible ordeals with more wisdom than I could ever gain from my own privileged life. And they share that wisdom with me. They try to teach us what they've learned. It's an incredible relationship that we foster with these homeless people, and I am thankful every day that I can be a part of their lives.
So that has been my life for the past semester. I still find time to have fun with my friends. Overall, I'd say that I have an incredibly well-balanced life in medical school and I'm really happy with how everything has turned out. The only thing I'm a little sad about is not having time to read or study philosophy anymore... I miss that more than anything. Hopefully this upcoming semester will be a little less busy, and I will be able to spend some time at Tufts on Thursday nights when they have their Philosophy Club meetings...
Anyway, I hope that you're doing well. I miss you a lot and I think about you quite often. I hope that you've been taking care of yourself, both in body and in mind. That is the most important thing.
I love you, Grandpa!
- A Bao (阿宝）
Merry Christmas! I hope you are doing well this holiday season, and staying warm through this chilly winter. I just got back to Illinois a few days ago and have really been enjoying my winter vacation. It is great to be able to relax after a semester of working very hard.
This semester has been quite a busy one, but it has been better than I ever imagined it could be. It has been incredibly stressful at times - to the point where I had weeks where I would just wake up stressed out, feel stressed out the entire day, and go to bed stressed out. However, it has certainly been worth it. I did well in all of my classes and I think that I've finally figured out how to work more efficiently in medical school, so it's been less stressful ever since. I have made some amazing friends already and they make every day at medical school a lot of fun. They're all so smart and have a great sense of humor, so when we get together we have a great time. I can tell that even though we've only spent a few months together, we already care about each other a great deal. It's great to know that I will always have people to count on during this difficult and long journey.
While I have learned a GREAT deal of information in all of my classes (like the entire anatomy of the human body), I have learned even more from the extracurricular programs that I've become involved in. At my medical school, we have two amazing programs that deal with the homeless population of Boston - one is the Outreach Van Project, where we take a van out every Thursday and bring food and clothing to a small group of homeless people in East Boston. The other is the Homeless Health Project, where we go and interview patients that are at the homeless hospital across the street from our school. The amazing thing about Boston University is that we have such a strong connection and concern for extremely underserved people, like the homeless. Not only does our major hospital - Boston Medical Center - take in all patients regardless of whether or not they can pay, but we also have a specialized hospital for homeless patients, with doctors and nurses that have dedicated their entire lives to working with the homeless. Anyway, both of these programs were very selective. There was an application process at the beginning of the year and many students wanted to participate in them, but weren't selected. I was extremely lucky to be selected for BOTH programs, which has been the greatest blessing at medical school. Being in science classes all the time can be really, really dry and you start to lose that sense of why you wanted to become a doctor in the first place. But these two programs have helped me keep that vision alive, because every time I go out in the van or go to the homeless hospital, I talk with these people that don't have anyone else to talk to. They rely on us to care about them, because nobody else will. They are not bad people - most, if not all of them, have had immense hardships that I couldn't even imagine going through. They have been unfortunate. They have not come from good families. But they try to survive nonetheless, and some of them come out of these terrible ordeals with more wisdom than I could ever gain from my own privileged life. And they share that wisdom with me. They try to teach us what they've learned. It's an incredible relationship that we foster with these homeless people, and I am thankful every day that I can be a part of their lives.
So that has been my life for the past semester. I still find time to have fun with my friends. Overall, I'd say that I have an incredibly well-balanced life in medical school and I'm really happy with how everything has turned out. The only thing I'm a little sad about is not having time to read or study philosophy anymore... I miss that more than anything. Hopefully this upcoming semester will be a little less busy, and I will be able to spend some time at Tufts on Thursday nights when they have their Philosophy Club meetings...
Anyway, I hope that you're doing well. I miss you a lot and I think about you quite often. I hope that you've been taking care of yourself, both in body and in mind. That is the most important thing.
I love you, Grandpa!
- A Bao (阿宝）
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