Baltimore, I’m not done yet!

If you were to ask me where I imagined myself a year ago now, I probably wouldn’t have said Baltimore.

During my senior year at Hopkins, I treated every passing moment with preemptive nostalgia, accepting the certainty that I was bidding farewell to every event and activity that I had participated in throughout college.

I assumed I’d go back home to New York for a gap year before applying to medical school, and because of this, I didn’t even realize that I was closing myself off from other opportunities.

While I hadn’t planned to do so during my undergrad, I’m now beyond thrilled to be pursuing a Master’s at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and I’m loving my current program and classes. It’s a testament to expect the unexpected and to make room for new and exciting opportunities, even if they aren’t what I had initially planned.

I’ve done a lot of reflection in the last several months, and I’ve realized that life is not a set of events that we can mold and shape into perfection. We can’t use a cookie cutter to construct the path our lives will take. Instead, events happen, and we are left to deal with the consequences. We can’t control everything that happens, but we can decide how we react to what happens and how we proceed. And further, when opportunities come our way, we need to grasp them while we can. 

For instance, when I first got my MCAT score back earlier this year, I was disappointed with the results and anxious about retaking it. I felt like a failure for not performing the way that I had wanted to, which set off a chain reaction of questions in my head. I had to cope with the idea of taking an additional gap year and feeling lost in a sea of doubt. 

My thought process reminded me of how I get so caught up in thinking about academic success and performance that I forget to consider my personal successes in the long run. To me, what is most important is the connections and experiences that I form with the people around me. Whether that be with my family, my friends, my colleagues or my professors, I would not be where I am today without the support of them all.

I get so stuck in the everyday stress of academia and pushing myself to always do the most, yet at the same time; I always feel like I am not doing enough. Alas, I know that I’m not the only Hopkins student who feels this way.

When I look back at everything that I have accomplished, I realize that progress takes time and that there is beauty in being patient and in enjoying the process. There’s no rush. I have to appreciate that my life is a detailed fabric that I’ve intricately woven with my lived experiences, and that this does not all happen instantaneously.

I’m grateful to have established networks of family and friends, whether it be in New York, Rio de Janeiro, Tel Aviv, Baltimore, Seville — these are all cities that I have called home at some point in time. Even if these places were just “home” temporarily, I’m beyond grateful that the bonds I’ve formed there are permanent, and that I continue to have opportunities to connect myself with loved ones throughout different corners of this world. 

I’m slowly but surely learning that academic success does not define my worth or my future. To put things into perspective, most of my family and friends abroad don’t even know what the MCAT is or what the medical school application process is like in the US, which just goes to show how little I should let standardized testing affect me.

While I spent parts of my senior year anxious about what would come next, I’m so glad to be exactly where I am now. I feel so grateful to be able to study public health and mental health at such a renowned institution like Hopkins and to use my neuroscience background from undergrad to study important health topics, like aging and neurodegenerative disorders. I’m thankful to be able to work alongside peers and faculty in areas of research that I find so important and fascinating, and I’m excited to see where this next year in Baltimore takes me.

All in all, I’ve learned to do what makes me happy. I realize the importance of doing both what makes you feel good and what feels right, as well as surrounding myself with people I love and saying yes to the opportunities that matter most to me. With all of this in mind, I say: Baltimore, I’m not done yet!

Gabriel Lesser is a graduate student from Westchester, NY in the Department of Mental Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. His column explores his memories, along with his current reflections and the lessons that he has learned.