Highs and Lows

There is a kid in my class at school who is famous for his greeting: "Hey, man! Alright, highs and lows!"

It's great because instead of the absent minded, "Hey, how's it going?"  -- where you don't really expect an honest answer before you move on with your life, the greeting I'm guilty of --  this greeting makes you think, and you get to hear what the other person is dealing with, the good and the bad.

So, here are the week's highs and lows.

Highs:

• I was volunteering at a local school science fair and got to hold a tarantula AND a spotted gecko! They reminded me of home and made me happy.
• I made some serious progress inderstanding some concepts that kept tripping me up in neuroanatomy. The irony of how difucult it is to cram facts about the human brain into my brain is not lost on me. 
• I bought a new nutribullet and have been drinking smoothies for days. I've even become one of those weirdos who adds kale. It looks disgustng, but tastes delcious!
• The Lone Bellow came out with a new album and it's awesome! I'm seeing them live in February and can't wait. 

Lows:

• It's still winter - brutally cold and icy. I am not a fan. 
• I had to pay for health insurance like a real adult. Does the government not get that the whole point of staying in school was to prolong the realities of being an adult? 
• We're less than two weeks out from our first big exam of the semester. Hello, sleepless nights. 

I'm thankful to be ending the week with my "highs" outnumbering my "lows." Hope you can say the same!

Evidence of Things Unseen

I've been back in the land of snow for all of five days. Yesterday, I was diagnosed, by a fellow classmate, with a bad case of acute homesickness, precipitated by seemingly endless snowfall. The first few days after visiting home are always tough. Mostly, because all of my recent memories and thoughts are about people and places I'm currently a country away from.

In the days leading up to winter break, we had a series of neurology lectures. At one point, our professor mentioned that memories are stored throughout the entire cortex of the brain. Meaning that while there is a single structure responsible for making new memories (the hippocampus), no such structure exists for memory storage. Rather, our memories are stored over the entire surface of our brains. So everything we are, everything we think, and believe and feel and dream, is literally surrounded by our memories. So. Cool.

So while the immediate post-departure sadness of leaving home is frustrating, there is something beautiful in knowing that even though I'm miles away from home, living on the wrong coast, buried in a foot and a half of snow, the primary organ that makes up "me" is blanketed with memories of the people and places I love.

While you read this, I hope that you're close to your loved ones (and places!). But, on this chilly winter night, if you find yourself far away from everything that makes you "you," take comfort in knowing that, in a way, everything you do and everything you are is wrapped up in moments passed. And, should you ever feel the need to take a trip down memory lane, your memories are quite actually on the surface of your mind, just waiting to be remembered.