Ennui?
15 June 2009I graduated medical school a week ago last Friday, and I feel as if I might be the only medical student blogger who graduated and didn’t put up some special post marking the day. Instead, I’ve spent the last 2 weeks having my son visit and trying to uncover myself from the sea of boxes in which I’ve been living and going to the dentist and getting fingerprinted and working a couple shifts as a medic for extra money.
Yes, I worked my arse off and I should be proud and my Facebook profile (or maybe my JEMS Connect profile, more appropriately) should read “Jason Kodat has just graduated!!!!!!!!” like everyone else’s. But mostly I just feel relieved that it’s all over now. I guess that’s the difference between someone who has never been out of school, whose adult life is just starting with graduation, and me, whose life is restarting (or just continuing, really) with graduation.
OK, I’m done introspecting. I will now return to my regular blogging.
I have pages and pages of posts on this very subject. It’s not just you. I’ll phrase the answer as a question: Why is it that the feeling I get from my biggest accomplishments is just a sense of relief? Where’s my damned confetti?
The Happiness research says that as we get closer to big goals our brains do a good job of predicting the outcome, so there’s no big rush of happy-chemicals, just a sense of relief when the expected outcome actually happens. The surprise comes with the rush of chemicals, and in this way finding a $10 bill on the street subjective feels better than, say, launching your own company successfully and taking off to cancun. It’s not just you.