Easy is Not-So-Easy.

A month and spare change into my 3rd year in college. Many many inside jokes along the way, but one always sticks out among my buddies and me: "Just take it easy, man; take it easy." Sure, the hilarity resulted from the pure irony of the situation, the people involved, and the usual expression of the people's faces when we re-enact the scene.

But then I thought about it: what does it really mean to "Take it easy?"

Upon retrospect, I don't think I've ever "taken it easy." I mean, sure I've had weekends where I have no work, in a bye-week between my endless streams of exams/papers. However, I've always found myself running around from one activity to the next, and then returning relatively late to the suite for either sleep, or playing catch-up on some problem set that probably should have been done 15 hours prior. Most of the time, if I seem to not have any activities, it's usually because I forgot to sign-up for some dinner event, missed an appointment with some Dean, or we have a bye with for IM sports.

Needless to say, I'm a busy, busy person. I guess that is to be expected to someone who is jumping face-first into chasing a career in the field of medicine. The standards of each pre-medicine candidate only gets higher and higher, and let's just put it at "super-human."

However, in my case, I feel like this non-"taking it easy" principle started even back in high school. If I wasn't doing homework, I was doing some after-school activity such as: performing for some orchestra concert or a celtic music quartet street show, playing soccer or ultimate frisbee, throwing the football around with my buddies from the football team, participating and later managing a Science Olympiad team, the list goes on longer than an 8-year old's Christmas wishlist. The people who I saw that were actually "taking it easy" were what Asian parents called "failures."

But is "taking it easy" really a bad thing? I mean, I know those guys who did take it easy in high school ended up at community colleges or less prestigious universities, but what is the trade-off for the "educational difference?" I realized that the answer was levels of stress and sanity. The stress levels of someone who would need to follow in my footsteps, or repeat everything I did in life, would probably be off the charts. Granted, even if I, personally, reflect on what crazy antics I pulled in high school, I still don't believe that I achieved all of that within the 24 hours everyday, all coasting on an average of 4-5 hours of sleep. It's an insane lifestyle, and it's definitely not "taking it easy."

Why does this pop up now? At the end of my sophomore spring semester, I finally pulled myself out of the hellhole of 19 credits of class, and 2 internship/shadowing programs that made me go off-campus an average of 12-13 hours a week. I told myself that junior year, I'll be "taking it easy" and focusing on getting prepped up for the MCAT that I'm looking at taking in May. A hop, skip, and a jump around China for the summer, and now I'm back on WashU campus, looking at my classes. Credit-wise, I definitely took a well-deserved decrease in the number of classes, but time-wise and effort-wise, I don't think anything has changed. As I did gain back double-digit hours that I would normally have to spend off campus, those are exchanged for a pick-up of more CSA responsibilities, LNYF's Lion Dance choreography, as well as an increased role in IM sports with my good friends in ACF/GF. Alphabet soup aside, I essentially dropped my internship credits, and picked up about 10 credits-worth of what we fondly know as "extracurricular/co-curricular activities." In fact, I just finished planning my next semester's classes, and I'm staying at the above-average 16 credits, despite originally planning of taking less to fit in an MCAT prep course. Looks like that plan is going straight down the Chinese toilet-otherwise-known-as-a-hole-in-a-ground; once it's gone, you wouldn't want it back.

Why does it always end this way? Maybe it's in my nature that I need to be constantly occupied with something to stay on the top of my game. Maybe my time management skills probably hinge on the fact that I actually need to manage my time. Maybe I'm masochistic on my mind. Maybe I'm super-human. I don't know really, just that the only explanation I can find, is that there is no explanation.

Just take it easy, guys. Take it easy.