May to May – a year in the pursuit of happiness

Sometimes people ask me what my goals are in life, to which I answer, “To be happy.” I know it’s a cheap answer because it lets me avoid saying anything concrete and specific. The real truth is that I don’t know exactly what I want in life. I know I want to be happy, and I do have some ideas about what can get me there.

That being said, getting into medical school (May 15 2009) was possibly one of the happiest days of my life. I still remember the morning, almost one year ago, where heart pounding, I clicked on an email with a subject title of “University of Toronto – Co…”

May 7 2010

One year later, last Friday night, I was studying with one of my best buddies from class and we often study together on campus. Since the undergrad students were off school, no campus libraries were open past 6 pm on Fridays.

Unphased, we decide to set up shop at the Medical Sciences Building cafeteria for the night. To say the least, it turned out to be a funny but sad situation. Here were two burned out students, with huge coffees and highlighters sprawled over the table, studying a thick pile of neurology notes. To top it off, there was no one else there, save for occasional loud partygoers who walked through the building (and gave us stares) and the janitor who noisily cleaned around our feet. The thunderstorm flashed at us every so often, and, of course, we both had headaches. I chuckled every time that he sighed and said “This is so sad.”

The question now is – how did I get from extreme happiness one year ago to this?

Winning the lottery

This is how I rationalized it to myself – I used a study that compared the happiness of people before and after they won a medium-sized lottery. The study had found that the people’s level of happiness increased significantly for the year after the win, but after that, their happiness reverted to approximately the baseline level that it was before. It wasn’t that they had finished spending their money, but it was just that the money became a part of their life, they took it for granted, and it wasn’t a source of happiness anymore.

After May 15 last year, it was almost as if I had won the lottery. I would have given up anything to get into medical school, and when I got in, I was so happy. I spent the rest of the summer busily filling out admission forms and wearing rose-coloured lens. And, like the people who won the lottery, I thought that maybe I was starting to feel the end of the ‘year of happiness’, and reverting back to my baseline. (It’s not like I was unhappy about medical school. I was just starting to get used to the whole thing, and like the lottery winners, it had became part of life.)

May 13 2010

You may know the significance of this date – it’s the day when all Ontario medical schools email out their offers of admission. I know this date because I have a few friends in the admission process, and I was waiting for their news. This morning, one of those friends texted to me: “guess who you’re going to see a lot of next year!!!!” (I’ve faithfully reproduced the number of exclamation marks.)

At that moment, vivid memories of my own application process rushed back – me screaming “I GOT IN!” at 7am in the morning, clicking on the admission offer email with a pounding heart, attending interviews and sweating during them, writing the MCAT, my first day of undergrad… And then, I suddenly realized how extremely happy that I’m in medical school. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do and I’m actually where I want to be. I’m definitely above the happiness baseline again, and this time, I plan on keeping it this way.

Just before I get back to studying for my finals, let me say this: for all those who got good news today, enjoy the ride, it’ll prove to be a lifelong one. For those who are still waiting to get there, it’s worth the wait, I promise!