Fossilized Behaviors
and invisible through-lines
In this chapter of my medical school application journey I’m simultaneously taking organic chemistry two and summing up my life’s work in various manifestations - resume, CV, narratives, bits and bobbles of woven ideas that summarize or thread together the things that have happened so far. This means so much of what I’m writing is making sense of who I am in this moment, which might be interesting to you(?) but more likely, the process itself might be.
The CV is a collection of trainings and positions and awards which, if you’re a typical applicant, covers as much as a decade of time, most of which is likely to unfold chronologically. This might ring true to the last time you assembled a resume or CV - that you summed up your academics, and the very logical steps you took from that moment through the next moments (perhaps omitting the errant travel or gap in time for managing life events) until now. This is supposed to be a straightforward exercise requiring you to dig deeply into your verb vault and wow the reader with amusing bullet points that each cleverly start in a unique way.
Coordinated
Strategized
Wrangled
Spearheaded
Synthesized
Herded
So many of mine could well relate to farm animals or catastrophic weather events, how ‘bout yours?
My challenge is that rather than having one job for a very long time, or a handful of jobs, I have had multiple simultaneous jobs and roles since the mid 90’s. I’ve learned from all of them, and most have had an influence on my path, with few exceptions. Years ago I wrote to you about the emotional collapse I had on the beach in Santa Monica in March for 2011. Wednesday evening I taught yoga until 8:30 at night, then woke early to fly to Los Angeles with a pair of sandals and a toothbrush in my purse and a breakneck itinerary that involved a fancy reception in the Hollywood Hills and an unscheduled after after party at the host’s restaurant after closing for the night. Fitful sleep between 3-6am, and back for a day in the office and stage managing community theatre into the night.
What would have happened if my flight had been delayed? Who would have called the show? How did I have faith that it would all work out?!
The thing that broke me to tears on the beach was realizing that while I had apparel and supplies, I had unpainted toenails and needed to locate drugstore nail polish to dip them into rather than ocean waves. Hard to be ready for anything at all moments, but being nimble inside of (self-imposed) tight circumstances feels noteworthy when I consider the ways in which I’m prepared for what comes next.
I started chronologically, and then printed out the six pages and cut them into sections, as etiquete dictates that I am entitled to only four: one for each seven years of experience. Can you tell your professional life’s journey in four pages? I dare you to try. I triaged and batched, taped and highlighted and scratched and Frankensteined my CV with my personal statement into a cohesive narrative glued together with the word relevant.
My pages are limited and my narrative character locked (including spaces), but my recommenders have more wiggle room to advocate. I’m grateful to have had some lovely professors in my post-bacc program, including one who responded to my request with enthusiasm, a book recommendation, and a podcast to listen to: This Podcast Will Kill You. A good student, I’ve managed to listen to the two episodes she noted which happen to be about sleep in a mashed up hybrid manner of research and poppy banter. A noteworthy absence on my CV is my appreciation for sleep (but it does exist in the YTT curriculum I wrote for White Lotus five years ago, so maybe I can squish it in…). My sense is that some sleep loss is pathological and problematic, but yoga teachers can indeed help yoga students learn how to relax, practice falling asleep, and encourage appropriate referrals as needed. The podcast agrees, but also talks about animal sleep (or sleep-like behavior) and used this curious phrase that I adore when describing the trouble with studying the sleep of our ancestors: behavior is not fossilized.
Huh.
True, in the sense that paleontologists do not sift and brush debris from fragile remnants of sleep etchings. But as I was simultaneously sculpting my resume, I realized that this strange intersection holds fossilized behavior within it. The story is what we make it with spin. What anthropologists know well, but the rest of you sweet humans seem not to, is that story is what makes us human. Our human-ish ancestors did not plop down as the sun set and settle into a long continuous sleep, they sat by the fire sharing what they had learned, what they had dreamed, what their growing minds could weave. Language (and thumbs, and precarious pelvises) make us human, but could story be the driver rather than the accidental byproduct?
Who knows, but it felt noteworthy to mention.
A day later, while sifting through the physical wreckage of my brother’s life, I found a single drawing from his high school days made as an assignment, as it was graded on the back. It was a future timeline of the life to yet unfold, likely assigned in a leadership class whose main objective was to either support or redirect. It’s a bummer of an assignment because it doesn’t include the odyssean foibles that rear up for all of us, like recessions and unanticipated bodily malfunctions. My face grew hot as I traced the thin, simple line from college through medical school to his tombstone, and stopped.
