Becoming a better person. Connecting the pieces of my past. Mindfulness. You and I both knew prolonged periods of indulging in wanderlust and fending for oneself is enough to instill these cliché transformations upon anyone, but this is my written version.  And just wait, because this was only four months.

 

 

6. I am better at recognizing differences in the habits and faces of people

And it makes me happy. Although I am thankful that the United States is a place teeming with diversity, the life of a student is not optimal for appreciating other cultures. The head coach of my high school’s football team also taught Human Geography, and one day he shared with the class that he loved predicting the ancestries of his students because he thoroughly enjoyed noting the facial features unique to different ethnicities. The more I thought about his statement, the cooler I thought his hobby was. Hitchhiking and hostel-hopping allowed me to pick anyone’s brain about his or her country. I learned more about Europe while traveling the South American continent than I did over the course of eight trips to Europe itself.

 

5. I am more introverted

Before I left I wrote that I wasn’t trying to find myself, because I already knew me pretty well. This is still true. Travel allowed me to practice being my best self. The absolute financial and social independence created a peaceful little bubble of my own thoughts to escape to. I always labelled myself as an extravert when asked, but now, not so much. The concept that I am the one person who will always be there to make me happy was constantly reinforced over the summer. Contentment in my invisible bubble continued to recharge me after I got back to my university’s social scene.

 

 

4. I am soooo totallyyyy Chinese

There hadn’t been a day in the last 20 years when I wasn’t aware, and proud, of this fact. Before this summer I had been to China eight times. I am fluent in mandarin and was told by my Chinese friends that I was the coolest ABC, or American Born Chinese, they had ever met (as it turns out, China’s youth holds a mild stigma against ABCs). But the difference was that now I constantly craved to be back in Asia and I identified increasingly with both the good and the bad of Asian culture. Asia consumed my daydreams.

Surrounded by endless steakhouse delicacies in Rio de Janeiro and the world class street food throughout Bolivia and Peru, I confirmed that at least for my taste buds, Asian food  was so much more superior than any other cuisine in the world. South America was delicious, but most city folk seemed to swear by watery coffee and stale rolls for breakfast, and don’t get me started on manjar. My body wants the heavy use of vegetables, the spices and curries, sticky rice, the ingenuity of slurpy noodles served in a broth… one of the biggest forces driving me in that direction this upcoming summer.

 

3. That extra dose of mindfulness took months to become full in effect

Every last traveler out there can talk about a hippie, newfound gratuity for “the little things.” But what does this mean? It’s something you feel with your heart. The good in every shitty situation became blatantly easy to spot. Life was always beautiful. Now it was more beautiful. I didn’t quite realize how much more thankful I had become for the small gestures of those around me and for my loved ones until halfway through fall semester. Then suddenly I was “thank you”-ing and offering to do the dishes and looking up at the perfect Floridian skies like I had lost my mind. But really I had found it.

 

 

2. I am less ambitious with my days

But more ambitious with my life. Along with more mindfulness came more free time. That didn’t mean acknowledging the benefits of me time. It meant literally making more time to be less productive.

Sophomore fall, I juggled employment as an Emergency Medical Scribe in one hospital, 9 hours of organic chemistry and biology labs as well as volunteering 10 hours in a research lab and 3 hours in the other hospital in town every week, backpacking Guatemala and Panama on longer weekends, camping throughout the Southeastern United States, blogging, volleyball, yoga, cooking all my meals and following a Paleo diet, and training for a half marathon. Fast forward one year and my daily goals were concise. I found new music and slept more. With the help of my tablet breaking the first week of my trip, I no longer stressed that I’m not updating my blog “on time,” whatever that meant.

I traveled at a slower pace. Going back to the same countries didn’t phase me because I knew there was always something new to gain.

I could get more out of each moment but I also demanded more out of my life. My one life. I wanted to be selfish before I devoted a career to being selfless. Active travel didn’t satisfy my biological need to wander aimlessly. It made me lust even more for the unknown.

I came to terms with the difficult solution during fall finals week: postponing medical school with five-ish gap years. And before I die, I want to go to every country—safe or sketch, black or white. I want to work in a chocolate shop and on a coffee plantation and be a chef, I want to help refugees, and endangered species of the reefs and Safaris. I want to dog-sit huskies in Scandinavia. I want to house-sit cottages in Europe and greet guests at resorts in Sri Lanka. I want to work in a surf shop and a kite-surf shop and a yoga studio and eat a lot of fruit.

 

 

1.  My life has no rules

Because I choose for it to be that way. If I ran my life the way society told me to, I would feel like I have nothing to look forward to.

I noticed more and more the closed mindset trapping everyone around me. It’s a vortex of materialism and FOMO and brands. It’s a meaningless and unfulfilling cycle of stressing and studying to work way too hard to make money to pay way too much for rent, clothes, and alcohol.

My trip was exercising the wild idea of doing what I want. I don’t mean dumb things like majoring in what I want. I’m referring to the liberation of knowing I can do whatever I want until I’m dead.

I’m talking about the most empowering knowledge any twenty-something-year-old could ask for.

Summer internships with the highest salaries or enrolling in certain fancy classes “they are looking for” pale in comparison to my greatest fantasy to walk the earth. Like, as a bum. Who is “they?” Who is to say I can’t do all of those odd jobs I just listed above?

I will brute force and deprive sleep. I will shake up my life, set my comfort zone on fire, and go balls to the walls. Nothing is about success or failure and everything is about staying true to myself. Four months was just a taste of what’s out there. No rules means I will be a bum for an undecided number of years and if I still want to be a doctor, I will take the MCAT when I’m 27. Wrinkles and all.

Now I can be brutally honest when I ask myself the hardest questions regarding my future. And merciless when I carry out my intentions.

Hint: it won’t involve following a formula.