only four more exams next week (only? what the heck am i thinking) and i'll have finished my first year in dentistry. my first year of professional school, of professionalization, part way there towards managing patients of my own...

i never look forward to the end of the year, and at the same time, i'm grateful for the end of the year. i hate goodbyes, however temporary, and even little talk of a year-end bbq or a final movie (the matrix!) before everyone takes off to move or takes off to singapore or vancouver or SARS-land or cancun makes me want to hide or leave at the earliest possible moment, to avoid sentimental moments of goodbye, not because i hate sentimental moments - i love sentimental - but sentimentality implies that something you once had is over, or gone, or past, that change has indeed happened, and i hate that feeling. i'm imagining it it now - maybe feeling it - but it's really, i know, in my imagination. i wish we could all just leave at the same time, without saying goodbye, and when september rolled around, we'd all be back in place, as if nothing had lapsed between the two moments. i felt as though there were always two choices one had in such instances. one to be sentimental, and the other, to become unattached at just the right moment - it's just pride and reservation and conservatism and fear, i think, that prevents you from wanting to be emotionally affected. but it's so much easier too - no what if's, no had i's, no could that have been's. i think what has really struck me this year - and materialized in words when my friend sent me a card last month - is the brevity of life. you blink, and a whole year has passed. you close your eyes for a few seconds, and things you thought you had mounds of time for - are lost by now because you should have started years ago.

it's always irreconcilable that at the same time you are still in school, your friends are already in 9-to-5 jobs with health plans, your parents go about their daily routine, everyone goes about their daily routine, and you wonder about the purpose of your life, and sometimes you have to remind yourself that although you are working toward a definable goal and you think ah! that's when life will start! real life, the purpose of your life, does not begin with the attainment of a license to do dental surgery, but is reflected all the time, right now, as you work through your experiences. i'm not sure about all of your worth, but some of the value of your existence lies in what you can do for others, how you can give. your beliefs and your will to uphold principles. little things - the way you makes others feel, the character with which you deal with situations that even seem mundane or trite - count, of course. we need to, i think, treasure, feel, savour, and experience - however bad or wonderful - every second of our waking existence.

sleep time. speaking of which, i had a dental dream that someone anesthetized my chin and lower lip and i was trying to talk in the library but my lips were numb and i kept slobbering. hmmm. sign of things to come, i guess, when our class gets to anaesthetize each other. three more days of studying all day...