Let's Listen to the Noise: Day 1 & 2

This campus view...

Long post ahead!

JVC Silent Retreat is on the horizon. Get it? Like the picture above! Haha... hah... ha... On to serious stuff. The Jesuits that have supported us recommended that we take some time to be comfortable with silence in preparation. So what did I do in response? I decided to make as much noise as possible this past weekend.

I'm not uncomfortable with silence. I actually love silence. It allows me to think and find my personal safe haven. Life tends to be noisy and a lot of the noise tends to be disingenuous. Most of the time, I believe people tend to make noise so that they don't have to feel the real weight of the silence. But, this past weekend I found myself in the middle of noise.

It will ALWAYS be Sears Tower

I haven't been in Chicago for 5 months. I have missed the noise, the people, the walking, the food, the public transit, the culture, the friends, the neighborhoods, the university, the suburbs and the lake. Pretty much everything about the Windy City (I missed Chiberia season so hah). Of course I squeezed as much as I can.

Day 1 just involved taking the bus to Chicago. Nothing beats seeing the Chicago skyline at night. I was coming home. I stayed at my friends' apartment in Lakeview. Nikki was my roommate for three years and I've known Andrew since highschool. It was nice to just kick back and talk that first night/day. We talked about where we're headed, what we're doing, and of course Game of Thrones. As par for the course, Nikki and I ended up watching an episode of Futurama before we both left Friday morning. It's funny how easily we fall back into old habits.

The social justice bug has me.

Friday morning, I went back to campus to see some of my old co-workers and my mentors. I have been blessed to meet some amazing professors at Loyola. Dr. Garbarino invited me to be his guest at the Center for the Human Rights of Children's conference on the protection of children from corporal punishment. This was never an issue I had considered before, but after listening to psychologists and neurobiologists discuss the distinctions of discipline vs punishment, the neurochemistry of cortisol levels in children who are spanked, and false notions of the advantages of corporal punishment, I became convinced that corporal punishment should be more openly discussed in our society. I have missed the university setting where you can just hear about issues that you would not regularly encounter.

Afterward, Dr. Garbarino and I had a chance for a quick conversation. I spoke of how much I have changed since JVC and how thankful I was that his class opened me up to global issues of social justice. He spoke of how he was nominated for a university Ignatian teaching award and how as part of his talk about Ignatian values he mentioned a senior in his class that ended up doing JVC because that senior learned about stories of social injustice. Guess who that senior was? Dr. Garbarino spoke of how he got the impression that I am a lot more centered now. I'm not sure if centered would be the word I would use. I have felt de-centered, but I feel more willing to tackle whatever confusion I may have.

Next, I went back to my lab and spoke to Ro and John. I worked with Ro for two and a half years and John was my Biochemistry TA. It's funny. Chemistry has its own language. Being back made me realize one thing: I'm still a chemist at heart. Discussing the progress of the project and giving my ideas about hydrolyzation, auto-fluorescence, and protein chemistry actually felt familiar. I have been out of touch with that side of me that it felt good to use a language I hadn't used in the past year.

After going to lab, I went to visit Dr. Vigen. I credit Dr. Vigen as the first professor to set me on my path as a socially conscious individual. During my second year in college, I went on a medical trip to Honduras. There, I remember a woman who had a leg wound that had gone necrotic. She had two options: 1) to get her leg amputated or 2) to go home and die. She chose to go home because if she chose to have her leg amputated she would have ruined her family. This shocked and traumatized me. For a year, I no longer knew if I wanted to become a doctor. It would have been easy for me to pursue my love of biochemical research. But, I ended up in Dr. Vigen's theology of healthcare. In that class, I began the path of understanding how to accompany people in the path of suffering through the words of Paul Farmer, Anne Fadiman, Arthur Kleinman, and Atul Gawande. A lot of my conversation with Dr. Vigen became about accompaniment, my own growth through JVC, and how I can use my perspective to better my path in healthcare. In the end, all I could say was thank you for what she helped me become.

I finished my time with a two hour conversation with Dr. Olsen and Dr. Dale. (Dr. Olsen is my biochemistry mentor who has helped me develop into the kind of analytical thinker that I am today; Dr. Dale is a lab collaborator that I worked with during my last undergraduate year). A lot of our discussion revolved around what kind of scientist I wanted to become and the change that is happening around Loyola. I became aware of the tension between teaching and research at the university level. The same tension they spoke of is the same tension I am becoming more aware of when I think of myself as a clinician versus a scientist. I still have no answers, but I did come to the realization that I love research. I curse Dr. Olsen's tutelage because that's one more thing that I want to pursue. (Geeknote, Dr. Olsen talked about the new Biochemistry discussion class for majors that revolved around paper discussions, 3D molecular modeling, and homology modeling; I was actually annoyed that my Biochemistry discussion did not involve any of that; Dr. Olsen did his job in turning me into a Biochemistry nerd). But, science is cool so I can't be that mad.

I was unable to meet up with Dr. Vaillancourt or Dr. Parks who developed my notions of aesthetics and ethics respectively, but it was already a full day so I went back to the apartment to take a nap.

Of course, the noise didn't end. I ended up going to drinks with a fellow JV in Chicago. We spent two and a half hours talking about a myriad number of things. We spoke about our respective families (25 cousins vs 16 cousins), our high school days (pop culture nerd vs social justice nerd), our mutual exhaustion over social work, our experiences with JV community life, our respective universities' politics, our hopes for nationwide politics, our mentors in college, our mutual idolization of Paul Farmer, my gripes with idealism, her passion for social justice, my plans for medical school, her plans for grad school/career, my development as a chemist, her experience as a journalist, my excitement about Detroit, her growing love for Chicago, and pretty much anything we could think of. All in all, it was a pretty good conversation about real experiences. That conversation became the seeds of this post. (Sidenote, I found out my hometown has a brewery!)

"A little faith goes a long way."

As the night was ending and she went back to her apartment, I had time to be quiet and reflect. What would a Chicago trip be without a CTA mishap? As par for the course, my connecting bus never came. For any future Chicagoan, get lost as often as possible because that's how you get to know the city! I ended up walking the last two and a half miles from Roscoe Village to Lakeview. I love the CTA! But that walk made me think of my first two days back in Chicago.

What is the noise in our lives? They tend to pull us in different directions. Should I care about global issues or urban issues in my hometown? How do I deal with the suffering and trauma that I see? Do I want to be a clinician or a researcher? Am I on the path of becoming an activist or a scientist? Being pulled in so many directions is beautiful. It made me realize how blessed I am. I have had mentors, friends, and family that have developed who I am to the point where I feel like I have a rich life. The noise has made me an aware advocate, a curious chemist, an imaginative artist, a caring friend, a kind human and a romantic Chicagoan. I love who I'm becoming. The noise nurtures us when we're lucky and aware enough to use the noise to our advantage. Creating silence when we're lucky allows us to become aware to what the noise means. They work hand-in-hand.

The above billboard made me chuckle because of its initial dig on the Cubs. I'm a Cubs fan so of course all I have is faith that someday, one day, all the MLB teams will pity us and let us win a World Series. One can hope right? Upon further reflection, I'm coming to the conclusion that faith will carry us where we have to go. I'm not talking about faith in God (I don't think I'll ever be comfortable with any notion of god or God), but faith in love and in life. If we have faith that love is beautiful, that life will nourish us, we can make a home between the noise and the silence.