Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Thought of the day…

The interesting aspect of attending a college is that you are allowed to reinvent yourself. People know nothing about you when you arrive as a freshman, and everyone is eager to make friends. What you did not like about yourself in high school you can change without anyone from college knowing; you have this clean slate.

I brought my yearbooks back from high school and middle school along with some pictures from prom, graduation etc. to show a few of my friends. They laughed hysterically at the pictures—at my expense of course. I had selective amnesia of most of high school until I began recently looking at all of the pictures, which threw my past back in my face.

I often wonder if I could relive my school days over again with the knowledge I have now, would I? My answer is probably no, but I often contemplate how my life would change if the choices and decisions I made were different. If my family was less supportive of me would I have gone to college? If I was better friends with the people from high school would I go to the same college as them? If I didn’t go into college with a girlfriend, would I have made one at college freshman year?  If I went to a different high school would I still have wanted to go to medical school? If I didn’t choose Hartwick College, would I still want to go to medical school?

It is also interesting to think about if I didn’t attend Hartwick College what kind of people would be my friends, and how that would affect the type of person I am now. If I went to another college—what type of people would I talk to? Would I have mixed with the wrong crowd of people? Would the type of friends I had made influence my GPA? I mean, if you think about it, you have probably made very close friends at Hartwick (for those who attend). You would just as easily have made friends at another college. And, when I go to medical school, I’ll start all over again (again).

“What if?” questions are numerous and you can’t change the past but it doesn’t stop us from wondering.

Think about this quote from behaviorist John B. Watson. “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.” (1930)