Have you ever sat in your room, trying with all your might to study … but, instead, you find yourself on facebook, g-chatting with a friend, or reading up on your favorite celebrity?  In these times, have you watched hours slip out of your hands, with nothing checked off your “to do” list … but not having any “real fun” either? 

The good news is, like most bad habits, procrastination can be overcome.  And I have a few suggestions for how to get rid of this nuisance once and for all:

 Today, I began my surgery rotation.  At 7:30am, three Humanities and Medicine students and I met the attending physician in the hospital lobby. I’ve never been squeamish around blood or the other gory aspects of the body, so when Dr. Steinhagen sat down with the four students doing surgery rotations this week and provided us with advice about what to do if we became nauseous, or started to black out (and even when he warned that this is more frequent than one might guess), I never anticipated these words of wisdom might apply to me.

 This two week period is overflowing with packing, moving, studying for finals in the gorgeous California sun, preparing to graduate, savoring my last few weeks as an undergraduate, saying goodbye to friends, and getting ready to leave my hometown of 9 years.

There are so many transitions that are about to take place – in just over a week, I will be a UCLA alumnus, not a student.  I no longer live in Los Angeles, but rather study medicine in the middle of Manhattan. I will exit the phase of my life where people ask, “what is your major?” and enter a chapter in which they will want to know, “what do I do?”

Sometimes, you learn exceptionally valuable things in class that have little to do with academics. I remember during winter quarter this year, my biology professor asked students in his lecture if they exercised every day. When only a small fraction raised their hands, he was shocked and exclaimed, “Do you think you don’t have time to exercise? You’re WRONG! You don’t have time NOT to exercise.” 

This is my first time writing a blog and I am excited to embark on this new endeavor!

My name is Jamie Lauren Zimmerman, and I am a current senior at UC Los Angeles studying Anthropology and pre-medicine… at least for the next three weeks.  After graduating on June 14th, I will move to New York, where I will begin a summer program at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.  I still am deciding whether I will begin medical school in the fall… a choice complicated by my many different passions and interests.