wine and cheese.

Tonight was one of those rites of passage nights. One of those nights where your future flashes before your eyes. One of those nights when you start to get a whiff of what you've signed up for.

Tonight I had to attend a dinner function honoring the founder of an extra-curricular psychiatry program of which I am now a participant. The majority of the first year participants were in attendance, so that was good. What was not good was the challenge at hand: navigate a room full of mostly older white men sipping on their bottles of beer/glasses of wine. Before jumping to, "what's the big deal?" ask yourself when you were last outnumbered so wholly in terms of gender, age, race, and culture? I was not socialized in the stand around sipping on your alcoholic beverage of choice culture. I am not a particularly big fan of trivial small talk, either. I am even less of a fan of disingenuous conversation with people who would normally not give me the time of day were I to cross them in any other social setting. So I struggle to justify why we must force ourselves together in this artificial one.

I know that this is just the beginning and that I will necessary have to make more of an effort, lest I be pegged the self-isolationist who cannot cope with her double (sometimes triple) "minority" status. I am human and I am allowing myself this moment of feeling and reflection. And at this particular moment, I just wish that the path towards genuine human interaction at these functions was a little less cumbersome.

Oh, professional school.