Impulsive Mistake?

I was supposed to be in Manila today to take the LSAT. But I'm not. I cancelled it several days ago after an extreme twisting and turning of events. I went from wanting to go to law school, which was precisely the reason why I signed up for the LSAT in the first place, to wanting to go to med school and finally, to choosing something which was never an option before. It's just mentally tiring to having to adjust and decide and adjust again to each of the option, especially when you thought that that was gonna be it. Scrolling down this page, you'd come across an entry entitled, "finally. at ease." Or something like that. It was the time when I thought I was settling for med. But then again, things always have a way of screwing things up. So now, I'm down to my last acceptable never-was-an-option-before option. I am compromising. If it means not having to feel guilty my whole life, then fine. Let's meet halfway through. Compromise. Something I'm not really very eager about but nevertheless acceptable. Anyway, I'm getting but a partial refund of what I had to pay. It's unfair but it seems to prove that indecisiveness indeed costs a lot. In numbers, that would be $76 + $16 for the reviewers. Or roughly about 4,600 bucks.

When I was consulting people about my dilemma, the consistently single answer I've gotten from them was, right, think about what I REALLY want. It sounds easy but.... when you want to do so many things and time (and money) are constricting all of these things, putting you on the spot of having to choose, it becomes difficult. Perhaps, people who know what they want to be at the onset are envious. They no longer have to suffer this long and tedious process of having to decide. They already know what they want. They're just waiting for that day when they will formally be a doctor, a nurse, a lawyer, an engineer, an accountant or whatever. Their fates are sealed, have been, and so they're bound to follow that particular path.

But for people like me, it is such a major problem. Questions like 'what do you really want to be?" or "what do you love doing?" requires singling out that which stands out. Thing is, nothing stands out or it seems that no matter how hard you try thinking about that, either you just end up feeling sleepy and not finding an answer or you just flip a coin and make your call. Either of which don't help a single bit. They just aggravate the situation, slowly eating up your time, which you would rather freeze so it doesn't get wasted.

Slowly, I'm realizing it was a mistake that I didn't push through with the plan of having to shift to Bio when I got accepted in the Ateneo. If I did, by now I'd be halfway through my first year of med school and things could be going well. (I am such a bad decision maker. I am always deceived by things I think I want only to realize in the end it's not really what I want.) I used to defy to idea of regret. I thought it was pointless, waste of time, and ridiculous. We are responsible for our actions and every bit of decision we make must be the every bit of thing we want to be and do. But. Mistakes come along our way once or twice or many other times. They could be big or small mistakes. At one point, we would have both. I guess in my case, it was that decision that was the big mistake. While feeling regretful of that is pointless, that it's not gonna bring back the four years I've spent in college yaddah yaddah, it is still human. Sometimes, no matter how principled we seem to think we are, we can't avoid feeling bummed by the wrong decision we make and think about the what ifs. It doesn't help to bring things back, but it does help to put things into perspective. You think, you feel, you learn.

Grey's Anatomy's second episode for the season talks about impulses. There are things we can't control. Many times we wish we were able to control them; sometimes we're thankful we didn't or we just wish not to, at all. I wonder if all of this is pure impulse. A flight of fancy, a whim. Med, Law, and the third option. Sometimes, our impulses make us feel good about the decisions we make. But sometimes, they don't. They make us feel like shit. They play with our minds deceiving us into believing that that something is what we really want. The next thing we know, we fancy something else. Precisely my case. And yes, it is making me feel like shit.

Should I leave it up to a coin to decide for me? No matter how irrational the method seems? I guess amidst all this, the only thing I know is, I want to leave. I want to travel and neither med nor law allows much of that, not anytime soon, or both. Med might require me to stay here for the next 6 years or so of my life. (Going to US for med school would require me to spend a year PRIOR to MS to stduy sciences. Something about matching qualifications shit.) Law, on the other hand, is very contrained. I wish to travel to Europe and some other parts of the world. Given that the US is my only option for it, I don't think I'd even come close to fulfilling the dream of travelling. Therefore, could I be right in choosing neither of the two and just going for what wasnt an option before?

I've said this so many times and I'll say it again. Choosing this path requires me to take a risk. I'm not sure I could get into both programs. (If I don't, I'm damned.) And that's freaky. These are the 2 things that could define my future yet they're very much uncertain for me. The long period of waiting just unnecesarily allows me to be all to confident about making it. Most of the time, my confidence is a bad omen. The more confident I become, the more screwed up things get. The more pessimism I display, the more surprises come my way. Unfortunately, I'm on the confident side at the moment. It couldn't be good. I should start worrying. Paranoia usually is my savior.