Necessary Shortcuts

Times have been desperate lately so I have done a couple things I never thought I would: hire a cleaning lady and order from Fresh Direct.  Something I have never been able to shake is my annoyance at people who pay someone to do work they should do themselves.  I was brought up by parents who never hired people to complete their household chores.  Cleaning, laundry, gardening, mowing etc. were not to be pawned off on paid help.  As a child, I have somewhat fond memories of helping my parents with dusting, washing dishes, and vacuuming.  As an adult, I have maintained the ideal that one should, at the very least, be able to keep a clean house.  Doing my own laundry, cleaning my own bathroom, cooking my own food are basic adult tasks that, in my mind, there is absolutely no excuse to not to do myself.  Now perhaps one might think, well surely one of your parents didn't?  No, both my parents worked more than full time jobs, and my mother was constantly traveling for work, leaving my father with 3 kids and a full time job to manage while she was in DC, China, South Africa, Alaska etc.  My grand parents worked full time, raised children, and also raised/butchered their own meat, milked cows, and grew their own vegetables.  My parents and grandparents, somehow, managed just fine without hired help, therefore, I should too, right?

WRONG!  Unfortunately, my graduate school schedule combined with MCAT prep, my boyfriend's insane work schedule, and my springtime flu has left us reduced to a pair of invalids.  Our apartment had gotten to the point where it was unsanitary, our fridge was bare, and my stock pile of emergency food had dwindled.  I could literally see the dust and cat hair floating around and, had I not already been taking large quantities of cold medicine, would have needed some kind of antihistamine intervention in order to exist comfortably in our apartment.  Mike hasn't been home to eat, and I have resorted to eating 2 meals a day ordered from seamless web which means I've been eating nothing but Thai noodles and oatmeal for the past two weeks.  The laundry pile is simply unmentionable.  Luckily, I have a large collection of underwear.  Things could have gone to a whole new level of bad.

The solution?  First, hire a cleaning lady.  Never will I completely rid myself of cleaning lady guilt.  I firmly believe that if you are physically capable of cleaning your own house then you should, and that children should learn how to clean up their own damn mess.  Life is not about avoiding all of the icky parts.  Everyone should get down on their hands and knees and put in a little elbow grease.  However, I decided that my MCAT score is more important than my ideals so out the window they went.  I will pick them up later when the thought of scrubbing my toilet doesn't make me want to cry.  I think the lesson here for any student or busy person is each decision should be viewed as such: if I do (don't do) x and I do poorly on my exam (presentation, report, etc), will I look back and regret my decision?  If the answer is yes, find a way around it.  I don't have a day to lose to cleaning, so the cleaning lady came.  Parents, grandparents, you are made of tougher stuff than me.

Next issue, food.  Somehow, my twisted logic allows me to order prepared food, but not groceries.  This is less am ingrained ideals thing, and more a budgetary thing.  I have never ordered from Fresh Direct because it is more expensive than me dragging my butt to Trader Joe's and maybe ordering out one night a week.  The flaw, of course, is that Fresh Direct IS cheaper than me ordering two meals a day every day.  Next lesson, the next best thing is ok.  Make compromises, you will still save time and money in the long run.  

The point of this whole entry (which I shouldn't even be doing) is that sometimes, you just have to give in.  School, large standardized exams, and jobs with crazy work loads put you into a unique situation where your work follows you everywhere you go.  Days off are dictated by how much work there is to do and how much time you have to do it.  For people who are trying to get into medical school, the process is so competitive, we must put in every thing we have in order to succeed.  If we don't, and then don't get in/do well(my situation this past cycle), we regret not trying harder.  If I had a day off, I would clearly use that time to take care of my business.  The problem is, as a student, when you literally lose track of what day it is because you do nothing but study and work all the time, every day, there is no way to wring out that half-day necessary to maintain a reasonable standard of living.  Every student will reach this level of desperation at one point or another.  That point, when you forget what going out is, when the only difference between Saturday and Wednesday is your class schedule, and when things like makeup, jeans, and nice hair are the time-indulgent luxuries of others.  The key is balance.  Find a way to budget in a few shortcuts so that you can keep your stress at a manageable level.  Finals, theses, MCAT, school applications are all reasonable things to be slightly stressed out about.  Your dirty bathroom is not.  Let someone else take care of it for you.  Use a little of that bought time to go on a walk, take a yoga class, or write something that won't be graded.  Do what you need to do to manage your stress and work load, rather than your laundry pile.  There is plenty of time later to scrub your own toilet.