It’s been a full semester now since I returned to the United States, and my German has been steadily deteriorating. While my passive knowledge has been more or less retained, and I can still more or less understand most of what is said, speaking and writing no longer comes to me naturally. I took a Medieval German Literature class this semester, for which I wrote three papers auf Deutsch. The first one I was able to directly write in German, the second I had to write up an English/German hybrid rough draft and translate phrases, while for the last I gave up and just translated from an English draft. Though it didn’t end up mattering to my grade, as this class was horrendously easy compared to my Faust class back in Freiburg, it’s still somewhat sad to extrapolate from this progression.

In other news, it’s now my last year of undergrad, which is definitely just a tad scary. Though my current post-graduate plans aim towards an MD/PhD program of some kind, and I’m most of the ways through the interview process, I must admit that I’m again having second thoughts. While I know I’d probably excel in such an environment, I am left wondering whether or not that’s where I should be. Friends of mine taking similar paths seem to be characterized by conviction I do not possess and/or an almost single-minded drive anathema to my love of the whole.

Luckily, I recently won a major post-graduate award for two years of study abroad in Great Britain. As such, though it’s been somewhat detrimental to my medical school applications this season, if I don’t get in where I want to, I can simply re-apply several years later with a much stronger application. What’s far more important though, I’m going to England! That’s one of the other major points of this blog post: since I’ll be abroad once more, I’ll probably start weblogging regularly again next October from London. So keep your hyperlinks bookmarked, and I’ll be back ^_^

~William~