Emaan Abbasi - 5th Year Biomedical Physiology

Q: What's been new for you this academic year? A: I decided to take the semester off and it was a hard decision, it was completely against every bone in my body. It was because of a mix of almost every person's struggle in this day and age. What am I doing with my life? Where is this going? What am I going to get out of it? Because I went ham with school for four years. I just reached the point where I realized it's just too much now. So I decided to take a break because the stress got bad. Q: What do you personally do to deal with that built-up stress? A: I write a lot of poetry. It's funny because a friend of mine said that they like to stay away from poetry because poets are pretty dark people. When I used to share them, I would get messages from people saying that they totally resonated with my poems. And I was basically building a community. Q: Why don't you share your poetry as much now? A: I think because I am secretly a super dark person and my poems get super dark that sometimes I get pulled into them. So I have to write them in a very timely manner. If i'm writing them all the time, I will be in my head a lot of the time. I don't want to be too engrossed in that. Sometimes I feel like i'm not living in the moment as much as I used to a few years ago. Im constantly worried about what Im doing and where my life is going. because of that, i'm forgetting so many of the things that happen just in the day, here and now. And this semester off has been like a slap on the face. I realize that I've actually gotta sit down, smile, and enjoy my day. Q: Why has it been important to build a community for yourself? A: Well I'm a narcissistic person, it's very obvious. Having a community is like you're the centre and there is a pinwheel around you. All the people in your life are that circle around you. Wherever the wheel stops, you need a person who'd make you feel like you've won something. You basically just need to meet one good person in your life, and then they will introduce you to their good person, and they'll introduce you to their good person. And it's like you don't even understand how you become friends when half the people you're friends with. It just happens and it keeps you afloat. There are days when you just want to lie in bed and you don't want to pick up anyone's phone. It's those days when you realize, that you should check your phone. Because there will be five people who've messaged you. A community just takes you out of the dark places.