After my weekend in San Diego earlier this month, I spent a week relaxing in Los Angeles. Similarly to how I hoped to make residency interviews concurrent with my trip to San Diego, the goal of interviews at UCLA while in LA didn’t work out either. Thankfully, I’m at a place where I’m not stressing the residency interview trail too much because I have faith that everything will work out according to God’s plan.
Because I’ve already been to LA and had a great time exploring the city while there in 2015, I didn’t feel pressed to do much sightseeing this time around. Instead, I wanted to relax and take in the amazing weather and great friendships in Los Angeles.
HANGING OUT WITH FRIENDS
A few of my closest friends happen to live in Los Angeles right now. I made sure that I got to spend quality time with each of them throughout the trip.
Trisha lives in LA, and like me, she’s an MD/MBA student. She was incredibly kind enough to allow me to crash with her and her lovely roommates for the week. Honestly, this whole trip wouldn’t have been possible without her hospitality because the way my bank account is set up…I couldn’t have paid for a week’s worth of hotel accommodations in LA. On Veterans’ Day, I got the chance to explore the UCLA campus with Trisha. The campus is obnoxiously beautiful. It felt like walking through a movie set where every tree was perfectly manicured and the sun shone brilliantly on every walkway.
We also had great eats along the way. Whether it was a salad bowl at Cava, Peruvian food at Los Balcones, Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, or homemade breakfast tacos, we stayed fed. We also had a great beach day where we just relaxed and enjoyed great vibes at Santa Monica Beach. Trisha also has a blog, so it was cool to use our time together to have photoshoots for each other’s blogs.
My friend Pooja and I have been friends since middle school when we were both the new kids at Newtown Middle School. Fourteen years later, our friendship is still going strong! Pooja recently relocated to Los Angeles in pursuit of comedy writing. You can check out some of her work here. We spent time together working out at a fitness studio called Fundamental 45 in West Hollywood. That workout was TOUGH but I had a ton of fun. Pooja and I grew close through track practices together in high school, so it was nice to revisit our tradition of working out together. We also explored The Grove in West Hollywood. Had I hung around The Grove for an extra hour or so, I could have met my favorite artist Toni Braxton! Thing is, based on her show Braxton Family Values, she never seems to be on time for things. I didn’t want to wait around to see exactly how late she would be.
Another friend I made sure to see in Los Angeles was my friend Camille from medical school. We went to a Home Church service. It was super cool for me to see pastor Judah Smith preach in person because I’ve been following his Bible Study series How is Your Soul with women of Wharton Christian Fellowship. Camille and I also worked out on the Clover City Stairs. That was one of the more challenging workouts that I’ve done in while. The steepness and number of stairs had me out of breath and sweating in no time. It was nice to catch up with Camille as we’re both going through the residency interview trail, so we could completely relate to how the other was feeling.
GET WORK DONE
Paradoxically, I find a lot of relaxation from getting work done. Don’t get me wrong, I love a do-nothing beach day here or there, but there’s nothing as calming for me as checking things off of my to-do list. Throughout the course of the week in Los Angeles, I spent a lot of time working on my blog and White Coats Black Blazers. In the previous months, I couldn’t dedicate as much time as I wanted to those endeavors because I was studying for Step 2 CK. This week in LA, however, I was a writing machine! I drafted about 5 posts in total, some for my personal blog and some for WCBB. I also completed my first ever grant application to get funding for WCBB. After doing just one grant application, I have NO IDEA how academics live their lives by writing grant applications. That’s not my portion in this life.
Here’s a quick summary of all that I wrote and published while in Los Angeles:
- PERSONAL BLOG
- WHITE COATS BLACK BLAZERS
There are even some more posts scheduled for the upcoming weeks 🙂
I would say that I’m sad to be back on the East Coast, but I’ll be traveling throughout the south for the rest of 2018, so I’m pretty content with the fact that I’ll get to miss a good chunk of fall and winter this year.
Hope that you’re enjoying following my the stories of my travels as much as I’m enjoying sharing!
Peace and blessings,
Atasha Jordan, MD (to be)
