Happy Birthday Roomie!

My roommate is turning 22 this weekend so we went out to celebrate at Salvage Bar and Lounge in Downtown Los Angeles. 

Barely 22 years of age, she's one of the youngest in our dental school class. The fact that I'm only four months older than her makes me... also one of the youngest in our dental school class. 

The composition of students in our class is rather novel to me. Most of my classmates aren't the same age as me anymore. Many of those who I hang out with are one or two years older than me. But there are some classmates who are nearly two decades older than me.

The thing is, most people don't matriculate into dental school straight out of college. Actually, it seems quite abnormal to start dental school right after college. Many of my classmates had jobs prior to dental school. Some are older, hitting the age of "settling down" and "long-term relationships". Some people are married. Some people even have children.

Seriously, I've never talked to peers about their children before I started dental school.

But having a hodgepodge of people with different backgrounds and life experiences simply serve to make our class more diverse. And even for a person who grew up in a very homogenous Asian town amongst peers who were the exact same age as me, I think that diversity is a good thing.