puccini

Gather 3 premeds around to talk about medical school applications = recipe for disaster.

Eventually one person gets tired of talking about it, one person overanalyzes things, and the third one embraces the shame of getting diarrhea from dairy foods.

Ugh, why did I have to miss maker faire?!

Tomorrow: must start writing personal statement, send in CV and high school summary to office. What the hell did I do back in high school?!

Getting a CA license on Tuesday. Old one expired, and I'll probably need this one to work in Cali, as well have a photo ID that's not expired when I show them to security officers. "Yes, I know it's expired- I ordered another TX license. It's going to be sent by mail within 60 days, they said..."

I am THIS close to punching my mom in the face. Her time has come. She needs to leave SF NOW, but leave the food.

slipstick

25.

Hmm, so I've made up my list of medical schools that I'll be applying to. Thought that I would be applying to more schools in the lower rungs of rankings, but there's definitely more of a leftward skew. I might have to narrow more schools down- stuck at 19 right now. Definitely want to be accepted somewhere, but it should be somewhere that I want to go. Worst case scenario would be- well, worst case would be not getting in anywhere. 2nd worst case scenario then: getting into a place that I had no intention of attending, only that I applied because it was a safety school.

--medical school rant, done--

--new rant/complaint, being--

Another dream about Drab?! The month isn't even over yet! Ugh...

There I was, willing to attend a random party in San Francisco for some insane reason. Very bored for the most part, so I sifted through the crowd, wandering to find the exit. Out of nowhere comes an extremely drunk Drab, smile as wide as his face, stumbling towards my direction. I closed my eyes, hoping that if I couldn't see anybody, then Drab wouldn't be able to see me. Once I reopened my eyes he was inches away from my face, reeking of booze. Once we made eye contact, he instantly planted his forehead against mine, close enough to the point where our noses touched. He was slurring all his words, telling me about how he read in one of my blog posts about a me having a dream recently about him, involving an intimately unpleasant moment. At this uncomfortable distance, he squeezed his eyes closed, scrunched his nose, and made this kissing face which made the moment even more awkward than when it started. I couldn't handle his drunk ass anymore, so I just started screaming right there in the middle of the crowd, our foreheads/noses still touching for some insane reason.

I think my subconscious is going haywire. Solution? Shut it up with my level-headed, rational awake state.

"You think this is hard? I'm living with hepatitis, that's hard!"
"You think this is hard? Try being waterboarded, that's hard!"

My new woman crush = Jane Lynch. She might even sing in one of the episodes!

agglutination

Something pretentious about people/places/things starting titles off with "the," and having to include "the" in all formal documentation.

Ordered transcripts after getting yelled at by Janey to get on the ball.

$5 for Rice. $10 for UT-Austin?! For just one class?! What a ripoff. And then $15 for my current institution. Ugh.

A-, B+. I suppose I could have done better in those two classes. Hrm. Still, my science GPA's a lot higher than I had predicted. Not competitive, but within the mean I suppose. The overall GPA is another story. Ugh.

Got 3 people solidified to do my letters of recommendation, including the health advising office. Waiting on my Chinese teacher to respond, and I'm being told to ask another science prof for a letter. Ugh.

The R01's finally over and done with- don't have to look at it/proofread ANY more typos! Plus, applied online for the job position in my lab. Hopefully someone better doesn't come along? Now I have time to work on my 3 AMCAS essays. Ugh.

Learned more about my mom tonight. She actually performed surgeries back in the day- thyroid, stomach, gallbladder, heart. Furthermore, she attended the 3rd best medical school in China. Hmm, if only I could get into a top 10 med school... Ugh.

Nightz.

hashashin

Hmm, I think it'll be best if I started exercising.

OH, and I will finally be able to attend the beginner's hip hop dance classes on Sunday. Mmm!

Sent out one request for a letter of recommendation; going to send out another tonight once I get back on my Mac, since the stupid computers at the VA don't have Chinese script!

Until my mom arrives, I've stalled on cooking anything in my kitchen, so basically I pretty much order take-out every night. Tennessee Grill was SO GOOD, OMG. About 5-6 slices of bread, with butter slices included, a side of steamed vegetables, mashed potatoes, 2 cups of gravy, and breaded/fried veal steak. AND a side of minestrone, all for $9! My only concern was that going through my last sliver of veal, I pushed my fork down on the piece of meat, only to find bloody juices flowing out of it. Are pan-fried steaks supposed to be bloody still?

Janey: the only people I'll currently admit to loving is my LAB. Don't worry, I'll soon fall out of that once I leave them.

Dios mio, I haven't been blogging the minimum 30 posts per month. Expect more. Mandy Moore.

sanshou

Why did I put off MCAT practice problems?! It's going to be painful finishing 1600 of them by the end of this week...

Going to do volunteer training for the Emergency Department on Tuesday, then start volunteering on my own. Not sure how I'm going to be able to commit to 6 months with interviews coming up, and night classes. Argh.

Finished reading Drab's qualifier proposal. Treated it as an RO1 grant application. Didn't like it. Not enough junk in the trunk.

Was waiting at Banhwich yesterday, and they were airing Hannah Montana on their TV set. Is it weird for me to be slightly attracted to Miley Cyrus? Maybe in another lifetime I would have been that 25 year old model whats-his-face who's dating her right now. She would have been more attractive if I didn't have to see her hideous malformations of blindingly overbleached white teeth.

So I have this bottle of blueberry-cranberry juice that's been sitting in my fridge for almost 1 (1+?) years, with no mold on the surface. Would it still be safe to drink?

Also been torturous having to finish the odd candies that I've stocked up in lab from 6 months ago. Ugh how can people like chocolate/sweets.

Thought I was going to be by myself in lab, filling out my AMCAS, working on MCAT, but Danimals, Benihana, and Daewoo came in!

Memorial Day.

snickersnee

Danimals' birthday was on Saturday. We got him a model boat set, since he has this weird fascination with boats.

Had an interesting/chaotic chat w/ Janey today. Talking about our moles infesting our skin, future lives as doctor &/or researchers, her first telling me that I'm obsessed w/ Kaiser, then trying to tell me that I'm in love w/ Drab. HAH!

Hmm, good thing I talked w/ Janey today. I started looking over the forms I have to fill out right now, even though finals ended two days ago, and I could have sent out two simples forms to open my file already! AHHH! Yeah... well, I already knew I was behind in the game. No need to freak out now. Clutch!

New obsessions: guns, close quarter combat, knives/swords, violence, movies involving all four.

Going to read Hans Christian Anderson, or East of Eden.

ouroboros

I had to drop off the projector adapter (for the Mac), so I stopped by Drab's lab (again...) Friday night, with a bag of various ramen goodies and a box of Quaker oatmeal squares- I know he doesn't buy good ramen nor good cereal.

Once I arrived there, he was busily typing away at the computer, hairy messy, sending out his draft qualifier proposal for initial review.

What bugged me was first walking into the lab, where every lab member with a direct line of sight to the entrance turned their heads to look at me. Even with a meager attempt to smile, wave, and be friendly, they all just turn right back to their work. Whatever.

Another oddity was that the tall brunette rotation student periodically stared at me while Drab and I were having a conversation. Eventually Drab asked me out to dinner, and I reluctantly agreed to Japanese food.

Not only are we studying pretty much the same area, same field of research, but so many other things seem to be coinciding. Both of us buying Japanese jeans, both of us getting into baseball. I started getting interested after watching a random baseball anime, and my lab wanted to do a group outing to a Giants game, but Drab's lab group ALSO wants to organize a field trip to AT&T Park as well. And THEN he was planning on going to a hipster dance club, which probably played the few genres of hipster music I don't mind listening to, except I didn't go because I still had a paper final to finish. Conversation just flowed. Ugh. I can't be enjoying spending time with Drab. That would mean not hating him anymore. I refuse. At some points the restaurant would just get considerably loud, and Drab's low voice often blended in with the noise, so whenever we were talking about politics (one of my least favorite conversation topics) and I couldn't hear him or read his lips, I would just stare at him and nod as if I took in everything he said. And yet again his feet brushed against mine...

The food was okay- Drab ended up paying for part of my meal because we just threw our cards down on the check, and the waitress must have just split the bill evenly in half. The tofu appetizer: used medium tofu (I would have preferred silken), soaked in a weak soy sauce and sprinkled with scallions. Ordered 5 different rolls, all much too tiny, much too unsavory to be worth $25, save for one set- must have been the yellowtail. So fatty, mmm...

Surprisingly, after taking the T line back to Embarcadero, I was waiting for the L line to take me back home. Once I got into the train and sat down, there was this figure standing right in front of me, so I decided to raise my head up only to find my friend/LRC coworker/archi Mary Juana. She's been in SF for a year and I didn't know about it. Jeez. Anyhow, we caught up for as long as she was riding on the train (so, to Castro), and we're supposed to be hanging sometime in the next month before she returns to Rice to finish her degree.

Also dreamed about lab again Friday night. Something about broccoli being stuck near the gum of my top front teeth, but nobody would tell me about it.

Should go to sleep, now that I have the time. Still need to mutilate Drab's qualifier proposal though.

stagiere

Had another dream about lab last night.

Only slept 12 hours in the past 5 days. Not in the mood for talking much- mind is on the fritz. No, not Liz.

Highlights of the week? Fried chicken. Cole Slaw.

One more paper. Waking up at 5:30. Ta-ta.

idaho potato

24.

Hmm, didn't study as much as I'd hoped for the plant bio exam today, but I seem to have gotten more right than wrong, for the ones that I were unsure of. Assuming he's going to be lenient on the grading for the paper, I should be set for an A?

2 down. 3 to go. Paper, final, paper.

Because I had made the mistake of studying under warm sheets last night, I barely got past the first page of my notes before falling asleep. You can guess what happened.

Peace (of mind) doesn't last very long. After a very long and serene hiatus, I awoke gasping, hyperventilating heavily having realized that once again Drab has invaded my dreams. UGHHHHH!

What was it this time?! We were sitting next to each other in a booth for dinner, across from two other people who decided to leave early. Unfortunately, that left the two of us alone. I suppose one good thing was that he didn't do his thing with touching my foot/knee/leg under the table. We were talking for a little bit longer when he just suddenly stopped. All he did from then on was look at me. He just kept staring and moving closer, like in those horror movies where the camera just keeps panning ever so slowly towards a person's face, with a creepy stringed instrument playing louder and louder in the background. Even my nervous laughter didn't help in keeping his distance from me. So the only thing left for me to do was panic and force myself to wake up, back to my conscious, rational, cold and unemotional reality.

Tired. Time to write paper. Ciao.

cryptorchidism

Yes! I'm not a failure! I think I'm just happy I was able to pull off missing only 1 problem on the final exam. Hmm, now think, if I studied this hard for all my other exams throughout the year... I probably could have made an A instead of an A-. Sigh. Then again, I skipped that class all the time. Terrible lecturer, speaking to the class as if we were babies.

Now to try and keep an A in 2 other classes while trying to pull off an A- in a class I have no idea where my grade stands at this point.

Plant biology could be an interesting field to go into, if I just wanted to study chromatin, non-neuroscience. Didn't know there was a neuroimmunology field either.

MMM foggy days have returned to SF! I hope it lasts like this forever, that is, until my mother arrives. Then I hope the UV rays from the heavens smite her with the wrath of the Texas two-step. I feel sleep-deprived.

Gotta finish a paper for final and print it out in lab. Adios amigos.

lifescape

Listening to these piano songs that are supposed to be calming, except they make me think of certain people more frequently than I should be.

Perhaps the thing I'm going through is andropause? It would explain a lot.

Looked at an apartment today. Great neighborhood, right by the park, right by UCSF and their shuttle service. Problem? The first thing the guy did when seeing me was lead me down to the basement level into this dark, dimly lit room less than 100 sq. ft. Worse, he was wearing some weird thermal underwear for pants, these odd pajamas that didn't leave much to the imagination. If the landlord were, say, a semi-beautiful man like Ewan McGregor, MAYBE I would let that slide. So greasy and creepy! Blegh! Oh wait. THEN there was the kitchen. Flies buzzing all around the place. They asked me what I thought, and instead of blatantly saying it was a shithole, I told them the room was too small, but if one of the larger rooms happened to open up in the future, I might be interested.

Ugh. So, I'm instead going to be browsing another place tomorrow, closer to the beach, being rented out by a lady who doesn't sound like she'll be prancing around in underwear.

Oops forgot to post this draft after writing it.

doggerel

Woohoo. Righhhht...

Seems like everybody has something to say about my future. Maybe everybody's been ready for me to move on with my life. Except they urge me less annoyingly than my parents.

I'm so glad that Janey decided to pursue Md/PhD as well. She'll probably be a really strong candidate during her interviews. This is of course assuming that she knows the research she's been doing inside and out. Hmm, I wonder if I should worry at all about my interviews this early in the game? So many hoops to jump through: primaries, acceptance from the primary, secondaries, then acceptance from the secondary. Blegh.

Hmm, well, Poorneel said that he lived comfortably off 33K plus benefits, so maybe I should ask for that much?

What do I feel... certainty in getting 3 A's (10 hours), hopefully getting A-'s in the other two classes. What's odd is that I get A's in classes that I skip, and then struggle in classes where the teacher is terrible.

Ok, heading back to my apartment. Blog later.

dysentery

AHHHHH!!! My Danimals offered me a job today! The one unexpected thing was him asking me what salary I would want so that I could live comfortably in SF.

I called my parents later today- why did I expect not to get a lecture from my Dad? And then my Mom tried to guilt trip me into wanting her to come see me. Yeah, she's coming to stay with me. For a MONTH! Even worse, my lab group wants me to bring her around to lab sometime and introduce her to everyone. Ughhhhhh.

No wait. Even worse, I got so excited, I even started an email to Drab about the good news before I stopped myself. Ugghhhh gross. I have become the needy person that I hated about everyone else.

Danimals tells me that it might be hard to get into med school, and that I might not even like it, in reference to the seeing 40-50 patients per day in a clinical setting. He also said that even if I've researched for 2+ years now, there wouldn't be a significant advantage to my application unless I included an abstract of a bound-to-be published paper.

This is probably one of those times where I would be freaking out again, except I need to finish a paper tonight/start studying for finals.

omnium horarum homo

Dear lord. I posted 9 days ago?! I was so wrapped up in my studying and labbing, I forgot to happy birfday Klean.

Hmm, news. I'm having tofu and asparagus tonight?

Umm. I had to run in with Drab the other day to pick up an adapter for a TERRIBLE presentation I did this morning. Less than 2 hours of sleep this morning. And yet, I don't feel tired at all. Maybe one just realizes that sleep isn't so necessary after all. I've also lost an inch in my waistline from all the cortisol brought on by stress.

I have a love/hate relationship with teachers that grill you when you're at the front of the class.

Research. It goes. Although I'm reaching my breaking point just staring down lists of gene names all day.

My fobby clothes are here!

waterboarding

Wayne Graham. Kinda awesome.

I got home from lab around 7, expecting just my neighbors' mail in my mailbox, but sifting through I found this letter addressed to me from France, with no return address.

I usually expect a check from my parents, but it was highly unlikely that they would be forwarding money over from France, unless they had flown to France randomly for shits and giggles.

Odd was the fact that inside the envelope was a postcard. Who sends postcards in envelopes anyway?!

The handwriting on the back gave it all away- poorly written, rushed, and entirely illegible. Kaiser. She had taken a spontaneous trip to France w/ her gal pal Teletubbie. Her message was in her typical response: brief, detached, cold. Just the way I like it.

I was fucking giddy for a few minutes.

Had this sudden urge to visit a 99 Ranch Market. If only I had a car...

From a rational standpoint, I probably wouldn't want to be bisexual, if I ever sprouted from my seed of asexual dormancy. Having to deal with drama specific to either sex would be utterly annoying.

This bright and shiny thing doesn't suit me well. I used to like rainy days and dark cloudy skies. It's like that now in SF, and it isn't doing it for me. What's wrong with me?!? I seem to be asking that question a lot recently.

Also, as I was walking down to Clement to reach the bus stop, an elderly man was laying on the ground right by the trash can. What seemed like a homeless guy at first turned out to be an old guy reeling in pain. Somehow he fell and broke his hip while getting off the bus. Another person eating a burrito had the audacity to go up to him and ask,"Are you really hurt or are you just fucking with us?"