Day 498: A little more juice

Let's get a little in-depth with my activities, shall we?

• Neurosurgery Internship: It's much better to be the sole intern. I get to do a bunch of cool things I wouldn't have been able to do before (surgeries, more decapitations, more brain removals, etc). It's unfortunate that, lately, the days I've been coming haven't been filled with a lot for me to do. I can't watch surgeries all day because, honestly, that's a bit boring. So, I tend to play translator for most of the Chinese visiting scholars. It's a good resume builder, but sadly, that seems to be all that it is right now.
  
  Also, having the opportunity to perform surgeries has helped me see the bigger picture. I have enough trouble moving muscles aside to find a rat's carotid artery. I can only imagine how ridiculously complicated it is to perform surgery on actual human beings.
  
  
• Biology Class & Lab: The second week is almost done. I have class and lab again tomorrow and right now, it's all looking pretty kosher. We have a lab quiz tomorrow on Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (which is related to population genetics). Hopefully it won't be too bad, I should go over my notes and worked-out problems today.
  
  In regards to the caliber of students at the local community college, it feels like any institution. You've got the pig-headed ones and the ones-that-just-don't-seem-to-get-it. I find it easy to judge and assume a lot about these kids but most of them have big goals/ideas/places-to- transfer so I'm working on keeping an open mind. It's really hard when the kid I sit next to is a little awkward and at first it was cute but now it borders on annoying.
  
  The most annoying thing about all the kids at said-community-college is that they all think they're better than community college. They make a big deal about asking questions and proving their knowledge -- which upsets me on all levels. I really abhor the people who feel like they constantly have to prove themselves. You're not impressing anybody with your lame question, dumbo.
  


• Personal: I thought you should all know my eye is bruised. I'm not sure how it happened. But it hurts when I actively blink. Can you tell which eye is broken?
  
  
  
  I only look cross-eyed because I was
  looking into my camera phone lens.
  Promise.

• Social life: Per a friend's request, I'm going to try and put a little more personal stuff in here.
  
  Let's see, a good friend of mine's musical begins its two week run this weekend. I'll be catching her show on Sunday.
  
  
  
  
  My one friend (let's call him J.) is pestering me to hang out with him. I don't want to because he's going to profess his love for me for the umpteenth time and I just don't need that in my life right now. I'm also being much too cowardly to call him and, essentially, end our friendship for the third time. Why don't boys ever get the message?

Day 489: Oh the humanity!

Don't be fooled by the subject title. This is going to a serious-ish post.

This looks just like the one we use at the lab.

Today, I returned to guillotining rats and cracking their skulls open. It's been a while since I've guillotined a rat myself and it was incredibly disconcerting. It didn't help that this certain rat was not given the best treatment -- it was definitely alive and somewhat conscious while it's heart was being drained of blood, and it's liver and lung were being cut out; it was thrashing about in it's semi-alive state. Then, I get the joy of cutting it's head off only to have its eyes bug out as I sever his head from the rest of his body. It was not a pleasant image.

Then, I have to crack the skull and do other unpleasant things and the moral of this story is, it's hard to completely distance myself from the inhumanity of it all. I'm not a fan of rats. However, I think it's good to be grateful for their lives because they are contributing to the big picture.

I'm going to warn you right now. If you don't want to read about teeth and skull-cracking and brain-removing, skip ahead until you see this "@#$"...

As I was cracking the rat's skull open, I could feel its teeth jabbing into my finger. I had to cut its skin away from the skull and pull at the muscle and I was trying somewhat desperately not to gag at the idea that it's eye sockets were just about gone and its teeth were still jabbing my freaking finger.

@#$

Anyway, all in all, rats are rats. It's easy to feel bad for what we do to them (or so I think) but it's also surprisingly easy to dull one's senses to both the injustice and plain old creepyness of what I/we have to do.

Classes start tomorrow. And the new routine begins.

Day 482: Big News

I have submitted my medical school application. !!!

Applying is expensive!

In other news, today was my first day back at my internship. It was wonderful to see all the old post-docs but a complete drag to see Dr. Z. He is so great about making me feel completely useless and unwanted. Whatever. You know what I did to stick it to him? I performed a splenectomy on a rat.

Big day, big day.

Day 429: Lots of changes!

It seems my work load has grown exponentially. No, seriously. I started my new MCAT prep course this weekend and I have enough books to knock someone out. Lots of passages and questions and reading. I am taking calculus concurrently and after a shameful/dismal/depressing/shockingly bad grade on Exam 2, I decided something had to give. And what gave? My internship.

Dr. Z was incredibly understanding about giving me some time off to focus on my calculus class and impending MCAT.

Oh, and I got these puppies.

Doesn't this remind you of awkward teenage-dom?

I think I look sincerely like a twelve-year old. I also think I look horrendous. In spite of this, I kind of like them. I like the idea that change is happening. Since my teeth are quite tender at the moment, change is quite apparent (to me anyway). Also, I never realized how unpleasantly crooked and discombobulated my teeth were until they put the braces on.

So, to keep everything straight, I'm on a hiatus from my internship. Instead of running Western blots, I am doing lots and lots of math and MCAT homework. I got braces yesterday (Wednesday).

That is all.

Day 416: Rats and chats

Hello!

Yesterday (Thursday) was quite a big day for me. I had my first calc test (it went fine enough). Then, at the lab, I extracted my first brain and sliced and did all the fun, gory stuff related to the lab's research.

NOT our actual experiment. Just samples of rat brains :P

In other news, I've been trying to run this experiment all week (with my fellow interns) and we kept f-ing it up. Yesterday, the experiment was successful (it's a two-day experiment) and today, we were able to scan our results. They were fairly successful, which is always good.

My actual boss, let's call him Dr. Z, is...interesting. I feel that I'm more of a speck on his radar than anything of actual concern. That doesn't make me any less grateful for the research opportunity. I just want to feel more...useful. And wanted. But whatever. We had a nice chat/discussion about my future at the lab and I think we're going to focus my tasks at the lab. I'm going to learn to run the experiment (it's called a Western blot) as well as I can. I'm also going to learn to troubleshoot the experiment, which seems to the be the best demonstration of my knowledge. Either way, more focused work at the lab. It can get pretty slow at times. Good thing I have books (I just finished Bernard Schlink's The Reader) and Calculus homework to keep me busy.

Tonight, lab people and I are going to dinner for my pseudo-boss, Mr. X. Mr. X is just the best. Today is his last full day. He's moving to a different lab next week. However, due to the lack of aptitude at our lab, Mr. X has decided to work part-time at our lab until August. (Yay!) Until then, we'll have to work hard to gain enough confidence and comfort with the goings-on of the lab.

Day 410: Happy Independence Day!

Hello my fellow Americans! Happy Fourth of July! Fun question, does England have a Fourth of July?

Moving on, I hope you're all enjoying your freedoms and liberties and all that other mumbo-jumbo that's expoused in our Declaration of Independence :)

This is the first (sort-of) week of my new routine and it's gone quite well. I figured out where to park at Stanford (after receiving a lovely parking ticket from the university, thanks Stanford) for my new internship. Since I see the internship people at least five hours a day, I've already developed small rapports with each of the people there. I've been learning about the research they do and I had the opportunity to guillotine a rat's head the other day (vive la France!) We cut off its head in order to slice its brain to see the effects of our experiment. Too gory? I'll move on.

My calc class is moving at a decent pace. I was worried it would pick up where things left off, and it has in some ways, but it's done so in a way that I can certainly manage. My first test is this upcoming Thursday. I have a test every Thursday (four total) and then the last one will be a final. The professor seems fair enough and he makes cute academia/nerd jokes that amuse me.

Aside from that, my best friend comes home Wednesday (wee!), I need to start working out again (sooner rather than later) and I also need to get my personal statement together. Things to do, things to do.