Terrorism?

Big extended family dinner tonight in early celebration of mother's day, and inevitably school and post-school related stuff came up in conversation. Not a particularly pleasant topic for me. (Not that my family they aren't encouraging, loving people, it's because they are so awesome that I feel a lot of pressure to make them proud.) Was in a state of self-loathing after dinner for a while so I instant messaged my friend, Ivana, for a pity party. But she wouldn't have any of that, and snapped me out my wallowing.

me: I dont want to go to school anymore

me: imma just get married

Ivana: WAHAAAT

unless you can find a guy like that dude with eunjung

you're going to school with me

me:....ivana, im just done with school. Imma just be a homemaker

Ivana:lol yeah right

feminist wonderwoman like you

would be so pent up at home

you'd terrorize your husband

so for the safety and peace of the world

you should stay in school and in the workforce

Haha, so "no" on terrorism, I guess.

last month

Why April was pretty good:

1. New favorite drapey shirt from Forever 21.
   
2. Donated blood for the second time ever, didn't feel terribly hung-over the next day like last time. Yay for proper post-donation hydration.
3. Chance to rock a pencil skirt for my research presentation. Shirt also from F21*.
4. Presentation went very well. I was the most nervous out of my group, but we got such great feedback from the audience, which was comprised mostly of doctors and health professionals. Also, I think my clinic's director finally knows my name, cause she told me she enjoyed my part of the presentation more than once. And she said this to me only. Eek.
5. "Keep working on those eye exams" said Dr. M, one the clinic's regular preceptor, after clinic one day. The first time we met, back in 2010, I had asked if I could sit in on him with a retinopathic patient (I was pretty interested in opthamology at the time). Not only was he totally fine with it, he even let me hold a fundoscope to peer into the patient's pupils. I can see the inside of their eye, it was friggin' awesome. Fast forward to now, and he still remembers me (and there's like 50-something student volunteers). Dr. M is way cool.
6. Catching up over froyo. My friend shared the great news with me that she got hired at this summer internship she wanted - in Alaska. How cool is that? And the following week, I shared the news with her that I got hired as a science reporter for my university's newspaper.

So yeah, the end of April was good (the beginning, not so much).

*A Forever 21 opened around the corner from where I live. No joke, it's a two-minute walk away. It's a good stress reliever after midterms, but the traffic around my block is crazy now.

This Thing All Things Devours: Birds, Beasts, Trees, Flowers...

Cortisol. I can feel it concentrating in my brain. I don't know how not to keep producing it. This next two weeks does not look like fun.

I was in clinic today from 9-5 to sort through old charts and, as a separate task, collect FOBT data for an abstract we will be using in a presentation next weekend at a cancer symposium. And I have to be at clinic tomorrow at 8-3, and then stay after to analyze that data. I already spent 2 hours tonight with pivot tables, charts and filters to figure out how the hell we were going present some our more meager findings.

I also have my first assignment as a reporter due next Monday and I need to get the bulk of the research/interviews done by this Wednesday. (more on this later)

I have my first midterm Wednesday and two more in the following week.

Shoot, I just remembered I have a meeting with someone on the other side of town this Wednesday too.

And I have school/clinic related stuff for the next three weekends -not short, little meetings but long, time-consuming events.

Also, I am way behind on my online class.

But hey, got my bike tuned up today. Got laughed at by the mechanic cause I'm not supposed to change gears when I'm not pedaling (nobody has ever bothered to inform me of this). I guess not having to take the bus anymore will probably save me some time, which I so desperately need more of this week. Damn.

A Little Birdie Told Me

Tomorrow is the first day of classes for spring. A few resolutions/wishes for this quarter:

1. Explore new places to study. Like the above location. It's the arboretum that surrounds one side of my college campus and it's a pretty popular place to study for law students (more incentive to go). Currently, my only experience with this location was a birthday picnic for my ex. But, I digress.
2. Stick to a study schedule. Heh, we'll see how this will turn out.
3. Continue going to office hours that have a large attendance. I find it really beneficial (and motivational) to feed off other people's questions and observations. One-on-one meetings with the prof. serve a whole different purpose.
4. Get more involved. I ambiguously toned that on purpose. What I hope is to find something that I will thoroughly enjoy, instead of mindlessly collecting extracurriculars.
5. Continue being open minded. I know that not everything is going to work for me, but I only know this from trying them out. I would have never guessed that salsa classes would be so 'meh' for me. But I haven't given up on finding my outlet for dancing.
6. Pack my own lunch (and breakfast and dinner) more often. I've given too much money to my university already, don't need to keep contributing by buying their overpriced food.
   

Anyways, something I bought yesterday: 3 gold bangles + one silver birdie from etsy seller allison mooney. I've been meaning to buy some bangles. I've always like the little twinkling sounds they make as they move about on your wrist.

Quarter End Review

Another quarter has passed and a new one is about to begin in 3 days. I've learned more than I expected this quarter. Fell in love with physiology and more in love with gender studies (unfortunately fell out of love with chemistry).

This quarter's grades: 2 A's ...and a chem.

Lessons learned from this quarter (A lot of these are pretty "duh" but I needed to experience it for myself.):

• Don't be afraid to dispute exam/hw questions with professors. There's nothing to lose if I have the goods to back it up.
• Textbook only helps if there's something I am grossly confused about (or is specifically required). Otherwise, don't bother with it.
• All nighters don't really work for finals. I just end up all panicky and anxious. So... stop doing this.
• Office hours are a nice place to meet cute, smart boys.

Next quarter's classes, all upper division again:

• Excercise Metabolism
• Introduction to Nutrition and Metabolism (an online class!)
• Motor Learning and Sport Psychology
• Gender and Sexuality (anthro approach)
  
  

I'm pretty stoked to have classes that might have overlapping material (the two metabolism classes). I enjoy having the opportunity to integrate similar material from different sources. And I never thought I would be taking an upper div science course online, I wonder how this is going to work. I'm kind of liking the idea of getting to stay home, away from the spring rain, with a nice cup of team, sitting in on online office hour chats. Also excited to take another class with my women's studies professor from last quarter. She has renewed my faith in my ability to write in-class essays.

I know all this positivity and optimism is gonna be gone by the 3rd week of school so I'm going to bathe in it while I can. Yay school.

Tan Tan Men

Met up with a friend for lunch. We went to eat ramen at this little japanese place downtown. I have never ate ramen outside of home before. It was raining but people were still waiting outside for a seat so the place must have been good. And it was. I had a small bowl of Tan Tan Men and a side of chirashi. After our meal, she had to pick up her brother from work but since we were early we killed some time by getting froyo.

I always add gummies to my yogurt because I can't say no to candy.

The froyo places back home are so different from the ones at school. I guess since the demand is lower here, the quality is lower as well. The fruit pieces were huge in comparison to the ones in Davis, like 5x bigger. It just doesn't feel the same plopping one-two large chunks of fruit into your cup instead of that the nice toppling spoonful of bite-size pieces. My guess is that the owner is trying to make her customers add on as much ounces that they can to their cup. A lot less fresh and a smaller selection of toppings too. It was also 43 cent per ounce here versus Davis's 34-38 cents. Expensive.

Cardigan: From China Shirt: Plain white tee, F21 Pants: Mossimo/Target Scarf: Claire's

Lucky Chambray Dress

Did some shopping over my spring break back home. Haven't shopped for clothes since winter vacation. I saw this embroidered chambray dress (below) at Lucky Brand during the Christmas season and totally loved it on the mannequin but for the full price of $119, I passed. Fast forward 3 months and it's on sale for $30. Yay.

From site.

With a skinny belt.

With a bejewelled leather belt.

Also found some nice pieces at Banana Republic (below). The sale rack was stuffed with clothes. I was chatting with a friend from SF and she got some good deals as well. Also found out that BR offered 15% off discount to students off their full priced items. Neat.

Shirt: Banana Republic $13 Jeans: Banana Republic $17