Winter Blues Makes Time Go By Fast

While I catch a slight break watching Tom and Jerry, I'll catch you guys up on what's been happening lately. School has started for a couple of weeks now. The time has gone by so quickly, I can't believe that half of January is already over. It totally feels like the new year just started.

This quarter I'm taking two psychology classes, physics and my last organic chemistry class. They're going well for now, but it's too early to say anything definitely except that most of them are very fun and interesting (I'm looking directly at you advanced behavioral neuroscience). Other than taking classes, I've mostly been spending my time running, studying, volunteering, in the lab or sleeping. Ah winter quarter, how you promote laziness/sleep. Mostly importantly, I decided to move my MCAT test date back so that I could have more time to study for it. Hopefully it pays off.

Standing Still and Looking in Both Directions

As we all usher in the New Year, I think this is an excellent time to reflect on last year and the coming year. So here goes

2010 was a year where I accomplished so much and so little at the same time. This was a year of many firsts. I finished my first half-marathon, first 100 mile bike ride and first triathlon. More importantly, I made some new friends and found myself some more. Despite some doubts early on, I discovered truly how much I was doing what I wanted to do. While this year was far from perfect, I found myself very happy with how this year turned out. Even though I didn't get an A in every single class, nor finish my research project, I was still able to gain a lot of experiences.

Looking back, I think I made my greatest changes during the summer. For the first time, I was truly taking care of myself. I had finally moved out of the dorms and into a house with one of my close friends. Furthermore, I started my first full time 9-5 job. On top of that, I had to take care of all of my own cooking. For the first time, it seemed like I was truly an independent adult. Before, I had alway relied on school food and my parents to pay for my ... well basically life. This summer, however, I took care of it all for the first time. The lessons that I learned have made me more confident in myself. On top of these life lessons, I managed to have a lot of fun whether with my friends or my running club. I would say that it was a very good summer.

However, 2010 was not without its problems. With this in mind, here are some goals/resolutions/improvements that I hope to make in 2011 (psychology says that the more people who know of what we do, the more we try to reach our goals).

1. Get into medical school. So this one is pretty self-explanatory. While I will not actually find out whether or not I actually get accepted, I should at least get my interviews done by the time 2012 comes around. So yet to be determined are: my MCAT score (January 29th, starting to freak out now), 4 more science classes and my personal statement (hopefully some publications, though that is out of my hands).
2. Kick the habit. No I do not mean smoking, but this year I somehow developed the really bad habit of watching TV while studying. As one can guess, this basically results in me watching TV a lot instead of studying; however, I have high hopes that I can get rid of this habit as demonstrated by my recent attempts at studying for the MCAT.
3. Work as hard as possible. The last few years, I feel like I have worked quite hard, but never had I forced myself to be perfect or stay up all night studying (I've come close). While I'm not going to demand myself to be perfect the entire year (that is just not possible, for me at least), I am going to set a resolution to just try as hard as I can for an entire week. So this means, for a week, I am not going to give up on a quiz or test, nor let myself go easy during a practice when I should be pushing myself. While this might not seem very much, one week at OSU can somehow make the difference between a letter grade in a class. Perhaps, if I really do end up pulling this one off, I'll try to go longer. 
4. Qualify for Boston (Big B). On one of the last days of summer going into freshmen year, I made a list of all the things that I wanted to do in college. While I've forgotten most of them, there are a few that I remember: run the Boston Marathon, get good grades (that one is now down the drain) and really get to know at least one professor (kind of achieved that). While I have definitely improved in running, especially in the last year and a half, I still have yet to run the ultimate race. Like most big, city marathons, there is a qualification time in order to apply for a spot for the Boston Marathon. Previously, the qualifying time was 3 hours and 10 minutes (or around 7 minutes and 15 seconds per mile). While the new rules for qualifying and apply have not been announced yet, I am going to try to run a qualifying marathon in Columbus this fall.
5. Be happy. While this seems like something really simple, I think that it is something that is perhaps even more important than anything else on this list. True, there are many ways to be happy, but regardless of where that happiness comes from, I just want to be able to look back a year from now and still be at least equally proud of the past year as I am now. I think that one of the significant contributors to why I was so satisfied with this year was the happiness that accompanied my overall growth.

So while this year's list is not very long, I do think that these are some mostly realistic goals for myself. I do have numbers that I want to hit for the MCAT and my GPA, but I'll keep those to myself for now. Unfortunately, I am not that confident in myself. So with this, I look forward to 2011 and all the good, bad and unexpected that it will bring.

From the Frying Pan into the Fire

So now that Finals are finally over (yesterday), I’m now home. They were really quite unevetnful, so I’m not really going to elaborate that much. Anyway while most people are celebrating the endless joys of finishing another quarter (semester people are almost there!), I get the wonderful joy of prepping for the MCAT. Now that I have complained for several months about it, I’m actually insanely prepping for it. That is all. I think.

Also, I’m going to try to post more often, since I just got a new app called MacJournal that makes it easy and really have no reason to procrastinate and not write. Also, I’m going to try to post more pictures since that’s both easy and fast. And now I’m done.

A Very Different Kind of Turkey Day

Now that I have been back in Ohio for a week now, I think it’s time to pause for a few seconds and reconsider my Thanksgiving Break. I have been meaning to write this post of a while, but school just has been, too, busy. But now with the quarter over (except for two exams next week), I have a few brief moments to share my experience.

So as most of my readers (like all three of you at this point :P) know, my parents decided to fly me out to Las Vegas to spend Thanksgiving (and also my 21^st) with them as they met with some friends. So what is it like to spend an extended weekend out in Vegas? It is amazing!

So I flew out on Wednesday late afternoon. As I was leaving, Columbus had started its first snow/sleet/hail/ice or wintry mix. Flying out, I took American Airlines, despite my strong feelings against this airline (side story: All three times that I have flown with them, I have experienced a delay because the crew was not present). Of course, it wouldn’t be an American flight without some kind of problem. Trying to get out of Columbus took an hour and a half longer than it was suppose to since the crew failed to show up timely (apparently taking the taxi for 5 minutes would have cost them $40 was the rumor). This caused me to miss my Vegas connection in Dallas/Ft. Worth, which meant that I had to wait an extra hour and thirty minutes at DFW. In the end I managed to get into Vegas at 11:30pm Wednseday night, missing Thursday by just 30 minutes. Flying into Vegas at night was definitely an experience. While I will probably not love any city like New York (or at least my perception of New York), Las Vegas is an amazing place at night. All the lights from the casinos on The Strip showing people enjoying themselves and having a good time. As soon as I landed and got to the hotel, however, I fell asleep (in my defense it would have been equivalent to 3:30am EST).

Thursday morning, I woke up to the very busy city of Las Vegas. Even though it was Thanksgiving, so many people were out walking around the casinos. After parking our rental car at Aria, we took a nice stroll through the casinos. Since I had finally turned 21, I was free to roam around! As I walked around all the different casinos looking at all of the interior designs and living vicarious by watching other people gamble (being a psychology major is so fun/sucks sometimes). We finally got to The Venetian in the late afternoon after walking through The Strip (look at the pictures below!). The atmosphere of The Venetian was just completely different. While you were inside, it’s so easy to totally forget about the concept of time. After spending what felt like only a few minutes, but really a few hours inside, my family and I headed back to our hotel to have Thanksgiving dinner with some family friends. Being my birthday, I got my first official drink (Hieneken, someone else bought it for me, or else I totally would have picked a much better wine to go with dinner).

The following Friday was a very frigid, windy day. Despite a late start, we got on the road for a 5 hour drive to the Southern Rim of the Grand Canyon. The view there was unlike any I had ever seen. I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story of that day.

Sadly, I had to leave Las Vegas that Saturday morning. This trip came to an end too fast. There was still so much that I wanted to do, but now at least I have a really good reason for going back! Lastly, no, I luckily did not have to take American to get back to Columbus (United is so much better).

Edit: Web Album Click here to more of the pictures from the trip.

So Close To Getting There

So now that my classes have been put on temporary pause (OSU currently has an active investigation into bomb threats for four school buildings), I think it's safe to actually sit back and think about the things that I have to do before next Wednesday. Why? Well firstly, next Wednesday marks the beginning of Thanksgiving Break, which for me will be quite eventful (guess what I get to do). Wednesday also marks the beginning of the end of the quarter, which for me is not so great. I have so much to do before then. I need to finish almost all of my Chinese assignments, psychology outline/paper (12 pages :O), a chemistry lab report and a chemistry final. Most of these things are due on Friday, so chances are Thursday night is going to be terrible.

Break, why can't you come faster with good results? Hopefully the first couple of days of break will be relaxing enough. Though, I must say I really do enjoy flying, so maybe just that will be enough, too.

Fall Quarter

Why hello there! Contrary to my recent youtube and blog activities, I have no fallen off the face of the earth, nor have I had a rather boring life; however, I have been super busy as school has started back up, MCATs are in my immediate future and running club has really taken off. So after a particularly hectic week, I decided that it might be a good time to take a few minutes to comment on my life. So here goes:

Volunteering. This quarter like spring quarter, I'm volunteering in the emergency room. This is one of my favorite times of the week, because it's so exciting. I get to see so many people come in. Unfortunately, that's about all I feel comfortable saying, but I will say that I have learned so much medicine since I have been there in the last quarter and a half.

Classes. There are times in my life when I am so happy that I focused on being a psychology major, and this quarter is definitely one of them. My psychology class this quarter is in the subfield of cognitive psychology. I've never thought that I'd be so enthusiastic about this class or area of interest, but I have really enjoyed it. We learn about the fallacies that people make, the reasons why it happens and finally what the correct way to make decisions are. I have become really enlightened in the way people think. While this is not my first exposure to such fallacies, this course if the first to focus on such and has taught me a lot about the mistakes that I make myself. I'm also taking a yoga class which has been very beneficial. I'm now a lot more flexible than before, and I've noticed that running on Wednesdays (when my class is) with the club feels different than the rest of the week. Perhaps I should try practicing on my own sometime. The rest of my classes (organic chemistry ones and Chinese) either make me really sad to think about or really angry to think so I won't talk about it now.

Life. Surprisingly, this quarter has been actually quite filled with events. Unfortunately, it has mostly been events that I could not go to. The Columbus Marathon was a great race, and it was a lot of fun watching people run by (you'd be surprised) and cheering on club members. Sadly, since I spent the entire summer trying to get stuff done instead of running like I should have, I was in no shape to run either race (full or half). President Obama also visited (incidentally, the same day as Columbus), but I also didn't have time to wait in line since I had a 5.5 hour MCAT class at the time and two quite difficult midterms the next day. Also the OUAB has been showing some really good movies at the Union Theater, but guess what, I'm still too busy. Sadly this week's film is Twilight, and so the one and only time that I can actually go see a movie, it's one that I will not watch. Such is life. While this portion seems really depressing, I must say that my every day life has been filled with much more little surprises that have helped carry me through enough.

Now that I have posted something about my life, I feel much more content and am probably ready to make some breakfast and get some homework done. I must say, I've really looked forward to this weekend just to get homework done with any distractions of OSU football or the like. As I read this last line and think about how happy I was this week about this weekend, I have come to the conclusion that my life has come to a new level of fun sadness.

So to the 14 or so friends and random people who stumble onto my blog, I will be back very soon. The quarter is almost over, which means the Holidays will be approaching us. Can you believe it's already early November? Hopefully, the next post will at the latest come when I am several thousand feet in the air and accompanied by pictures and video!

End of Summer

Quick update:

Yay! I'm finally arriving at the end of summer. Why am I so excited? Well...

1. Summer to fall break. Since I spent the summer in lab, it'll be nice to have a couple of weeks to myself before school starts.

2. Apple entertainment keynote. Every September Apple hosts its annual iPod and related keynote. This year it came as no surprise. The iPod Touch finally got the upgrades that I was looking for, which means that my old, but much loved and babied 5th generation iPod nano 16GB is now up for sale! Let me know if you're interested (it comes with 2 cases, too!). For amazing-ness of the new iPods, Apple TV and new iTunes, check out apple.com

3. DCRainmaker, a fellow blogger and triathlete, is giving away a Garmin 310XT. Link here. There are three chances to win, and this is one of them! (Putting up a link on your blog) I've already retweeted his tweet and so now I'm signed up for three entries! Woot!