Absinthe Party

Yeah, so I'm totally going to be a doctor and shit. Ain't no thang.

*Dusts off shoulder, drinks pinot noir, doesn't give a fuck*

So.

34S MCAT score.

I am a very, very happy camper. I need to add some top tier schools to my app.

That's two points higher than my best practice exam. Not only this, but in my weakest section, physical sciences, I scored a 12.

Whaaaaat the fuck.

I'm still beside myself.

My pre-health adviser wants me to apply to the ivy leagues. How did this happen? When did I become an ivy leaguer? I slept every day in every math class I had in high school. I have more hours logged into WoW and Everquest combined than I care to consider. And I don't own a single cardigan. Not one.

Don't get me wrong; I'm thrilled. But this all seemed to happen over night. It's been a complete whirlwind, and I'm standing here with all the opportunities in the world in front of me. But part of me wonders how I got here.

Honestly though, I doubt I'll get into an ivy league. My extracurriculars are strong, but not ivy league strong. We'll see though. I pretty certain I'll be going to a good school, at any rate.

Could somebody explain to me what a "hipster" movie is? It seems to me to that many, sometimes respected, movie critics completely write off a movie simply because it fits the hipster moniker. But what does that actually mean?

I'm not saying the remark isn't justified, just overused. I can identify a "hipster movie" when I see one, but regardless of this, I'm mystified as to what the set of criteria for such a film is. It can't simply be a movie featuring a soundtrack with lesser-known artists, but that is often how the title is ascribed. Not only this, but why, exactly, is a "hipster" movie a bad thing? God forbid 500 Days of Summer features a song by the Pixies in one scene. It must be pretentious drivel.

I bring all this up because, some weeks ago, I watched Away We Go, and for the most part, I enjoyed the film. I didn't feel the earth shift beneath me as I watched, but it was good all the same. And just today, I actually got to reading some reviews of the film at Rotten Tomatoes, and like my own take on the film, many critics received the film luke-warmly. Why? Because it "Narrowly manages to avoid the insufferably twee hipster cutesiness of, say, Juno, or any other works of Satan."

Well that's that's just so informative. Pay no mind the the film's actual flaws or strengths. Just demonize the work with a buzzword.

So I've gotten to a point where I'm pretty consistent on my practice MCAT scores. Over the last three tests, I've gotten a 32, 31 and 31. You would think this would be good news, but analyzing the individual section scores reveals something else.

Test 1:
10P, 11V, 11B

Test 2:
10P, 11V, 10B

Test 3:
9P, 11V, 11B

The nine in physical sciences on test 3 is what concerns me. Including previous tests (ones not mentioned here), my all-time best for the section is an 11. The fact that this score varies so much tells me that my knowledge is still sparse and needs improvement.

Furthermore, a closer looks at my scores on biological sciences alone shows a great deal of room for improvement. For those of you who don't know, the biological sciences portion includes questions on organic chemistry and general physiology/biology. Of the organic chemistry problems, I've gotten more than 90% of them right on these last three tests. If I could replicate these kind of numbers for the other half of the questions, I could be scoring over 12. This is where my anthropology major hurts me. I took general physiology a year and a half ago, and I haven't taken the elective courses a more typical applicant (a micro major) has to strengthen this knowledge. I shouldn't see this as a concern though, I suppose, but rather as an opportunity to bring this section's score up with minimal studying.

I can't remember the last time I got something other than an 11 on verbal. Hey guys, I can read!

I probably shouldn't bitch though. I've consistently scored above a 30, and that's been my goal since the beginning. July 17th, here I come.

No.

UCF, USF, UF, FSU, UM, Georgetown, George Washington, Boston College and Emory are the medical schools where I am applying.

Emory, Georgetown, Boston and UF are probably the hardest to get into, in that order. For some reason, the idea of living in DC is very appealing, and George Washington has similar acceptance statistics to USF. Of course, I'll be out of state though. I think Boston might be too cold, but I'm down with Atlanta.

I figure FSU and USF are my "safeties," if you really want to call them that. They're still competitive, but if I can get above a 30 on the MCAT next month, I'm pretty sure I'll get into one of the two, and I know I can pull that off based on my practice tests. FSU is probably my last choice though. Tallahassee, blech, and I think their goal of producing community doctors is least in line with my career goals.

I don't know if there is any one school I want to go to the most at this point, but I think I would be overjoyed if I got into UF, Georgetown, Emory, Boston, or Georgetown. FSU would only be attended begrudgingly and as a last resort. I really don't like Tallahassee, or the Noles for that matter.

Everybody should see the Wrestler as soon as humanly possible.

Last week in my genetics lab, my lab partners and I were doing a DNA extraction from salmon semen. After doing the extraction, we performed a serial dilution so that we may construct a graph based on concentration of DNA versus absorbance. The following exchange occurred.

"We have some extra semen," my lab partner said. "How should we dispose of it?"
"I think we just put it down the sink," I said.
"Are you sure?" asked my lab partner.
"Yeah," I said. "I mean, that's what I do with my semen at home, so I don't see why not."

My morning coffee makes me poop almost 100% of the time.

Does anybody else experience this phenomenon? I mean, caffeine is a stimulant, so I'd imagine it would stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, but the fact that it makes me poop suggests it stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system.

Perhaps I'll never know.

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

( Food )

48/100

Not bad. I like to think I'm an adventurous eater.

For no reason, here is list of musicians I've seen play live.

( Music )

I think it's a pretty decent list.

Side note: Why did Sleater-Kinney have to break up?

If one more person complains about MTV not playing music, I will fucking shit a brick.

MTV hasn't played music in well over ten years, so your scathing critique of the channel hasn't been scathing for at least nine years. The horse is nothing more than kibble on top of a stained patch of crimson soil. Honestly, if you flip to MTV and expect to find anything resembling music, you deserve to watch whatever tripe they're passing off as entertainment.

Yesterday, in my physics class, we (finally) stopped studying the circuit and moved onto electromagnetic waves. I titled the day's notes thusly.

Light and Electromagnetic Waves Or: How I Learned to Stop Studying the Circuit and Love the Class

Seriously though, fuck circuits.

While swimming today, I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to arrange two Funnoodles to achieve the best marriage between buoyancy and comfort.

So my last three posts have been just as depressing as they have been intermittent. I seek to amend this.

I went to Whole Foods today. I bought candied ginger, truffle oil, brie and wine, among other things. Somehow, I've become a foodie.

Also, I think I've decided on a topic for an undergraduate thesis. I want to analyze the relative levels of major histocompatability complex diversity (MHC) amongst populations of different levels of health care. My hypothesis is that, due to the MHC's integral role in the adaptive immune system as well as the great degree of allotypes, that there will be less diversity amongst populations with lower levels of health care. This is because I predict that in these populations, there is the selective pressure which requires a stronger adaptive immune response, and there would be positive selection for a particular set of MHC genes.

I am fully aware that this topic might be too ambitious, and that Cassie is the the only person who will read this and understand what the fuck I'm talking about. And if it's too ambitious, I am pretty much dead-set on analyzing the MHC in some way.

My cat, Tarheels, had to be put to sleep today. We never knew how old she was; I found her eighteen years ago as a stray, and I think it's safe to say that my family gave her a better life than she would have had otherwise.

I always thought of her as my cat. I found her, and then I grew up with her.

I'll miss you, Tarheels.

When I listen to Sigur Rós, I feel like I'm ten years old.

I just walked home in the rain while crying. I arrive home, and I'm cold, wet and sad. I relate to my mother why I'm crying. She kisses me on the forehead, and tells me to take a shower. Upon my exit, she wraps me in a blanket which she just removed from the dryer; she had placed there with the express purpose of warming my cold frame.

I tell my mother why I cried, and slowly, enveloped in warmth, I fall asleep in her arms.

This is how I feel when I listen to Sigur Rós.

"Billy went up the carpeted stairway and into his and his wife's bedroom. The room had flowered wallpaper. There was a double bed with a clock-radio on the table beside it. Also on the table were controls for the electric blanket, and a switch to turn on a gentle vibrator which was bolted to the springs of the mattress. The trade name of the vibrator was "Magic Fingers." The vibrator was the doctor's idea.

Billy took off his tri-focals and his coat and his necktie and his shoes, and he closed the venetian blinds and then the drapes, and he lay down on the outside of the coverlet. But sleep would not come. Tears came instead. They seeped. Billy turned on the Magic Fingers, and he was jiggled as he wept."

I really love Kurt Vonnegut.

Whenever I see a Hollister shirt emblazoned with "HCO," I mentally add the 1- superscript and think of bicarbonate.

And I just realized my last three posts have to do with chemistry. This is no mistake. This is what my life has become.

Edit: I forgot to say this before, but fuck the subscript.

So I'm going through my normal Tuesday morning ritual at work of typing up this week's lab report, and I come across the final post lab question in my lab manual.

You see, this week's lab was about using titration to determine the number of metal cations in the water, thereby determining the degree of hardness. Fascinating, yes, but the last question in my lab manual mandates that I write an informal letter to a friend explaining my findings, and what they mean for him. This is supposed to make me used to talking about science in an informal setting, something that is completely alien to me, of course. At any rate, it's stupid, and I didn't take it very seriously.

( Hooooray chemistry )