commotiocordis

Updates. Because it's been forever. Short and significantly less detailed than I have words to say, but that's the only way it'll get done at all because I keep putting off updating this baby because it feels so daunting because there's so much to say, and then it never happens. You know, procrastination FTW.

Microbiology thing (recap: professor was a douche, I got the highest grade of those that took test version #2 for the third exam and it was a 44% and he said tough shit when I suggested that he curve it at least even up to the test #1 average).
Debated whether to drop it or not. If I got a C (I was sitting at a 79.6% coming into the last lab test and the lecture final), it'd kill my average and look like shit on all med school apps, but as long as I kept As in everything else (like I was on track to do), my scholarship would be okay. Within 1% of not okay, but safe. Mom said that it wasn't worth the gamble to stay in in case something happened with one of the other classes or some such catastrophy that would cost me some $37,000 over the remaining years. But if I dropped, I'd have to find some way to stay and take summer classes because that was my big 5 hour course and therefore would put me below the renewal credit hour requirements, and I'd have to find a place to stay and pay for both that and the credits themselves because my scholarship doesn't work during the summer (which is dumb, and I hear they're talking about changing it now). Plus, I looked at the last units for both lab and lecture and it turned out that it was a lot medical, and I'd never gotten worse than a B on any of the legitimate tests, so I decided to go for it because medicine's my thing, and I pulled those high enough to get the B in the class. Still not what I want people to see for such an integral class on my med apps, but better than a C and I don't have to put my entire next semester's schedule on hold to retake it like I would if I dropped.

Chemistry thing.
This one is new and very scary because it was last minute. I blanked on a formula for the last test, which brought my average to some 0.17% below the "you don't have to take the final" cutoff. And I was stressing about the micro finals, so didn't really do a whole lot of studying for this one, especially because he was giving us a formula sheet.

bleakone and I did anyway, but we were missing one of the tests to study from. Yeah, guess which chapter's formula section on the final was blank? Natch, the one we didn't study. So that one test managed to bring me down to an 89.6 or .7%, which I thought was an A. But I wasn't sure, so I went to check. He seemed to be indicating that no, that was a B. Which would fuck me over in terms of scholarship, and after I went to all that work with the micro to keep it. But it turned out (and I had worked out and brought all this math up there with me just in case, because I was moving back home the next day and didn't have time to screw around) that there was an extra credit thing that, to make a long story short, he had screwed up and I had pointed out to him back before when I thought that I was getting out of the final but he never changed because it turned out that it brought me up to the 0.17% below but he was going to be a dick and not roun3d up that little bit so it didn't matter. So I moved from having a high enough grade to almost get out of the final to walking away with a 90% even. Holy shit, was that close.

Computer thing.
Meanwhile, my computer died one night in the middle of finals. The screen just went grey. The computer was on, and the screen would dim like normal when it was on battery and get brighter when plugged in like it was supposed to, and if I'd had a spare monitor (as I'm doing now), I could have hooked it up fine, but nope. So that sucked. Know what else. Pretty sure that was THE FUCKING DAY AFTER my warranty expired. I haven't looked it up because it'll just make me sad. I haven't done anything with it yet mostly because it still sort of works now and I don't know if I can bear leaving it for however long. Which is bad. This week, I swear. I'm going to take it to the warranty place and if they tell me they can't do anything, I'll make Dad order the new LCD and we'll get to work putting it in.

In other news. I painted my fingernails two days in a row this week. Well, Kaci did it yesterday in a dark, denimy blue, and then I had been messing with my cuticles and ended up exposing a whole bunch of unpainted nail as well as chipping off some of it, so I put this awesome shimmery money-green on top. This is a once-every-two-or-so-years thing, so it's notable. I also have watched a lot of 30 Rock and SVU on the Roku/Netflix box since moving back home, as well as "Marley and Me" (at which Kaci cried, which means I almost cried because I'm reactive like that) and "Yes Man" tonight, played a lot of Sims, reread some 1600 pages of a Birds of Prey fic series, and did a couple of crossword puzzles. I'm casually looking for a job, but again, not so casually starting now. It's hard, as the computer I was using didn't have internet, and then the one that did doesn't have my CV on it because that's on the harddrive that crashed a few days ago (this one's def under warranty, though, as it's barely a few months old, so I've just got to get around to sending it off). And my thing at the gifted kids camp isn't going to work out because their enrollment is way down due to the economy and they've got a bunch of actual teachers that need to do their gifted practicums and so are taking my job (prolly because they don't have to pay them), and nobody else wants somebody just for the summer because there aren't that many jobs to begin with so it's not worth training somebody that's going to leave in 3 months. I could probably flip burgers or something, but I really need to do something I can put on my resume because this shit is important--hell, Harvard has "what you did with your summers" as a specific category on its list of things it looks at for med school. Not that I haven't blown my Harvard chances all to hell by ~~getting a B in micro~~ going to a podunk state school because it was free instead of the decent places my kickass test scores and all around geniosity (j/k) meant I should have gone if we weren't, you know, living off of teachers' salaries. But still. I'd like to go to Wash U at least, which is not exactly in the bottom 10, if you know what I mean.

You cannot define one of the "factors that influence pathogenicity" as "Virulence (degree of pathogenicity)". Seriously? That's like me saying "You know what influences how hungry I am? The degree of my hunger."

Also, things are not "adapt". They may be "adept," but fail.

/Microbiology teacher hate.

THINGS THAT ARE WIN, HERE THEY ARE. My E. coli guys. I transformed the Rad23 bit that I'm looking at into them with three different tagging vectors, and there's embedded in the swap-in bit for all three a gene for antibiotic resistance. That means that if it didn't transform the new DNA into the E. coli correctly, they wouldn't have the resistance so when I put them on the media plates with the antibiotic in the mix, they'd just be killed off. I had 6 batches, one of each of the tags plus a control for each of the tags with just the E. coli and all the other enzymes and such but without the Rad 23 segment inserted, and I went to check today and the ones that were supposed to grow grew and the ones that didn't, didn't. So win, especially considering I thought this stage had been ruined (and I would have had to go back several steps as I didn't have enough of the prepped R23 plasmid left over) when it was left incubating way too long at one stage because Dr. Smith left instructions to leave the instrumentation room unlocked, but there are two of those and so the wrong one was open and I couldn't get in to pull them out of the incubator.

bleakone and I (I dragged her along as we were on the way to the gym and it was only supposed to be a 15 minute stop of pulling the vials out of the incubator and putting them on the antibiotic plates and putting those back in the incubator) were in there for several hours as I tried to find a way to break in there. Turns out that in the evening on a Monday there's nobody in that building with a key. At all. I felt bad because then Dr. Smith had to come back in, but by the time he got my message, we had already given up and left, so he plated them for me.

Oh, and in news. US crew members have retaken their hijacked ship from the Somali pirates. That's right, suck it. I think we should fix our economy by becoming pirates, by the way. As a nation. It'd be awesome.

I'm benching for the moment the issue that I will probably at some time need to broach in more detail regarding how I've royally fucked my life by somehow cutting my average microbiology test score in half on the last exam, turning my grade from just-a-few-more-points-till-an-A to if-I-drop-a-few-more-points-I'll-have-a-D which in turn will have the drastic effect of there being a very good chance I won't be back in the fall as I'll lose my scholarship.

So I wrote this paper for abnormal psych that's basically a mini case report on a fictional character. I did Olivia Benson, and really wish I'd had more time and more pages (I hit 10 already, LOL, when I think most people were closer to 4, though admittedly I had two pages of cleverly doctored [rather brutally with Paint, as I don't have Photoshop installed on my new hard drive yet] images of Olivia's psychological test results) to delve more into her character. As it was, I ended up missing microbiology (yeah, I know; in my defense, this was prior to seeing my last test score) and being late to psych today (yesterday, I suppose) morning finishing it up because I started out trying to do the episode research and double check every fact I remembered about her background because the paper-writing-fiend in me felt like I needed citations (none of which actually got saved into the final paper because I didn't want to break character, of sorts, as the therapist).

Also taking up more time than I expected to spend on the paper was the fact that I sort of changed where in SVU canon I was setting the fake therapy sessions--I put it vaguely after the "PTSD" episode, saying that she'd really realized there was a problem then and that her passive participation in group wasn't going to cut it and approached Huang for a referral for more intense help. In my big page of notes I'd already done way back in February or so (why I thought that this would take an hour, two at the most), I didn't take into account the "PTSD" epsisode much and put more emphasis on her reticence to open up due to perceiving the evaluating psychologist as a threat to her job (which I mentioned, but only shortly and accompanying the notation that she requested the referral on her own behalf).

But all of it. . . idk, I just feel like I could have explained my analysis of her behavior and reactions and such so much better. Not within the format he gave us, really, but if I'd had more leeway to add in notes from fictional individual sessions or something. The biggest part I felt that I got in there but didn't express/explain very well was the whole issue of how though she can objectively acknowledge that she was a victim of a sex crime, she was sort of cavalier about needing help, not taking the group therapy she was doing prior to "PTSD" seriously because she sees so many attacks that are so much more brutal every day and can dissociate and reflect on her symptoms and what she should be feeling but doesn't let herself actually *feel* them because so much of her identity is as a helper, not a victim.

I was very proud, however, of how many references to her unresolved issues with Alex I managed to work in, LOL. Again, I would have put that in there so many more times had I not been short on time (compounded by the forced delay caused by the asshole who decided it would be a fun April Fools' prank to grease the staircases and pull the fire alarm at 3am) and working from a given outline. I think somehow I lost a paragraph somewhere, though, because I was flipping back through it this afternoon and couldn't find the bit I swore I wrote (maybe just imagined and planned to write but never got around to?) where I explained more explicitly the halving of Olivia's social network (meaning Alex and Elliot) caused by Alex's entry into the WPP and her feelings of rejection due to the fact that not only did Alex abandon her but then not even try to reconnect upon her return to be bureau chief. Still, I got decidedly more explicit with my HoYay references as the paper progressed to the point that at the end, I came out and said in the case outcome bit that "a joint session with ADA Cabot made significant inroads into resolving mutual feelings regarding their relationship". Perceivable as platonic, yes, but in a Xena subtext way more than an SVU HoYay way, if that makes sense to anyone but me.

As it's vaguely like a fic, I'll prolly post it just for fun, but the reason I started typing this post up was to lead into the fact that while doing research for it, Google sent me to a really good (really long--I finished the parts 1-5 block a bit ago and that was 70 pages in itself, and I think it goes to 26 or so) SVU fic called "Conflict of Interest", in which a reference to the statute of limitations for rape sent me back to Google to find out what said limitations were for the different states. I found this chart (PDF) and started reading through it only to be caught up short on Arizona. Rape is a class 2 felony (without modifying circumstances, a first offense punishable by 5 years, OMGWTF). Marital rape? Class 6. First offense punishment is one year. Holy shit. Spousal rapists are required to register as sex offenders, though, which is better than I expected, but still. That's horrid. I wish to move to Arizona just to campaign against this bullshit.

Assume similar indignation for all the other states and their criminally short statutes of limitation/lengths of incarceration/ludicrous determinations that some rapes aren't as bad as others because you know the perp. Shall go back to reading through it now, because though I was really tired right after dinner (meaning when I got back to my room a bit before midnight), the combination of this good fic and the potential for learning, OMGYAY, has popped me pretty darn awake. Plus, Chelsea was snoring.

One last thing. OMG ER FINALE TOMORROW. And I'm really supposed to go to the pre-law fraternity meeting during the first hour of it, but I think not because I'm not missing this. I'm kinda sad because I've been watching it forever and it's the one through which I discovered the miracles of internet fandom, and it's ending, but it is time--I still watched it only really out of the afore-insinuated feelings of loyalty to it; though it always has its moments of really kickassery, it frankly hasn't been that good for a while now, especially when you're comparing it to how good the beginnings were. Still. There might be tears.

In mock trial now. OMG, I hate this girl. She comes in and is all I IZ DOMINANT AND A KICK ASS MOCK TRIALER and she's not. She had the nerve last week to say something about us electing a captain, and I was all O HELLS NO, I have been trying to get this team off the ground since fucking September, and even after you joined you missed some 4 meetings because your schedule is "too hectic", so you don't even get to think about that.

It's pretty funny, when we do objections when going through this. If she called it, she keeps fighting it right until she knows she's going to lose, and then goes "Oh, let's just move on," once she realizes I've got her. And tried to do the entire plaintiff case first, not just the case in chief--she was trying to cross one of the defense witnesses before they'd been directed. That or she thought that the witness selection order carried over to witness calling order, even though I'd clarified that already last week and she evidently wasn't listening. She keeps telling the other lawyer to make these bullshit objections every three seconds if the witnesses answer is more than two words on direct or it's what she thinks is a leading question, which fails because she doesn't know what a leading question is, she keeps using the wrong justification for objections and just jumbling about and reiterating the "pursuant to Midlands Rule of Evidence (some random number that's wrong)" bit and not citing an actual rule, and she's overall just. . . not my guys from high school. Basically, her theory of working things is starkly different from mine; I'll just go ahead and say here that we have either beaten her team in HS or beaten someone who beat them, so I'm fairly certain that I've got at least a bit of an idea what I'm fucking talking about. I would take such pleasure in kicking her witness's ass in cross and objecting the fuck out of her direct if this was high school and she was on the other team.

Anger. Seriously. At least I can accept when somebody else points out a good objection. And don't try to point out bullshit ones when I don't know the justification for them or cheat my way out of being deemed wrong. That's the biggest thing. If she was trying to sneak in and steal control because she's. . . idk, an actual lawyer, that's different. Perfect example of a little bit of knowledge being a horrible, horrible thing.

That's this weekend. My witness, who I'd thought would be pretty good when we were going through some questions, looks like she's just going to memorize the script she wrote. Yet again, I need our witnesses back. Fucking dream team, we were. I'm really hoping she polishes it up and goes completely off script, because just like every time a script is written, she's really canned.

<-- That was all Monday. The witness who was supposed to meet me didn't actually show up--I think we may have mistakenly agreed on different days to meet, because according to the only-semi-annoying lawyer (so called because he tends to listen/ask the *less experienced* bitchface rather than me about some things, but that's semi-understandable because he actually knows her. Plus, his boyfriend walked by and kissed him once while we were meeting, and I had to restrain myself from "awww"ing) that like I her, she couldn't find me on the day.

Now it's Wednesday. My life sucks. More MT and Judith making my time of it a bitch. First, why today in particular sucked so hard. Starting at 7:40 or so I was in class until 5:50 (not even extracurricular lab, but lab-lab that took way too long because we had to keep redoing stuff because our results kept being shit), then back to plug in my laptop and putter around looking for the library Torchwood dvd I'd misplaced; never even got to take off my shoes before down to dinner and then the gym and then straight back up to my room to grab my mock trial binder for a no-notice MT meeting. It's almost 11 and I've been in my room a grand total of one hour since waking up.

I want to kill her. I really do. She's now got Sahara (the president of the frat who DIDN'T EVEN WANT TO GO) being the president, but at least it's not her, because I would have straight up vetoed that. But it's supposed to be me.

I've got this reoccurring dream/worry/fantasy that she's going to give the closing argument once (out of 4 trials) and suck, and I'm just going to have to be "No. You're not doing it anymore. I'm taking over, role limits be damned."

It's going to be a while before I can do these three pages of reflection stuff for Hero and Quest (summary of the weeks' readings, which I only ever did the first 1/6th of the entire book, summary of the class discussion, which is hard as I'm an idiot and never put dates on my notes, and a reflection bit; doesn't seem hard, and yet is so much more difficult than the bazillion-page microiology practice test I should be doing instead because you've got to make it sound good) because otherwise it'd be WARWARWARDIEDIEDIE HE'S (Henry Flemming from Red Badge of Courage) FAIL FOR RUNNING BECAUSE THEY NEED TO ALL BE DED KTHXBAI.

I'm letting her make me loathe going to MT because it's something I'm frankly really fucking good at and she's taking it away from me. She took my closing already, which I was fine with at first if it meant I'd just have more time to coach the other lawyer and witnesses who'd never done anything before, but she knows them all through the frat, so they all went "Oh, she's got debate experience and her little podunk town school did MT, so let's talk to she who DOESN'T FUCKING KNOW WHAT A LEADING QUESTION IS OR THAT PLAINTIFF CAN'T CROSS THE DEFENSE WITNESSES BEFORE THEY HAVE TESTIFIED." (Seriously? That second part? I don't think you need to have any experience with law save having seen two episodes of Law and Order to know that the lawyer on the other side asks their questions right after the lawyer whose witness it is asks theirs. Supposedly she just got confused between the order for pre-trial witness selection and calling the witnesses in the actual case, but you know what that tells me? She didn't really read the rules, and yet she's constantly trying to point them out to other people.) Oh, and the kicker. As this is pretty much the entire basis of the case. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE A BITCH TO SOMEONE TO SHOW ACTUAL MALICE. RECKLESS DISREGARD WORKS TOO AND IS THE EASIER TO PROVE. W. T. F.

Yeah. I'm not an overly roll-over-and-take-it person in general, especially in an area that I've got some standing in, but I tried so fucking hard not to just go in and write everything for everybody because I knew that since it was so late that I was finally getting people to stick that we didn't have time to be good, and I'd rather people learned for next year than sucked a little less this year. So when she came in to the picture a few weeks ago (versus me, who's the reason this team exists as I've been working on getting it up and going since September through probably 3 whole teams worth of people committing and then dropping out), I was already being too laid back with the team (whoever I could drum up and keep in for more than a week, with people refusing to commit or change their schedules, as I've bitched about before). Most of it's probably that they all know her. Idk. I've gotten this massive complex, now. She wants me to put this stupid-arsed "haste makes waste" into my opening and I can't do it. I won't, frankly, because sure, a theme works well, but one as stupid and singsongy as that isn't memorable as anything but stupid and singsongy, plus the defense can wipe it out with a couple of easy comments regarding the responsibility to the people to get news out on TV asap after it happens (backed up by the expert witness).

Gah. And I don't have anything memorized yet, and I've got those Hero and Quest journals to do tonight which are going to take a long time like always, and I've got two tests to make up when I get back--the microbiology one I could technically take on Friday as we're not leaving until 9 and it's my 8 o'clock, but I'd do a halfassed job on prepping for both mt and the test, and I can't afford to fuck this test up as I've got an 85% in there after that lab one I had to take after missing the follow up on the three labs before due to carfail (because idk when that'll ever get written--car died 2 hours out of STL, 1 hour from school, just on the side of the highway in nowheresville on Tuesday. Got it towed to a place [that I think was the only one within god knows how many miles], turns out it was a fatal dying,

bleakone had to come pick me up because the car's trash; missed everything that Tuesday which happens to be two of the three classes where attendance counts the most). Add the stress of Judith (aka bitchface) and how much I hate losing like I know we will and even worse, having to sit there and have other people screwing up and not being able to object on their behalf or rephrase their answers or something (see MT state semifinals and finals 2007 where I swear I took years off of my life restraining myself from shouting out the response to the objection from the witness bench while my team made a couple of stupid and critical mistakes). And having to fucking open for the plaintiff (never fun, as that's the absolute first thing to happen in the trial) and then direct the first plaintiff witness (the first actual exam to happen in the trial, which is dangerous because you can't get the feel for the judge or the other team's objection strategy before you have to just go--I'm well aware that the person with that job tends to get the lowest scores for that reason, which makes everything worse because it feels like everyone else will think that that's some kind of affirmation that Judith's better than I am if she scores higher when I know she's not). I'm breaking out like nobody's business (as per usual in preparation for the ONE DAY A YEAR I actually put on makeup and dress up and stuff) and having mini panic attacks about compounded stress and the prospect of driving 1.5hrs in a car packed with ~~three~~ four? other people (I don't know what I'm going to do there. I need to be either knocked out with megadoses of Dramamine or allergy medicine or something, which would not give me enough time to recover, or be able to completely zone out and meditate the fuck out of that car--for all seriousness, I'm freaking out just thinking about the prospect--both of which would prevent the rehearsing we should be using the time for.)

GAH. An hour later and I've been just writing this and catching up on the news and such and not doing the homework. Fucking fail. Midnight and I've got hours left of work to do. I need to learn to make these things as short and easy as they're supposed to be. I'm fairly sure I'm overthinking.

I'm also fairly sure I'm close to the border of incoherent from fatigue (not tiredness, really; though that's there to a not-pleasant extent as I woke up some ninetybazillion times during the night last night, it's mostly just exhaustion from the bitch of a day this has been) as seen by the worse my typing is getting. Though point of interest, Chelsea (primary cohab) was listening as she was going to sleep a bit ago to me rock out this keyboard and she asked how fast I type "because sometimes I listen and you're going at it like a ninja", and I guessed like 40wpm or something because that seemed like a number I'd seen before, but evidently if I'd seen that number before and not just pulled it out of the top of my head, it was from maybe 6th grade when I had to take typing class because I took some random online test just now and pulled an 80-95wpm range. That should afford me some kickass job somewhere paying lots of money until I get my MD and make tons more money, I think.

LOL at how I wake up at an ungodly early hour and try to do homework (and can't, because I can't find my lab schedule so I don't know which one to prep for microbiology), and munch on a handful of Fritos, and somehow the smell is enough to wake up my roommate. One handful! That's crazy to me, considering the window is open and my fan is on by my bed and that it was literally only one handful worth. Plus, though I can smell them, you don't think of Fritos as overwhelming stench. Idk, they're not great, but across the room? I'm fairly pissed, because she all but wakes up and yells at me, and I'm all WTF. If you had let me get the nap I wanted this afternoon instead of making me waste my time trying to sleep when you turned the light on, I would have been productive enough to (try to) do this reading before going to bed and you wouldn't have this problem. It was funny, though, how she's like "Do you smell that?" And I've got no idea what she's talking about, so I'm like "No. I . . . can open the window, I suppose?" And she asks if I cooked something, and the answer's still no, but I pause and think about it for a while because I've got no idea what it could be and my brain isn't good at switching gears from microbiology to smells when startled by her popping up like that--it's like she's got Fritodar, and as soon as my hand leaves the bag she pops up and makes some comment about the smell. If I'd downed an entire bag or something, maybe I'd get it, but to not only be smellable across the room but supposedly wake her up? I'd really rather she just asked me not to or something, if it bothers her, because this little side-comment thing she pulls is annoying.

"If the taxpayers are helping you, then you've got certain responsibilities to not be living high on the hog,"

Obama to detail further compensation limits

Damn straight. But then again, how many of the bailed-out CEOs really need a salary anyway? They'll cash in their stock options, maybe sell off one of their 4 Lamborghinis (which I'm surprised as hell I spelled right on the first try), and just keep on trekking. Still. Step in the right direction, considering what the Forbes list comes out with as salaries for the top CEOs every year. (Shift it to the teachers. The teachers!)

Microbiology test this morning? Quick. Should have been easy, had I been studying the easy stuff and not the hard shit that I didn't understand because he didn't really teach it. Lots of memorization of the history, which I've learned to expect to be the barely-skimmed-over part of these classes where it's not really relevant and have been unpleasantly surprised when this is not the case in two science classes here now.

And one question that just killed me--they wanted the name of the apparatus that lets you grow a continuous culture by feeding in and draining out a limiting nutrient that you then use to determine growth rate of a species. I looked at that last night and went "Oh, that's easy; I'll recognize it." Sure, I would have recognized it were it multiple choice. I remembered that it started with "chemo-". I could have danced around the word, bloody diagrammed it were it a short answer question. Nope. Fill in the blank, the stupidest test question type in existence. Seriously. Multiple choice gives you some context and lets you rely on recognition memory. Something with more room to answer lets you show that you know what you're talking about even if you forget the word. Can't come up with the exact term on fill in the blank and you're screwed. That's the one that I absolutely know I got wrong (I made up some "chemotron" thing that sounds more like a big technical piece of equipment than the "chemostat" it actually was).

And then a bunch more where I had spent too long working on trying to figure out what a south seeking magnetotactic bacterium in Flathead Lake would tend to do (questions from the book's online tests, which I mistakenly both prioritized higher since I don't have the actual book and spent much more time on since we covered the topics but not much of the actually questioned-on content, which should have been a clue in retrospect). So it was more "yeah, it's one of these. And this one sounds right. But not quite sure." The history stuff, mainly; the names I'd never heard before lecture and then didn't spend time reviewing because who really gives a damn about who did this first and when, so long as they did it?

*sigh.* Psychology next, which I'm hoping should be as easy as I'm expecting it to be, but as usual, I'm vaguely fearful that I'm entirely wrong. The bio test was all of 10 minutes max; I was out of the building by 8:20 when you add in my taking it and then going through it 2x more because I didn't want to turn it in first (the kid next to me looked like he finished it--turns out he just paused for a really long time whilst thinking--and just sat there, so I wondered if maybe we'd be grading it in class or something), so I got to my spot in the psych building (actually a different spot, because I brought my laptop cord today just in case and the spot with the tables that I usually use has no outlet) and had enough time to do this before I go through my notes again, as the class isn't until 10.

I started the third journal for my Hero and Quest class last night before realizing that she said "before Thursday" we must turn it in, which means that I can probably slide it under her door before my 9am on Thursday (hopefully she's not in before that), so I switched to the biology. That test is tomorrow as well, so maybe I can work the answers I'm going to write out for the study guide--this class appears to be very free response rather than the multiple choice/matching/"describe what myth's happening in this picture" of her class last semester, so I figured actually composing answers to all of the prompts is a good idea as she's mentioned pulling test stuff from there (though you never know to what extent teachers mean when they say that; could be anything from pulling questions word for word to their being related in topic and style)--into the reflective part of the journal. It's only got to be 2/3 as long as the others as there's no "talk about what happened in class" bit, as we had no class last week. The summary of the reading is going to require that I actually do some of the reading, though. The translation on the Internet Classics Archive of the Iliad isn't as good as the one I've been using by this Canadian professor that's also available online (he's translated a whole bunch of stuff and put it all out there for free, which is really awesome. I think I might email the guy and thank him at some point); I realized that I should have pointed it out to Dr. Johnson and asked what she thought of it in terms of, idk, accuracy and such, but it's a bit late now.

Should probably psych now. This is another one where I'm afraid there's going to be a whole load of names and dates I didn't memorize. There is a lot more history (more detailed, I guess) in the book than in the notes that I didn't really look at, which I'm hoping will be okay. I'm not planning on getting the book for this one at all, since I can pretty much get anything I need from his notes and the DSM (and, you know, AP Psych) and if really necessary, Chelsea (the cohab) is taking it as well and has the text sitting out on her desk that I can nab and quickly look things up in.

O. M. F. G.

Marburg hemorrhagic fever, imported case, UNITED STATES

LOL at how they retrospectively diagnosed it, though.

Atm, I'm in the first floor of the biomedical sciences building while my gel runs upstairs because I've got a shitload of work and no time to do it. I've been getting maybe 4 hours of sleep each of the last three days, which doesn't make me happy as with my 8 and 9 am classes, I was trying to be in bed by midnight. Yeah, that worked until I got, idk, actual homework.

And now I'm swamped, between the lab and mock trial right now. The former is new and weird. Though this is only my third day working in there, so it's understandable, and I am really getting the hang of things because I know what I'm doing, just not where everything is, LOL; keeping the notebook is the hard bit--I'm not sure how much/what to write out. As there's a large continuum of detailedness in procedure, especially since it's all written out for me already as standards and I only really have to mark down changes I make (different buffers, annealing temperatures for the PCR, etc.) And I'll definitely have enough to actually write it up when I'm done, but I'm not sure how much the supervisor wants in terms of that kiddish bullshit regarding actually enumerating every item you ever even think about touching in the materials section, etc.

MT is. . . interesting. We're just prepping every witness just in case, which is what I'd been advocating forever, but now we have enough people to do it. I'm pretty much pissed at most of the people, though, as they just jumped in on Sunday so they could get to go with us to Columbia for the competition. And worried, as I've never heard any of them do anything mock trial-y. And one of them not even talk, really. I'm worried about him the most, as he's not even in Phi Alpha Delta (the pre-law fraternity that's sponsoring the MT team) and. . . doesn't really strike me as intelligent. I mean, at all. But as a result of this last-minute thing, we don't have an overall case strategy, nobody's working with each other to coordinate examinations (because sometimes you've got to make sure somebody says something earlier so you can get in what you want later), etc. So we're pretty much going to get our asses kicked, which I severely dislike. Because I'm good at this mock trial stuff, but I'm having to spend all my time just trying to get everybody (or even some of everybody) in the same room at the same time. We had both of the other lawyers and one of my two definitely-going-to-be-used witnesses not show up to the meeting on Sunday, so I can only hope that they didn't just quit on me or something. I don't understand why people here think they don't have to make any kind of comittment--it's only since the president of PAD intervened for me and started browbeating people that anybody would show up, since I've got no incentive/disincentive to enforce to ensure attendance. But seriously? Nobody seems to get that you've got to make the meeting times fit, you can't just say "oh, I've got work, can't show"--it's called asking off, seeing as how MT'll be over in a few weeks, it's not like it's going to be forever.

And I've got my microbiology test tomorrow that I'm going to fail since I still can't get the book (they're out at the bookstore; they offered to order me one, but I'll be damned if I'm paying the new price much less also the "having to ship it in" fee that I've heard they tack on)

And a psychology test that I'm going to spend all of 5 minutes looking over stuff for because I'm fairly certain I can take this class's final right now and pull at least a 97% but still adds to the stress

And chemistry lab (and thus in-lab quiz and writeup) tomorrow.

And journal entries due for Hero and Quest reflecting over material I haven't actually read all of. These being that which I was up until 1 and then from 3:30-6ish doing two weeks worth of last night (and it actually did take me that long, because of both the ADD from hell that's decided to be a bitch this semester simply because my doctor moved to Wisconsin so I've got no way of getting my meds for it reupped again), but it turns out that even though we didn't have class at all the third week, we've still got to do one.

And to add insult to injury, I was all excited about lunch today because it was some French theme and one of the counters was going to be fruit and cheese dessert. Which I thought might mean decent fruit (berries and such instead of the standard apple/orange/pear/banana/grapefruit rotating selection they've got of fresh, and nasty mushy sugary frozen/canned other fruits). With no interest in dinner (chicken strips and mashed potatoes/macaroni and cheese in both dining halls, blech--since they're for some reason killer popular, that's all it would have been at all the counters and in both places on the same day, which just seems stupid to me), that was going to be it for me for the day, but no. That dining place has a power outage.

And the chairs that I'm in in the computer lab have the most worthless backs in the history of chairs. Which would be okay if you just didn't use them, like stools; painful but doable. But no. The seat is slanted backwards so as to tip you back towards the back, which then leans so far back that I'd probably fall asleep if I stayed that way for more than a few seconds.

On a less-whiny (okay, still whiny, but different topic) note, House last night. How long after all the hoopla was that last scene supposed to have taken place? They didn't establish any kind of time passage, I think, which is fail. Because really? Not so much with the sexing after all that medical shit goes down. (Plus, erm, not really a fan of the 14.)

Evangelical pastor Rick Warren, whose participation drew criticism from liberals and gay rights groups, directly invoked Jesus as expected in his invocation, but did so personally.

"I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life," he prayed.

He also quoted from the most important prayer in Judaism, the Sh'ma, when he said, "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is One," and he called God "the compassionate and merciful one," a phrase from Muslim devotion.
Inaugural prayers aim for a more diverse America - Yahoo! News

Color me surprised. And impressed. The whole "who changed my life" bit felt pretty much like a late-night televangelism testimony session, but the rest (as well as Obama's shoutout to the secularists in his speech) was neat.

And then we get to Roberts. Way to fail, sir. Now we don't actually have a president, as according to Article II of the Constitution and all, he's got to say those 35 words (that are in there in quotation marks, so I think even though he got them all in but out of order, it doesn't count) before taking office. Which he didn't.

Plus, "So help you God?" Not in there. What if he didn't want to say that part? I mean, no reason that he wouldn't, really, but putting that in there as a requirement in the oath sets precedent. Especially since Roberts will probably be doing the next, idk, 8 inaugurations since he's all of 53--now we've just injected a religion requirement into a Constitutionally required element of taking the Presidential office.

Back here in podunkville, fail that after finally finishing the 8 page review exercise for chemistry that every other lab section gets to turn in next week, but my teacher's an ass, I not only have psychology homework to finish (1 page on Dorothea Dix; totally easy but I keep trying to make it harder somehow because idk, using the first hit on Google just seems wrong) and chem lab prep still to do (that's going to be during lunch, because I'm already falling asleep), during the open hour that I thought I'd be able to use to throw the psych paper together I've got a meeting with the guy running the lab I'm supposed to be researching in this semester to go over what's going to be my project for the semester. And I have no ideas. None. I pulled up a couple of pages to read some about what work's already being done in those fields (that's the problem--all of my ideas don't have to do with this DNA repair stuff; I dig much more macro things than that).

And in microbiology news (my 8am class tomorrow), I think I've already "missed" that twice. I swear the guy takes attendance at 7:55 or something, because I was late twice already (of the three class periods we've had so far, major fail; it's almost exactly the opposite corner of the campus from me and it's been so damn cold and windy that riding my bike and walking take the same length of slow) but only maybe 7 minutes the first time and no more than 3 the second, but I don't remember having attendance taken either time. But it happened on the first day, and it's mentioned in the syllabus that though it's not for points, if you've got <4 misses he takes that into account when putting together final grades, so to have lost half of that grace period of 4 in the first week is really pissing me off.

I really, really need another Dr. Pepper as I'm thirsty as hell, but Chelsea moved her bed over near the door more, so I'm reluctant to get up and open it and trek out and back, etc. And I've only got one cold can left, and only 6 I think overall (and I bought the cans rather than my normal 2-liters in the first place because I could just grab one in the mornings, not to drink them while in bed). Plus, I'm thinking about going to sleep now and getting up at 6 or something to finish this Dix thing and try to read over some lab stuff because I'll just be able to take my Ritalin early and let that help keep me up, as opposed to how I'm obviously not able to take it now or risk never going to sleep tonight (and crashing 6-8 hours from now, putting it smack in the middle of my classes).

Another note, because procrastination is my thing. Michelle Obama's dress at the balls? Not a fan. The skirt was white and sparkly and pretty, but the bodice frankly looked like somebody had taken a roll of toilet paper and wrapped it around her chest and over one shoulder a bunch of times.

*points to Bush countdown clock on profile*

OMIGOD. OMIGOD. /end excitement.

Seriously? I'm not that excited. Guess what, guys--a couple of days from tomorrow, a week? I still won't be able to get a decent part time job because more qualified people are ahead of me in the unemployment line. I'll still be paying taxes on my scholarship money and for my textbooks. I'll still be going to a state school because I couldn't afford any of the more prestigious ones that I was admitted to, even though they gave me their top scholarships. Things are different, but they aren't that different. Things don't change overnight because somebody else is sitting in that chair--he's got to make the right choices to get us back on the right track, and that's not going to be easy. And frankly, when things happen like his pegging Rick Warren for the prayer at the inauguration, I begin to question exactly how many of these expectations we've laid upon him Obama's actually going to keep. I mean, think about it--how much has he promised really, and how much have we just assumed is going to change? I think we'll find that there's a lot of the latter. Sure, a lot of the former as well, but a lot of the latter.

I really do hope my clock implodes, though. (Side note also from the Colbert Report? The rerun I watched this afternoon [Edit: and this one] was sponsored by Canadian whiskey. IS THIS A JOKE, STEPHEN?!)

I can't decide whether to get up and eat something or not. I'm not particularly hungry (I think I am brain-wise, which is why this is such a dilemma, but not to the stomach-rumbling yet), but I only ate lunch (sort of two lunches, actually, at 11ish and 3ish, but the first was more like a snack) and I sort of feel like I should. If I don't, I'm afraid I'll fall asleep, and though I doubt of the 10 quizzes we have in my microbiology lab we'll have two in a row, I can't chance not knowing what's going on for a second quiz in a row. As I didn't expect the first one as I hadn't yet bought my lab manual (zomgwtf $55 used) and thus had zero idea of what the answers were on that one. But I can't find where to find out what lab we're even doing tomorrow, and I've been looking for quite some time and it's really starting to piss me off. How hard is it to just put it on your faculty page, or on the Blackboard course page? There's nowhere else I can think of to look. So perhaps to bed it just will be, and I'll just skim the stuff when I get there and actually know what it is I'm supposed to be reading.

OMFG, Tuesday's NCIS. Could it have been more gay? Answer: no. Fail at how I remember none of the details of it, though, just that there were looks and dialogue and ghey. Must rewatch, but stuff is crazy lately with the beginning of classes and I'm pretty much booked all night tonight, which I'm not really excited about. I mean, none if it's intense stuff, it's actually recreation-esque: dinner, then a pre-law frat meeting, then bingo in our lobby, then exercising, but the simple fact that my schedule is packed from 6-10 and I should be going to bed pretty soon after that (I'm not yet used to the fact that I've got to get up early every day this semester, not just 8am T/Th and 11 or 12 every other day, and I already was late to my 8 on Wednesday) means I feel like I've got no time.

Figured out my face thing, when it gets all red and burned like. I don't think, now, that all my incidences of this are the same, as the itching-inflammation precursors and symptoms don't seem to match the rarer pain-inflammation-sensitivity ones. The itching ones, though, are a combination of benzoyl peroxide (the acne medicine) and the cold, I think. Definite on the former, unsure on the latter, but it would make sense as to why I can use the exact same acne stuff day after day for ages and all of a sudden it will randomly give me a face like Rudolph's nose.

This is hilarious. IL spam and how it's getting so smart. I got an ecard from somebody I didn't recognize, and normally I would have just spammed it instantly, but the email notification was from a legit ecard website, so I decided to indulge my curiosity. It's just one of the standard ecard things for Valentine's Day ("See the kisses all over this email? Now picture them all over you."), but in the personalized message bit below was this ( fairly stalkeresque message: )

Seriously, I want to know why tons of my spam is addressed to my mother. Because that can't be a coincidence, that all these spammers think my name is Nancy. At first, I thought it was because my mom was putting my email down for things that asked for it that seem shady, but she says no (plus, she's not so much computer savvy to be able to really tell the difference between the shady and the not, in truth). Oddness. IL how it says that the reason you need to input your debit/credit number is to validate your age. Really, does that work as validation? I had a credit card at 16; I almost wish I'd tried it on something like that (if I would have trusted my number on the interwebs, though, which is a no) just to see if it could tell that I was underage or if it was just if you have a card, you're assumed to be over.

In other news, got called off the standby list to the dentist yesterday and got the whole bottom front of my mouth drilled up. As much as I appreciate that it's now done, as there was nobody scheduled after me so she went ahead and sort of did a double appointment and knocked off both sides of the front (it was a bunch of stuff where the bottom front guys overlap, so it was scattered throughout the non-gaps in the front six or so), two hours was WAY TOO FREAKING LONG to have my mouth being worked on. I'm still in quite a bit of pain from the jaw exertion. Plus, she gouged me a bit on the lip with something (it's more like a bruise/burn, so I think it may have been some part a bit back from the business end of the drill that was still either hot or moving that rested on there for a bit), so though I can now eat stuff with sugar without dying from the pain, the part of my lip right in front of where the worst one was for the aforementioned cavity pain is now preventing me from eating anything that's even the slightest bit acidic without misery.

Mom did give me one of Tyler's anti-anxiety pills before the dentist which really helped. I expected to be sort of mentally dulled in order to remove the anxiety a la sedatives, but this was not the case--I didn't even really notice that anything was different except for vaguely registering that without it I'd probably be freaking out at the beginning (I'm usually good once things get going; it's getting me through the door and into the chair that's the problem).

And school is starting soon again. Fail anxiety is abundant. This is a shittastic semester in terms of courses--virtually all science plus one class called "Hero and Quest" about, idk, heroics in different cultures or something that I have really no interest in but it's one I need for my general education requirements and is taught by last semester's mythology teacher that I kind of liked (though am now significantly less fond of since getting a suckerpunch B in the course).

When your adviser all but tells you you're in the wrong place, that's a bad sign, right? Had a long meeting with him (also my genetics professor) today about classes for next semester and such (basically, I screwed myself by not talking to him before registering for my fall classes because of this stupid major's sequenced classes, half of which are only offered in the fall), and he goes "So, why are you here?" In that way that meant "because you could do so much more someplace else". In terms of being competitive for medical school.

It turns out that because I'm here, I've got to do a lot more of the hoop-jumping shit: the community service, the medical job, the research, etc. if I want to play with somewhere big. While everybody that told me that going to a state school wouldn't hurt me was right in that I'd still probably get in somewhere, that somewhere was one of the other state university medical schools.

But he suggested doing research this semester, so I've got to shop around. It sucks, because I've looked (multiple times, LOL) on the research projects of the biomedical sciences professors, and I'm not that interested in anything they're doing. Mostly because I don't like cells. I'm more interested in the gross pathology of stuff, pharmacology, etc. More applicable to the practice of medicine Alzheimer's mice might be fun to play with, but I'm quite wary of the workload in general--he says that something like 4 hours a week in general in the lab would be equal to 1 hour of actual credit for it. OMG.

O, AND BARACK AND MICHELLE ARE HERE TOMORROW. I've got like *historyshivers* just thinking about it.

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