Oh hey, I remembered about posting pictures

Sorry, I just realized that the boringest thing to do is not post pictures. Unfortunately, this quarter I've just been filling out applications, writing essays, and doing research (not very picture-worthy), but here are two old pictures I found on my camera (new to everyone else though).

This is me... imitating either a large slug or a delicious blue eclair.


And here is Matt.. unwisely mixing two different striped patterns (tsk tsk).

Travelling to the East is nice

I'm starting to appreciate my occasional trips back East, because jet lag seems to be the only thing that can get me back to a "normal person" schedule. Having been in college for three and a third years, I have slowly migrated to being awake from 11 am to 2 pm. Waking up early for class is painful, to say the least. I sort of miss my high school days when going to bed at 12 am was "late" and, while I didn't like waking up at 7 every day, I could do it and still act like a normal person.

Now, with both my trips to Central time (2 hours ahead), I adjust to being on that schedule so when I come back to California, I get sleepy around 10 pm and can wake up early. It's amazing--after coming back from Texas, I spent a good week waking up before 10 am. It's liberating being able to act like a normal person for once...

Speaking of getting up early, tomorrow I'm waking up at the ungodly hour of 8 am to volunteer at Arbor Free Clinic (I'm an interpreter). Even though it's Christmas Eve, the clinic is still running, and being a local, I've guilt tripped myself into helping out (we're probably going to be understaffed anyways). It should be fun though, and maybe this will earn me brownie points with Santa (too bad he doesn't exist... oh well, it'll improve my karma anyways).

Back from St Louis

Hi everyone, I just got back from my interview at WashU (in St Louis, as they love to point out constantly). I really liked the school and everyone there seemed really nice. And Missouri wasn't that bad... I did go there during an unseasonably warm winter (it was about 40 degrees outside--not bad for the Midwest in December) but there were lots of California people there to convince us that the transition wasn't terrible. I ran into a lot of Stanford people, which was nice, and caught up on sleep the night before my interview, which was really nice. Now no more travelling (until I hear back from more schools) until February (when I go to Yale).

Want to hear a funny story?

Sooooo apparently when I wrote my last post, I didn't realize that my UCI interview was on THURSDAY, not FRIDAY. So my plane tickets were definitely for the wrong day, and I figured that out at 5 pm Wednesday evening! The good news was that I made it on time, and the interview went great (I loved the place, and apparently they really liked me too). But now I feel completely retarded and my parents think I'm irresponsible... which I probably AM, plus I was in the middle of finals/group project finishing up for the past two weeks, so I wasn't about to think about stuff a week ahead of time when I had things due the next day.
Anyways, I'm done with finals finally (had to take a makeup exam this morning, which was really hard!) and can relax until Monday when I'm off again to St Louis.
And, I just found out that I'm getting a sink in my room during winter quarter! Woohoo!!

My crazy schedule for the next week

I just finished a pretty easy Medical Spanish final and the end is in sight. After spending 6 long hours in the Tresidder Lair yesterday, my bioinformatics group project report is done, and all I have left to do is study for a (hard) final I'm making up on Saturday. The finals are not what I'm worried about though, it's my crazy travel/interview schedule that's going to be keeping me busy for the next few days.

Today I have to pack up my stuff and move back... I also have to do some laundry, which is irritating. Then, I'm going to leave for UC Irvine tomorrow (MSTP interview), and I'll get back on Friday. I have my final on Saturday, and will have one day of rest before I have to fly again on Monday, this time to St. Louis for a WashU medical school interview. By the time I get back on Tuesday night, I'm going to be exhausted.

I have figured out what I'm taking next quarter though, which is exciting: I also am about 99% positive I can graduate on time (which is always a good thing!). Here's my proposed schedule:

CS 103A: Discrete Math (this looks boring but is supposed to be easy.. blah requirements).
BMI 211/CS 271: Introduction to Biomedical Informatics: System Design (also a requirement, but looks a little less boring)
BMI 215/CS 275: Translatonal Bioinformatics (This class looks like it's going to rock!)
SLAVGEN 146: The Age of Transgression: The Great Russian Novel

I'm most excited about taking the Russian lit class-it's only the 4th I've taken at Stanford, which is a bummer. It might end up as death for me because it's a Russian majors' WIM, so next quarter I might be complaining about writing a million papers. In the big scheme of things, papers aren't bad though. I used to be good at writing papers (maybe I still am, but all I write nowadays are grant proposals), and when you're done writing a paper you don't have to go through debugging and error testing.

I also wanted to take CS 108 this quarter (not as a 5th class! in place of another one of these... I'm not that crazy), as I've heard that your Stanford CS experience is not complete until you do. Unfortunately, it conflicted with one of my required classes. Oh well, now I can continue to blithely hate on Java.

Finals week

Yay, I'm done with my structural biology website/final project! I finished on Friday afternoon, narrowly dodging disaster with a laptop death and elaine crashing. Now all I have is a relatively easy Medical Spanish final (Wednesday), a group report for my BMI project class (Thursday), and a final for Cardiovascular Bioengineering (Saturday). I'm taking the BioE final late on Saturday because I have a medical school interview (UC Irvine) on Thursday/Friday.

My weekend was pretty laid back. On Friday, I went shopping for three hours (BUT didn't buy anything but tights...) and missed dinner (I've been doing this too much lately-sad) so I ate leftovers at Matt's eating club and hung out with him/his friends. The funny part was that I randomly mentioned "Man, I want to go shopping again... the mall is open until 12 am, you know" and all his drunk friends suddenly wanted to go to the mall. Drunk people are... weird. So they ended up running to the mall (in the rain, no less) at 10:00 pm, where nothing bad actually happened (surprisingly). On Saturday I went with Matt and my parents to a Christmas musical ("A Christmas Carol") and out to dinner. Now (Sunday) I'm just sitting with my BMI project group, trying to fix a bug... actually, they're fixing the bug and I'm just sitting here. Heheh. Um, time to go.

I never thought I'd say it, but...

I actually think I'm getting burnt out. I think the combination of taking on too much this summer (research plus a hard class) and having to work through all my breaks on medical school application stuff has made me really, really tired of school work. I've been terrible about doing things on time, and while I haven't been turning in assignments late, I've definitely been waiting until the last minute to do everything. I used to be the person who started assignments the day they were due, and now I'm waiting until the night before to even look at it!
Next quarter I'm going to take an easy, non-stressful courseload full of nice things like mindless problem sets. I'm really tired of stuff like unstructured research or classes with huge assignments which you have four weeks to complete. I'm looking forward to Winter break more than anyone can imagine. Heck, I'm looking forward to this weekend--my last Structural Biology project is due today at midnight, and I'm nowhere near done.

On a happier note:

Thank you, Auntie Brenda. My aunt is incredibly cool, and even if she didn't like to take me shopping for ridiculously expensive things, I'd still enjoy visiting her and riding around in her tofu truck and eating huge dinners at Chinese restaurants until the wee hours. (I am continally blown away by the great selection of Chinese restaurants in the Houston area, and if I get into Baylor I'm going to get FAT! The only thing I like more than shopping is EATING!)

Baylor MSTP interview

Just got back from a nice "vacation" in Houston (right before finals, which is clearly the best time to leave).
I flew out to Houston on Thursday, apparently just 12 hours after the weather went from 80 degrees to 38. Fun. Went to a dinner at the MSTP director's house (informal) and basically zoned out because I was tired from my flight. On FridayI had my interviews (8 am to 7 pm!) which went pretty well. Then I got picked up by family members and had a nice relaxing weekend.
Um, I don't really have much more to say other than I loved Baylor and am sort of burnt out on work and stuff. Can't wait until finals are over...