Battery Recharge

I got 12 hours of sleep last night and...

IT WAS AWESOME.

Yesterday was the last day for anything school related. Had a PT test early in the morning, rocked it even though I haven't done that much exercise the last few weeks. I was expecting myself to do poorly but I ended up doing better than I did last time.

Then I took my MSCI final which, um, did not go so well. Our midterm was incredibly easy and I guess I thought this would be too, so I didn't review land nav stuff cause we've done soooo much of it. However, they asked some really random land nav questions about things I hadn't even heard of, and it wasn't multiple choice. Oh well.

I had my appointment yesterday with the LTC down at Madigan. It went pretty well :) She was really nice and showed me around her clinic. She went to med school at UHSUS, which is where I want to go so we were discussing that. It was pretty neat.

I also had to go get a new ID card cause mine got stolen I think. I'm also missing a credit card (already called USAA). There's a possibility that I misplaced them, but if I did it was at home or in my car. I super cleaned and rearranged my room the other day, so there aren't many places for them to hide in. I've checked everywhere though. Literally everywhere. Fortunately though my SSG is letting me off with just a ruler slap (literally, he said instead of a negative counseling to put out my hand and he slapped it with a ruler and told me to stop being stupid since I want to be a leader one day).

I got back yesterday, discovered that I could watch "Eureka" on netflix and crashed around 7 lol.

I'm so happy to have nothing to do right now. I can recharge my battery. Brilliant!

Funny Talking Animals - Best Of!

Family Guy - Music & Lyrics By Stewie Griffin

Humble

I was late to my Russian final.

I could have sworn that it was at 11:00 - not 10:30. Oh well, the professor just smiled and handed me my test with a "better late than never". Russian was really the only subject I studied over the weekend, thank the Lord I did too because that test was hard.

Like - really hard.

And this leads me to an important realization about my new life here at SPU and just in general. If the Russian exam was hard, and I'm certain that I will probably finish this quarter with a B....and add that to my B from chem: I'm certainly not going to be the straight A student I expected to be this fall.

This is hard for me to take. Obviously I pride myself in my school and academic capabilities, so when I don't do as well as I expected, it's hard for me not to take it personally. Am I learning a lot? Hell yeah I am. I've learned that at SPU there is no room for complacency and essentially that is where I went astray at the beginning of the quarter. At Blinn I could be complacent with my work, in my studying and still come out light years ahead of the rest of gang. Here - not so much.

Unfortunately I can't quit. This is the only the first quarter and from here on out it will only get harder, so any changes that I need to make in order to get better I have to make now. I don't think I've ever been tested this hard before, this is easily more difficult than basic training in that I don't get breaks and there is no "end" in sight in a few weeks.  This next quarter I'm going to have to be on top of everything - ask questions to things I don't understand, read the chapters even if they put me to sleep, really just LIVE to study, even more than I'm doing now. That's what it's going to have to take to do well on the level that I want to be at. I feel like I've put in more effort this last month than I ever had, and I have seen results - but it came a little too late.

I mean yeah, I am studying two difficult subjects- the sciences and russian. If this was history I would be good as gold (in fact in my art history class I've made nothing BUT A's) but if I really, truly, honestly want to be a doctor - I'm going to have to dig deeper than I thought I was going to have to. It really does take a lot of work. It takes a lot of commitment. It takes a lot of time. It's going to take a bigger sacrifice than I thought it would. I know that it will be worth it - in time. I just gotta keep my head up and take my set backs as opportunities to improve. But most importantly I have to turn thoughts into actions.

Wow - I'm in for quite a ride. This is gonna ssuuuuuuuuuck lol.

Ada Lovelace

I posted what my musical obsession has been this week now it's time for the rest of it.

During Thanksgiving I went down to Barnes and Noble and spent a lovely day sipping on an eggnog latte, reading a book called "The Age of Wonder" by Richard Holmes, a non-fiction about the romantic era of science and its importance in the world we live in today. A great read, it's focusing largely on the post-rennaisance time period - think of "Darwin" or "Hershel" .... anyways, that's got me started on another historical science kick. This isn't the first book I've read on the historical account of science. I've read books on Marie Curie, diseases, cholera, plague, epidemiology and then the comprehensive "The Scientists"  - oh, and a few books about medicine and blood. The history of blood was an interesting read.

When I was christmas shopping online I stumbled across these three shirts on thinkgeek.com. They are so awesome that I saved the images and printed them out and now have them hanging on my wall.

The first one is Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Although more of a writer than a legitimate scientist, she is credited with creating the genre of science fiction. Also, although she didn't perform experiments, she is considered to be a philosophical scientist and did correspond with some of the greatest minds of the time.

 This is probably my favorite of the series. This is Ada Lovelace, and to be honest I had never heard of her. She was the daughter of Lord Byron and is considered by many to be the first computer programmer in history. Apparently, some Italian guy back in the day had hypothesized a machine similar that was similar to a computer. She (being obsessed with mathematics) decided to translate his book into English. Her notes on the translation were twice as long as the book and ultimately she added to his work and developed numerous algorithms for his brain child. I decided to rename my guinea pig in her honor.

Can you guess this one? She's a scientist and a chemist......eh? EH!? It's the one, the only....Marie Curie! Easily one of the most awesome women to have ever lived - I totally admire her dedication and skill to chemistry. In fact there have been many a long night when I have had to sit through tired and boring lectures in chemistry and the only reason I manage is by thinking of her and how this was her work, and it makes the monotonous tone of my professor easier to bear.

So these women have been my other obsession this week. I wish I could find more prints like this, but this is it :(

Тимати - Я буду ждать (official version)

I found this while surfing MTV Russia land....love it, love it, love it... As of right now I've listened to it like 10 times. The rapper is Timati and Я буду ждать (Ya boodoo-schtazt) means "I'll be waiting".

Tradition.

Here I am, sitting in the Collegium surrounded by my friends. We're watching Elf. Popcorn is popping, a fire is going, there is a christmas tree and outside decorations are being put up for Tradition, the biggest celebration that SPU throws all year long. I'm excited, there will be eggnog, cider, christmas caroling, plays, games, free food and we're all in ugly christmas sweaters. Mine is white and had a hairy snowflake on it. Every time I look down I feel like an old many with a hairy chest.

Monday and Tuesday are the last twos days of school which equals - FINALS!!! I had my oral exam this morning in Russian. I brought pictures of Kyle with me and talked about him with my teacher, Prof Nemtchinova. She says that we definitely look like brother and sister ha. I had to explain who he was, where he was from, what he did, what our family was like, what he liked to do in his free time - all in Russian. I even showed her some of the comics that Kyle drew and posted on like, she got a kick out of it and said that she was very impressed with how much I could already converse in Russian. And spanish - cause I kept slipping into spanish ^_^