Overworked Bitch Goddess

Harry: My perfect [breast] size is C. Like a small-mid sized C. D's are just way too fukn big. Like "Holy cow, I can't even hug u big."

That quote's not related to anything, I just found it amusing how it came up while we gchat'd.

-----
So I was chatting with Michelle earlier today, and it seems neither of her roommates like me. I honestly have no idea what I did to offend them, because I've barely interacted with either of them. Roommate #1 apparently thinks I have a "know it all" attitude and that I should never be allowed to have patient contact (and more than that, she thinks I shouldn't go into peds). And Roommate #2 has no respect for me and thinks I should never have gotten into med school. Again, I've barely had any interactions with either of them and I've been nothing but polite/cordial with my the vast majority of my classmates. Also, they've been pretty polite back to me in public. Ugh, why can't people just show their true intentions/feelings to my face instead of this "fake niceness?" Sigh, the drama. :-/

Later I was also chatting with Michelle's bf, Lee. After a while I told him that I may be working with Roommate #2 (who I'll call Kat) on the exec board of a student group (I'll get back to the issue with her later). He asked which student group and I told him the LGBT one. He was surprised (I don't blame him) but was very "whatever" about it, like he is about pretty much everything that's not poker or Starcraft 2, lol. We talked a bit about the severe lack of LGBT health issue awareness and training amongst med students, and here's what he had to say about that:

Lee: [Regarding LGBT health issues] No offense to some of our classmates, a lot of people could use the wake-up call. :-P

That's my sentiment exactly, hehe. We've had no training or even mention of LGBT health issues throughout all of M1 year thus far, and I don't expect we will. I've heard from the M2's that they cut out (or will be cutting out) a small group discussion/module that focused on LGBT stuff during our M2 year. What little education might remain will likely be lumped into the "Psychiatry" or "Behavioral Sciences" course, together with fetishes, pedophilia, etc (at least, that's how it used to be years ago, I don't know if it's still true today).

Lee also mentioned how he doesn't know anyone in our class who's openly "out" (little does he know, lol). But I put it into perspective: why would anyone come out in med school? The rather conservative atmosphere of med schools isn't conducive to one coming out, especially if there's the slightest chance that it'd negatively affect one's career down the road. Furthermore, once someone comes out, it no longer matters what else they are. For example, they'd become "the gay guy" and any other defining thing about that person is wiped clean. Who wants to be "that gay guy" anyway? No one.

So yeah, I do want to make the LGBT group more visible and more applicable to the student body, as I can almost guarantee all doctors will run into a LGBT patient at some point in his/her career. The question is: how? I have a few ideas, but I want to expand further - and that I don't know how.

The outgoing president pretty much did indeed designate me as the future president of that group, I just confirmed. The only thing is, Kat is also really interested in being involved in the group. She was telling Michelle earlier today that she feels like she's going to be the only one on the exec board and will single-handedly improve the LGBT group, she feels that strongly. Except, once Michelle told me some of her ideas, I noticed that they're almost all doomed to failure.

It's going to be rough working with Kat. She wants that leadership power, and I don't want to give it to her because she'll use it to dominate the rest of the exec board (all potentially 3 of us). Funny thing is that she doesn't know I've been designated as the president of the LGBT group, so she really thinks she's the only one. She'll also be the president of 2 other student groups, treasurer of 2 more student groups, and a chair for a student group. To add one more presidency to that list would make her implode with stress, especially M2 year (at least, it'd implode me). Michelle is rather fed up living with her, because everything has to go her way. If not, she apparently becomes a total bitch. This kind of makes me want to be president even more, to "contain" her bossiness.

Sigh, so much drama before anything's even started! What to do, what to do, what to do?! I hope she'll at least be cooperative and polite to my face, otherwise the group will collapse. But again, hard to say as she seemingly has no respect for me and thinks I shouldn't even be here. Oh, and she wants to go into ob/gyn (because according to Michelle, she dislikes men). See the comic below under "ob/gyn" (original source here):Oh, and also look under the "Neurology" panel. That's exactly what I think about neurology. So much knowledge, so little ability to help.

The Sensitive Soul

I took this "What type of med student are you?" quiz on Facebook. My result: "the sensitive soul." In an odd way I'd say that's accurate though I would've never pegged myself as such a few years ago. The source of the quiz comes from this comic below (please click on it to enlarge and absorb the full hilarity):
My roommate got: "the questionable admission." I'm sorry to say but sometimes I feel that's an accurate description for him - not that he can't do the work (he definitely can) but that he doesn't care about medicine as much.

Another hilarious comic is the "12 Medical Specialties Stereotypes." I particularly like the ones for dermatology, ob/gyn, and radiation oncology. See here below (again click to enlarge):

Both of the comics above come from scutmonkey, who's also the author of the blog the underwear drawer.

Anyway, studying is going along alright. I had a mock anatomy lab practical exam last night. Nothing like spending an hour with about 100 of your peers staring at dead bodies in the night. I kid. I got 43/50 right, which isn't bad. I'm having trouble distinguishing arteries from nerves in some parts of the body (shut up, they all look the same in a cadaver - white and stringy - that probably sounded bad). It kind of sucks that we're not allowed to touch the bodies during the exam, as that's how many of us can definitively distinguish some things from others. Ah well, spending more time in the lab today with my group to get that sorted out (hopefully). People are beginning to freak out, maybe I should study more . . .

Oh, M4 Guy will no longer be helping us in anatomy lab. He's now doing his next rotation in I don't know what. Le sigh. :-(

Cuttlefish, eh?

Found at this link.

Hmm, maybe this is the branch of biology I should've done research in, and not fiddled around with the E. Coli genome or cancer cells. Cuttlefish are certainly more interesting to observe than colonies of bacteria growing or cancer cells on a slide (or dish).

I've kind of been lethargic the last few days, and my head feels cloudy for most of today. It's late and I'm going to bed. I'll post something more substantial later.

---TANGENT---
So I remembered this JUST before I went to bed last night. I caught up with two more blogs! :P I think my eyes are going to assassinate me for trying to catch up with a blog each day/night. Left a bunch of comments as well (so to Razz and gatechguy1, sorry for the sudden influx of comments if you find that annoying!). Their blogs are:

Doin' me head in
Thoughts of a College Boy...

As always, if you haven't done so you, head over, check out their blogs, and say hi! :D
---END TANGENT---

Mush . . .

My brain feels like it has rotted away from disuse this summer. And the following exemplifies my life of late:

Oh well. I really need to get out. And my morning run doesn't count. Too bad there's really nowhere to go in my city, especially without a car . . .

---mini-rant---

So apparently, the Amtrak is closed on August 11th for maintenance or something in my state. Thus my cousin will be staying until August 13th. Which is okay except I want my room back! I want the ability to jack off in the (more or less) privacy of my own room (my stupid door doesn't have a lock on it). Come to think of it, I haven't jacked off in about a week. Go me and self-restraint!

And I think my cousin has that "stinky Asian" smell. I don't know how else to describe it. It's weird! He's been here 6 days already. At least half of his clothes have gone through the laundry rotations. My house is pretty open with high-ish ceilings, so it's not like there's no air circulation or anything. Yet he has a distinct smell that's a bit off. My youngest brother also kind of has that smell, but he minimizes it well by not spending too much time in small enclosed rooms where you marinate in the same smell for a long time.

Yesterday my dad was teaching my cousin some algebra that, for the life of him, my cousin just couldn't get. Seriously, how hard is the equation: y = mx + b?! Anyway, my dad kept challenging him intellectually, having him work through the problems himself. After a while my cousin started to cry a bit. Which is sad as my dad was being unnaturally patient and wasn't even yelling. If it were my brothers or me, my dad would've proclaimed us useless and stupid long ago. My cousin's really not good at math. His English skills are lacking too. I'm surprised he hasn't entered an academic coma yet from all the SAT/ACT he's been doing.

On a slight tangent, I read a while ago that we need to focus more on math and the sciences in school. It's almost a double-standard when people say "Oh I'm not good at math" and that's okay, but when people say "Oh I'm not good at English" (or whatever primary language) they're seen as dumb and/or illiterate. So why's it okay to say one's bad at math while it's not okay to say one's bad at English? It's kind of lame when you don't have the ability to do simple math and simple algebra problems, assuming you don't have a learning problem and aren't mentally retarded. We're not talking about calculus here, just as we're not talking about analyzing John Milton (probably not the best analogy, but whatever).
---end mini-rant---

Anyway, Hish found out the identity of the guy in the yellow briefs in my last post. He's fitness model Bryan David Thomas and apparently he has his own blog!

Here are some more gratuitous pics of him. :P

Oh, on a final note, Chinese food is good for you. W00t!! Also, the sense of smell is totally underrated. Just a couple good articles in those links.

Teh Internets Are Fun!

First some quick updates on my life . . .

I accepted MCW's offer about a week ago. In mid-August I'll get one of two things from them. I'll either get an acceptance letter to this year's entering class, or I'll get an acceptance letter to next year's entering class. So for sure if I don't get into med school this year, I'm guaranteed next year. I guess I should start looking more at public health now, just in case, as well as apartments both here and in Milwaukee. Hmm . . .

My youngest brother is sometimes a meddler. He has this tendency to go through my things randomly. Hence I've become quite secretive, almost obsessively so. In any case, he found some of my old (gay) porn on an old computer the other day while I was still in Chicago. When he confronted me (jokingly), in my head I was like "Oh crap! Why's that still on there?!" I brushed it off as if I had no idea what he was talking about and that it shouldn't be there. I don't know if he bought that or if he suspects me of anything. He dropped the subject pretty much right afterwards.

So, regardless of whether or not I go to MCW in August or public health in September, it's going to be a new start. Why not lose 10-15 lbs? I have about a month to a month-and-a-half, shouldn't be hard, right?

I've added two more blogs to my blog roll:

DC Cised
A Popular Dude's Secret Life

Still plugging through some other blogs. I don't like to add blogs until I've read them through from the beginning to the most recent post.

And now, from the depths and extent of my current boredom, I bring you webcomics and lolcats from teh internets!

PHD Comics
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1039

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1040

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1041

Questionable Content
http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1183

Lolcats, lol

more cat pictures


more cat pictures


more cat pictures


more cat pictures


more cat pictures

There needs to be an auto-size function for pictures. >.<

We are the Hands . . .

. . . of research. It's true. AG-F and I occupy one of the lowest tiers of in the lab hierarchy - freshly graduated lab technicians. The only people lower than us are high school students and undergrads. We are thus subject to the whims of lab politics. It's somewhat amusing really (to me, though AG-F hates it). We do whatever someone wants us to do.

In any case, I've learned to love pubmed as much as one can possibly love it. Actually, I don't love pubmed. It can be annoying to use. In retrospect, however, it has allowed me to look up medical journals without having to actually seek the physical copies of those journals. In all my four years of undergrad, I've only checked out a book from the library once, and that was in my first semester freshman year. Everything else I needed was from either pubmed or some online biology journal. I still printed these articles though, as I can't stand reading them on a computer and I like to highlight and write notes in the margins.

I gave up on my own project and lately have been helping AG-F with hers (and doing whatever bidding people higher up the hierarchy want). I've been assigned a new project, except I'm leaving the lab in 2-3 days and this project takes at least a month to complete under optimal situations. So again, I just help AG-F. A few months ago she showed me how to extract the cochleas (the snail shell looking thing, for those who aren't biologically inclined) of the inner ear from the heads of mice. I don't know if I've blogged about this before, but here it goes again if so.

Today we had to kill 6 mice and extract their cochleas - 4 wild-types and 2 mutants. The mutant mice are so cute! They're "dwarves," so they're tiny. They have cranio-facial deformities that actually make them look cuter. Too bad their mutations also make them deaf, unable to keep their body temperature up, and thin their bones. I felt a bit bad killing them. I don't like to kill things (except spiders, ants, flies, most other insects, and bacteria, they don't count). After the mice were dead, I decapitate them, skin the fur back on their heads, then bisect their heads length-wise with scissors. I then scoop the brains out on either side to expose the cochleas, and then pry the cochleas out with sharp forceps. Even though I was wearing gloves, my hands smelled like dead mice for a couple hours afterwards.

To a non-biologist I'm sure all this probably sounds inexplicably gruesome, gross, and intense. It is rather gruesome, but not as intense as it could be. At least the mice weren't alive as we did all this. I think there's some weird psychological thing that makes it way more bearable to do all this when they're dead than if they were still alive. Even though I don't have a problem doing this, I know I cannot be a surgeon. I don't care about the money; never did. For one thing, as I mentioned before, these mice are already dead when we dissect them. In surgery, a person's still alive and you want to not harm/kill them. I don't want that kind of burden - the thought of making a mistake that could be costly beyond my imagination is a kind of stress I do not want as a future doctor. I think I would often refuse to do even the "simplest" procedures involving cutting unless it were an emergency or something.

On something completely unrelated, my brothers have got me looking at the webcomic Questionable Content. Here are two recent strips:

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1171

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1172

The nerd in me rejoices. At some point I will go back and read all of them. When I have time . . . if I have that much time.

---TANGENT---
Oh, I just thought of something randomly. About 2 days ago my roommate DvF-M invited 3 of his Physics Club people over. They were watching Battlestar Galactica. I didn't think it could exist, but there were effectively 4 DvF-M's in the living room at once. One was enough!!

So, DvF-M is very loud. He doesn't have a "quiet/whisper" mode. And he doesn't know when to stop talking. And here they were, 3 other people who were equally loud and each kept trying to talk over the other to be heard. Eventually I couldn't hear the TV anymore as their voices drowned it out. They put the episodes on closed captioning. Seriously?!

And they weren't even paying attention to what they were watching!! They just sat there loudly criticizing what they were watching and the actors. Seriously?! I had to leave. Note to self: never watch a movie with one of them.
---END TANGENT---

Shifting Futures

Okay, I couldn't come up with a particularly pertinent title for this post. But I hate leaving things untitled - things need to have some kind of unique identity.

Anyway, plans have changed for tomorrow. I woke up this morning and remembered that tomorrow is my grandma's birthday. Since my grandparents are visiting us this summer, they're all coming out here to me to celebrate her birthday. I get to show her around campus and such, and they'll probably stay for lunch and dinner then return home (home is only an hour away, so not such a big deal).

This does, however, prevent my friend TR-M from visiting me tomorrow. Which is sad. This means no "coming out" moment tomorrow. Oh well. I called TR-M and we agreed that as soon as I got back from Chicago I would drop him a line so we could hang out. We have been friends since we were practically around 7-years-old. He needs to know. Only now it'll be later rather than sooner. If I possess nothing else, I possess a rather remarkable amount of patience.

Today I also said goodbye to SR-F. I'll be leaving for home this coming Thursday while she's going up north with her family on Tuesday. Since we're both busy tomorrow and Monday, today was our goodbye. We basically just walked around campus for about 2 hours, talking, and then we went to get bubble tea and popcorn chicken for perhaps the last time together. It's weird to think that I may never see her again . . . or any of my friends I said goodbye to, for that matter. It's kind of lonesome. ::inserts frowny face::

Who knows what the future brings. Things are always subject to change and we must take it all in stride. Perhaps years from now, twice my current lifetime thus far, I'll meet together with a friend. In the shifting futures of our lives, anything is possible.

On a completely different note (good idea to click to enlarge) . . .
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1023
I think this is a fairly accurate description. This comic never ceases to amuse me.

Just Another Day

It was Valentine's Day? What? Lol, it felt like just another day. Though I must admit - for as long as this week has been, for as long as this day has been - it hasn't been that bad.

In Chinese class today, we watched part of a Chinese movie called “天下无贼” which translates to "A World Without Thieves." Apparently it's the Chinese version of "The Italian Job," but the two movies are not similar at all - except for them both being about thieves. Now I really want to see the rest of this movie.

I went to my next class, Great Books of China discussion. We talked about Zhuangzi's philosophy of life and death - but particularly death. Haha. After class, I was accosted in the halls by the Valentine's Day ninjas - people dressed in pink sweatshirts and sweatpants with ninja hoods who gave out candy to random strangers. It was amusing, to say the least. I know not what university group they're affiliated with, but they have my support.

But by far, lunch was the highlight of my day. I was finally able to attend SBS (Society of Biology Students) for the first time this semester! Okay, I know it sounds incredibly dorky, but first hear me out. There was free pizza. Who can say no to free pizza?! And the speaker was this amazing EEB (Ecology & Evolutionary Biology) professor. His topic: the evolution of sex.

He was a very entertaining speaker. I now wish I was able to take on of his courses (particularly Bio 116: The Biology of Sex). Grr, graduating. Anyway, he talked about how people choose mates who have a MHC (multi-histocompatibility) complex that's different than theirs. Basically, people tend to choose mates whose immune systems are most different than theirs. This is correlated with natural male and female body odors as well as the symmetry of men's faces.

He then moved on to the mystique of the female orgasm. These 2 guys had to go to class and when the professor mentioned the female orgasm, they were clearly torn. Admittedly, I would've been torn too. Apparently, about 29% of American women ever get orgasms from vaginal sex, although over 95% of these women are able to attain orgasm when masturbating. That's somewhat telling. And we went through all these theories as to how the female orgasm may have evolved or been adaptive. So apparently in some non-human primates, the males suck so bad at vaginal sex that the females "get off" only by stimulating each other. Facultative lesbian primates? Hmm.

Lastly, someone asked him about homosexuality. What he said isn't too far off from what I know/believe. Of course there are genetic and factors in the womb. According to some statistic, if one fraternal twin is gay, there's a 25% chance that the other's gay too. And among identical twins, that probability increases to 50%. This clearly suggests that there's a genetic component to homosexuality, and some studies suggest that certain hormone changes in the womb at the right time can influence the sexuality of the fetus. But even with those numbers, it's also clear that there are external post-gestation factors such as socio-cultural aspects. Lastly, I also appreciated how he said that sexuality is obviously not determined by a single gene, because that's too simple, and that sexuality is multigenic (aka, affected by many genes). Oh yeah, and he bashed Huckabee as a moron. His reaction was priceless.

The rest of my day was a blur, of sorts. I went to research, did what I had to do, and then went to work. At work, I helped people understand genetics. I'm somewhat impressed that people showed up at all, but hey, their genetics exam is next Monday - so studying trumps Valentine's Day. For the second week in a row, I actually felt productive and useful. Hurray!

Now, for some amusement/humor:
http://xkcd.com/382/

This Wang Leehom song has been stuck in my head lately.