Dear Medical Schools I've Applied To But Haven't Received a Final Decision From Yet:

MAKE UP YOUR MINDS!!!

Thanks.

Sincerely,

Joe
(dictated but not read)

 

Wouldn't it be nice if every once in a while we got a day that lasted longer than the standard 24 hours? I shouldn't complain because I have all the time in the world right now (relative to most of my friends, at least). But still somehow the day just doesn't go on long enough. If I could just get a couple more hours to read a book or an extra hour for a nap. If I could get a extension of the sunshine for four hours just once every couple of months. God that would be great.

I want to start reading the newspaper every day. This is a big issue at our house. Drew thinks the newspaper is filthy (the ink grosses him out) and so he says I can't have it on the bed unless I have a huge towel between paper and duvet. Even with the towel, I'm guessing there will be problems. He doesn't understand why I can't just get all my news online. That is what I'm doing now, but I'm personally dissatisfied with it. I don't think the coverage is as broad and as a deep as it is in the national papers (WaPo, NYT, LAT, etc). I'm mostly interested in international stuff, which in my opinion is best found in the NYT. This argument is eerily similar to the one Drew and I had when we got our TiVO. I wanted to record the ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Drew thought the evening news wasn't a worthy investment of our precious hard drive space. To me, the network evening newscasts are pretty damn informative. I think the whole CNN "news"channel has made people wary of television news, but there's a huge difference between the two oh lord jesus seriously who cares what am I talking about?

Sorry. Okay. So my main problem with subscribing to the paper is that I think it's going to be too expensive and I won't be able to read it every day. I read the Sunday paper now, which can take all day long. I realize the Sunday Times is huge compared to the weekday paper, but still I'm worried that I'll end up surfing Drudge Report every morning while my paper sits outside on the sidewalk.

And yes, Jana, I'm getting the NYT and not the LAT. I personally think the LAT's coverage of national and international stories isn't all that great. And I realize I will be in the dark about what's going on in my city and state, but that's why I'm friends with you, a LAT reader.

 

"I talked to a friend just the other day who had driven to Baghdad down to Basra, seven hours, found the situation dramatically improved from a year or so ago, sort of validated the British view they had made progress in southern Iraq and that they can therefore reduce their force levels."

-- VP Dick Cheney to ABC News' Jonathan Karl.

 

"I believe the record speaks for itself: Don Rumsfeld is the finest secretary of Defense this nation has ever had."

-- VP Dick Cheney at a Pentagon ceremony honoring Rumsfeld upon his departure in mid-December.

 

I went to the biology class today. Thankfully, it wasn't as painful as I'd feared. Yes, the instructor talked to us like we were idiots... but in the sweetest possible way. It was an hour of "What is science?" kind of questions, but he was a big bear of a guy. Very giggly and nice. So I decided not to be annoyed and just smiled and nodded and played along.

One classmate asked if it would be acceptable to answer the question "How did the universe begin?" with this response: "God created it." The teacher earned extra points in my book for answering that question in a smart way that somehow managed not to offend the Christians. Although he did put religion on par with astrology, so come to think of it several of them must have been offended.

Statistics is tomorrow. Hopefully that will be equally pain-free.

I've decided to go to NY for that interview. I can work it out so I only miss one bio lecture and one statistics lecture.

I just made a really disgusting lunch. The ingredients: kidney beans, shallots, lentils, chicken stock, garlic. Uhm... yeah. So I'm going to the grocery store now.

 

 

I have to take more classes. There are a handful of the schools I've applied to that require one more general biolgy class and a statistics course. I'm happy to take statistics, which I think is important, but I'm not too stoked about the bio. It's the most basic biology course: "Principles of Biology -- Evolution, Diversity and Ecology." YUCK. I think it'll be easy, but it will require a lot of rote memorization (no one's favorite) and it's so basic that I just know the instructor will treat us all like idiots. I just feel like I'm past this class now. Plus, it's going to make it tough to travel for interviews.

I'm really only doing this for UCLA, and I have about a 2% chance of getting into that school. It's just too damn popular and my application is so atypical. I'd really like to hear from them one way or the other so I could just get out of this stupid class.

I don't even know if I can go to NYC next week for an interview because it's the second week of classes. Even though I've already bought the ticket. I don't think that I really want to go to the NY school, but how do I know until I check it out??

Ugh. I just want to go to the Philadelphia school that's already accepted me. This process has dragged on so long.

I know this is a rambly, annoying post. That's what I haven't posted this week; because this is all I'm thinking about.

 

 

I just finished David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. I spent the first two hundred pages being excited about how imaginative he was with the structure (which shifts from a diary to a collection of letters to a film treatment to a kind of confessional to an oral history, each section completely different in tone yet somehow held together thematically).

At one point, though, it turns into what I consider science fiction -- a genre I know very little about. I think I've only read one Carl Sagan (and only because it was the basis for a Jodie Foster movie). I tried to describe the Cloud Atlas plot to Drew and he gave me an eyeroll, so I'm not going to try it again here. The second half of the book is crammed full of ideas (or so it seemed -- maybe the ideas in the first half were obscured by Mitchell's writing style and I'd just tired of his writing by page 300) and so it became a little less fun.

I have a feeling, though, that it's one of those books that's gong to stick with me for a while. Maybe it's too soon for me to try writing about it.

Now I'm reading the second book in Proust's In Search of Lost Time.

On page three, Proust is describing a character who was a bit of a boob in the first book but who has since become an internationally famous physician:

"In youth, everyone... had mercilessly mocked him for his hesitant air, his excessive diffidence and affability. Did some kind friend suggest he adopt an icy demeanor? The eminence of his position certainly made it easy for him to comply.... [H]e now made a show of being cold and taciturn; when speech was required, he was brusque and made a point of saying unpleasant things. He first tried his new manner on patients who had no prior acquaintance with him, who could therefore make no comparisons, and who would have been amazed to learn that he was not a man to whom such abruptness came naturally."

Excellent. I can't wait to try that out.

 

I want to feel lean and fast and free from worry.

I want an empty "to be filed" box. I don't want it to overflow again.

I want to sleep through the night because I've spent my day tiring myself out doing things I love to do.

I want to read things that challenge/effect/move me. Which excludes most websites.

I want to be clear. And loud.

I want to enjoy the full experience of being me instead of waiting in the wings for my cue to take the stage.

I want to smile at the thought that someone might find this list obnoxious or trite. It's none of my business what you think of me, anyway.

 

Drew and I went to a dinner party Saturday night. Normally I get pretty uncomfortable at a party with only six or eight people, some of whom I barely know. Small talk can be so exhausting. And this party was hosted by a straight couple, both of whom are architects. So, you know, lah-ti-dah. Come to think about it, four out of eight of the guests were architects. They'd also all gone to the same school, so there was lots of name-dropping I couldn't follow. It sounds disastrous, right?

It really wasn't, though. It was actually quite nice. I think it's because although they're all kind of fancy and wealthy, they're really not at all pretentious. If they said something I didn't understand I could actually say "Huh?" and someone would explain it to me in a friendly, non-condescending tone.

So now I've decided that this particular dinner party is going to be my standard for dinner parties at which I'm only friends with <1/2 the guests. I'm not going to play along with the insecure, pretentious crowd. Fuck all you people who try to be cool at those things and ruin it for the rest of us. When you're not too busy trying to be cool, you can learn all kinds of stuff.

For instance, at the party I heard (for the first time) about Japanese t-shirt folding.



So now I'm doing a load of laundry just so I can fold all of Drew's t-shirts.