I have a strange schedule for now (it's hovering at 19 credit hours) and for my MCB class (which stands for molecular and cellular biology, or something like that) I COMPLETELY forgot that there is a discussion section that I'm supposed to show up for. I only realized this after the first exam when we were seated according to our section. Yeah...so anyways, I decided to drop in today, and it turns out that there is someone I know there from my Polish class. Yeah, he's nice. But I'm posting today for another reason, because...more importantly...there is this other guy there that looks a bit like Heath Ledger. OMG. I got so excited. I mean, it's not like I let out a fangirl "squee!" and jumped up and down in my seat, but I really wanted to.
Keep in mind that this guy just REMINDS me of Ledger. He only bears a resemblance and it got me going. Ha.
There is something WRONG with me and my unhealthy obsession with Ledger's performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight. I saw the movie twice, I have two posters of him (as the Joker), I have a bat cape (lolz), whenever I'm online I'm in forums discussing the Joker or looking for lulzy pictures (that's a new word in my vocabulary), and I bought red, black, and white paint creams as well as green hairspray. What am I going to do with it all? I...don't...know...I'm SICK I tell you.
Iron Man was my favorite movie for a while...suffice it to say, The Dark Knight blew it away quite easily.
My calculus professor (I don't know his name, so don't ask) has a fairly heavy accent, Russian from what I can tell based on his frequently rolled r's and misplaced word emphasis. It's fun to listen to him talk, but none of it sinks in (probably because it's calc, not because of his accent).
I just ordered the book today...hopefully it'll be here soon...
Instead of paying attention to the math stuff, I jot down amusing things he says. Like when he starts class he tells us to ask him questions, "but not about what I did night before." He was joking...I think.
There are some people that I can't stand because they ask questions on simple things, and I guess the professor noticed this problem. So one day he said "Before we starrt, let's recall algebra some." You just gotta say it out loud. It keeps me smiling early in the morning. Then, when someone else asked a question about a problem, he didn't understand why they were asking the question and answered "But I did you example 5."
Other fun quotes: "This is graph." *points at graph* "I choose even so if I make mistake you cannot get me," on why we do only even problems in class. "Read the section. Language in book better den mine."
I am also working on a song to express my feelings about calculus. I have the first verse: "F of x, you are the bane of my life..."
Note: Don't get me wrong, the professor is very capable of teaching calc, in fact he's quite smart. Good thing I can understand him, though, because other people seem to be having trouble.
I have never felt so punished. Whipped, you might say. The day has not been kind so far. I can't help but feel that it's to pay for hating calc class before even stepping into the classroom...
I began my summer class yesterday, so I'll be in class Monday through Thursday from 8am-10:30am for a few weeks. Yeah, I don't know why I do this to myself, either. I hate calculus. I don't hate the class, but I am extremely adverse to the idea of going during summer... Anyways, today we got out early at 9:30 and I was quite pleased. I put on my iPod and boarded the bus.
I didn't notice it was going the wrong direction until I was in Mt. Prospect. I was playing my DS, totally absorbed...I got off and went on the CORRECT bus going east and not west. As soon as I got home, it was past 11 o'clock (it took that long!!) and I realized that I didn't have my keys with me, either. *facepalm*
I called my mom, and 30 minutes later I was met with one angry woman and a spank on the butt. How embarrassing...as if I didn't feel bad enough, a neighbor witnessed it.
The delightful opportunity of getting off an hour early was shot down, to say the least.
Wouldn't it be fascinating to hold a living heart and feel it pumping in your hands? I've often thought about it and fantasized being a doctor in the OR and doing just that. The human heart can beat on its own for about 1 to 2 minutes after being removed, and when I say beat, I mean it in the most animated way. It's the most lively looking thing in the human body, and when it is severed for an organ donation, it sometimes happens that it is dropped because of it's vigor. In such a case, they just clean it up and put it in the cooler. 3 second rule! Good as new!
I've been reading about things like this in the novel Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers, by Mary Roach (what an unappealing name O.o) which I recommend to anyone who wants to know what happens to your body after your demise, whether you decide to donate it to science, cremate it, donate organs, or let it rot in the ground. It talks about dozens of experiments done with cadavers as well as animal and simulated substitutes, the topics ranging from crash testing to researching decay in body gardens (it's exactly what you think it is). I'm not surprised that people with these jobs don't exactly do it while humming happily to themselves, but I suppose it is satisfying and in certain cases necessary. Except for cutting through that first layer of fat (omg that stuff looks nasty) and withstanding the smell, I don't think I would mind doing autopsies. When you get down to it, we simply look like pieces of meat on the inside. I've seen some on T.V. and also on youtube. I'm surprised that they have that sort of thing on youtube, but I'm not gonna post anything here, I don't want anyone to be too grossed out...aw, what the hell. Don't watch it if you can't take it, and don't say I didn't warn you that it's graphic (dur...it's an autopsy). I found one where the coroner narrates what he's doing, which is nice.
Speaking of dead meat, my mom had a traumatic experience in her childhood where she went to the meat smoking room (where the family would smoke their own meat...er...did I have to explain that..? sorry) to find that some of the meat spoiled and there were hundreds of maggots everywhere, loudly munching on the meat. The novel describes the sound as that of rice krispies in a bowl of milk. I asked my mom if that's what she heard and she confirmed it. She watches shows like C.S.I. and likes them as much as I do, but she can barely stand it when they show maggots (or hacienda, as I like to now call them). What's most disgusting about these insects is that the eggs are laid at all the openings of the body they can get to--the mouth, eyes, genitals, bellybutton--because little hacienda can't bite through skin. And it's not just outside critters eating up the dead, they start to melt (er...decay) from the inside because the bacteria in the body is no longer kept in check by the immune system, which is shut down. The first organs to go are the lungs and everything in the digestive sytstem, since that's where most bacteria lives, but the brain goes early, too. This is because all the bacteria in the mouth eats up the soft palate and works its way up there rather quickly. After three weeks, a dead body is basically reduced to soup on the inside (chicken soup, to be specific).
I'm not yet through reading (right now I'm learning about how versatile feces, spittle, and mummy remains were in the medicine market), but I already wish that I had bought it like I meant to in the first place instead of just checking it out of the library like my mom urged me to. I think it'll be a handy book because it not only talks about the scientific and medical aspects of dead bodies, but it also touches on the history of how they've been used and treated to benefit the living.
I haven't blogged in a while...so...brace yourself...
I seem to have hit the job jackpot. I’ve needed a summer job since I got back for summer, and now I have 4 of them lined up, potentially. I had an interview yesterday at Old Navy, I will be babysitting for an entire week in July and possibly longer for a new family, I will be helping at a baby shower, plus I have my regular babysitting job every Saturday.
Here’s the thing: I hate work of any kind. I have yet to find a job I actually enjoy, though I should say that my weekend job is easy; I get there when the kids are asleep and I get paid for sitting around for a few hours, almost literally babysitting. But if anyone’s ever talked to me about my past jobs, they’ve heard me grumble and complain about that horrible department store, Kohl’s, as well as the ungodly amount of time wasted just traveling to my tutoring job at U of I. I try not to let anyone at my workplaces catch any trace of my discontent, which seems to work. I usually get comments like “You’re always so upbeat and positive. How can you continue working like this?” to which I reply “I dunno,” with a big, dumb smile on my face while on the inside I scream, “are you kidding me?! I’m such a phony!” It makes me sad that they can’t tell how unhappy I am working, but that’s not the kind of person that gets hired. Besides, I need the money. No use complaining to other people doing it for the money. Hopefully working at Old Navy will be better than at Kohl’s.
The day I went for the interview was strange. I couldn’t get to sleep until 3am the night before (er…morning of) because interviews always make me nervous. Waking up later on, I was put in a bad and bleary mood with the help of the pitter-patter on my window and angry, black clouds outside. Not a good day for an interview that I had to somehow manage traveling to. Not wanting to be soggy on top of groggy, I decided to take the bus. Which was 15 minutes late. It would only take 7 minutes to drive to Old Navy, but it was supposed to arrive 2:05, and my interview was at 2:30. So I’m standing there, in the rain and wind with my flimsy pink umbrella and some guy dressed in typical white-collar work clothes and funny, pointy-toed shoes, my watch (which no longer ticks too loudly, fyi) telling me that it is already 2:20. I called and rescheduled my appointment for 3:00, and as soon as I got off the phone, the stupid bus came in sight. I was upset, but also relieved since it meant I didn’t have to walk.
After that, the day seemed to completely turn around. I got to the store at exactly 2:30pm, to my chagrin, but I was glad. The hiring manager was ready to take me, anyway. My mood lightened, which made it easier to calm down for the interview. I hated the questions because they all asked me to talk about specific situations that exemplify such-and-such of a skill. I knew the only reason I was there was because I have previous retail experience, so I pulled some answers out of you-know-where since I really didn’t feel adequately experienced after working at Kohl’s.
I think it went well. I'll know by the end of this week.
I walked out with a skip in my step (not literally, but I would have if people weren’t around) which is when I ran into my old debate partner from freshman year in high school! I just couldn’t believe it!
It turns out that she's been working there for about a year already. I hope I get the job now that I know I already have a friend there, but seriously, what are the chances? Then I stepped outside to catch the bus only to find the storm all cleared away and it looked like a totally new day. I decided to walk the mile or so home, it was so beautiful out. I walked down one main, busy street almost the whole way back, and although it was very busy, every time I had to cross the street, there weren't any cars around. It was very strange. It was as if the world was making up for the bad start I had earlier that day.
The only thing that could have made the day better was a rainbow. And maybe a free XBOX 360 with a copy of GTAIV, but I'm not complaining.
I'm sick of looking for a job, so I'm just going to chill and wait for responses from the places I applied.
In the meantime, I'm super bored. I've decided to make a trip to the library, but I don't like stepping into a huge building full of thousands of books without a plan or some sort of road map for myself. Therefore I have chosen a theme: what better way to suck up time and life than to pretend to be a med/pre-med student? I will start with microbiology, since I'm going to take that class next semester anyway, then some anatomy (perhaps do some drawing, to mix it up) and finally surgery. They actually have books in the library with step by step procedures accompanied by photos, which is what has me so excited and willing to go through with MCB and anatomy to have a deeper understanding.
You might be wondering what happened to my cello suite goal. Well, it turns out that I'm much more out of practice than I thought, and it's quite impossible to learn it without proper instruction. Playing the cello is quite different than reading and absorbing books...
I've been looking at other blogs to see what other people are writing about because I don't want to be boring. Is that strange? Well, it's entertaining nonetheless. I've found that a LOT of them are just picture blogs, usually of the bloggers kid(s), as well as a lot written in other languages I can't read, like Spanish and Japanese. I do, however, feel pretty cool when a French blog comes up. I get excited and read everything to see if I understand it all. I have yet to see a Polish blog. One blog had a whole bunch of pics of the elderly lady blogger that had no business being up for the public to view. Another was basically a mom's live journal of...well, a mom's life. Another just has posts of the person's practice architecture drawings. Another person blogs on Bollywood movies. In fact, they all seem to have a purpose or at least an overarching theme. Looking back at my posts, it is more like a live journal I suppose, but all over the place...Like this post. Hmmm.
Hi there. My name is Kathy, and yes, despite the look of my blog, I am a girl. I am a college student doing Pre-Pharm, a chemistry major and a French minor (I've finally settled!) and I like Devil May Cry as well as a million other video game, novel series, anime/manga, and t.v. show fandoms. Welcome to my life and do read the random thoughts posted to the right.
