Pre-November

This November will be the most insane month of my life so far.

This post was supposed to be about how I'm ready...I'm not. I'm terrified.

Okay, no, that's not completely true. I'm just not as fully prepared as I'd like to be. Wish I had more time. The first one is on a Friday, with a social-type thing the night before. But on Thursday morning before leaving, I have to register. Also a term paper, midterm, make-up lab and quiz, actual lab and quiz earlier in the week. poo. Hopefully, after the first one, I'll realize I'm actually good at this (because, well...I probably am) and not worry so much. When I worry, I can feel the blinders closing in, narrowing my view and obstructing the important stuff.

I forgot that this evening will be spent hiding from the children.

Argh

Facebook chat is broken and I have things that I need to talk about with people.

especially because my mother is having none of that right now.

I'm not equipped to deal with good news.

Catching up

Model Monday has been celebrated rather sparsely. I give you Abbey Lee.

She also doubles as the lesbian of the week, even though I'm not sure she's "officially" lesbian; however, I am pretty sure she is still dating Freja Beha, who is fabulous unto herself.

Also I want my hair to be this color pls.

There are no links in this post

So, um. I'm trying to prepare for you-know-what that is coming up you-know-when. I should have done more during September.

September was really nice. Everything was turned in and I convinced myself that not thinking about it (read: not preparing) was the best route. Bliss.

The people on those forums are straight-up jerks. They harass each other for posting what I think are completely reasonable questions. They respond, "If you have to ask that, you'll never be a doctor."

No. If you respond like that, regardless of whether you actually become a doctor, there is not a single patient who will want to be alone in a room with you. There is not a single patient who will feel comfortable asking you to clarify any instructions to them. There is not a single colleague who will want to seek your opinion on a difficult case, or to commend you on a job well done.

You guys know me--I'm not mushy-gushy. But there are standards, and this is a service industry. Service, as in serving others. If "maturity" and "life experience" have robbed you of that sincerity and replaced it with cynicism, with jadedness, with no real desire to make things better, I will take my lack of "life experience", my naivete, my immaturity, every day of the week.

Including Sunday.

I think I'm ready to write now.

WWGCD

1. "There is something profoundly diseased about a society that idolizes its ignoramuses and disdains its experts."

-Joe Klein

The rest of the article isn't hugely interesting to me. But snark toward competence, a mistrust of people who know what they're doing, is as American as apple pie. I don't believe it's restricted to the political sphere.

2. When feeling doubtful in a social situation, just ask yourself,

What would George Costanza do?

Longer than the long run

Here's my question.

Does tolerance include tolerance for intolerance?

Also, stealing Zach's words,

"I want to write about being a feminist."

I've tried. I've started multiple posts and saved them and never gone back to them. It seems silly that it's so difficult to write about. Not because of any personal memory--I can't remember a time I've been discriminated against because of my gender (this is probably because, as a rule, I don't take no bitchassness). It's another one of those things that seems silly to discuss because it's obvious.

In the meantime, read Amelia's post on it. David thought it was cute.

(No links. You all know where to find each other.)

Words for happy adults

In other news, though I have not been keeping up with his work (i'm sorry), John Campbell is my hero.

Also it is WTF Wednesday, but I don't have anything to share except that some people think a gorilla is an acceptable substitute for a phospholipid.

(not unless the gorilla's head is hydrophilic and it has two hydrophobic tails)

Another letter

Dear Katherine,

Reading your column makes me shake in anger. My family makes fun of me for getting "so emotional" over a newspaper article. I have two things to say to you.

1. How dare you claim to speak for the children.

2. Kindly fuck off.

Sincerely,

Over your attention-whore bullshit.

...

For happiness, please watch Ke$ha's new video. That girl gets more fabulous every day.

click, click. snap.

Harmony, accord, affinity, slashes

Lab-partner-who-is-almost-twice-my-age and I totally have a rapport established.

Poor misguided soul: Humans are overly concerned with profit. harumph.

LPWIATMA: But everything animals do, they do for profit...

LPWIATMA and I, at same time: ...evolutionary profit.

you had to be there. Hilarious.

YOU GUYS. It is Lesbian Saturday and I do not have a cool lesbian for you to learn about. I am trying to stay away from the cliche lesbians i.e. Ellen, Portia, even though they are awesome. So um...feel free to contribute a lesbian.

Also. I have three research projects/papers/presentations all dealing in some way with neural mechanisms of pain (opioid modulation of/the role of glia in/affective side of, respectively). It's getting pretty complicated/insane/exciting/scary. It is pretty cool to have so much independence in these projects but actually have the tools/resources/capacity to do them in a reasonable way (looking at you, 2003/2004).

Last, I have to decapitate Mr. Rat Baby :(

The yooj

Today's cell biology lecture will be about active vs. passive transport, the Nernst equation, patch clamp technology, and ion channels. Please

1. Read an earlier post titled "Redundancy", then

2. Make this a non-clicker class so I can just stop going.

3. Also I swear half the people in the class are total sycophants. Laughing at every single "joke" of his will not help you on the test, kids. I promise.

In happy news

The rat is alive and well, save for his shaved and neatly sutured head. I'm glad I volunteered for the scrub nurse role; I actually got to do more stuff than the surgeon--all of the injections (not easy on a squirming rodent), surgery prep, drilling calculations/measurements, and the actual dye injections. The surgeon of our group did a great job, even while freaking out and declaring that she would never be a surgeon. Mr. Rat Baby was almost completely conscious by the time she had to sew him up, and we had already maxed out our anesthetics, so she was suturing an extremely unhappy, wildly wriggling rodent. But our group was first done and the only ones to not make a major mistake (injecting four times too much dye, suturing the surgical drape to the rat's head...) or have our animal die. Wheeee.

Um. I also volunteered our group to do the first presentation. But none of us actually know what affective pain IS.

...Pubmed Thursday.

In Limbo

Currently stress-coping by denying/avoiding the problems. Let us weekend roundup instead.

1. Oh, shut UP already. You want to talk about indoctrination, Katherine, I'm wondering how well-rounded your own children's views are. And aren't college freshmen old enough to be able to critically evaluate others' viewpoints or ideologies? Seems kinda disrespectful to imply that they can be brainwashed so simply. Also, notice the specific attack on the freshmen traditions (well, new tradition) at our school, that is, her alma mater.

2. This made me laugh. Especially the part about the restaurants. To be fair, if my family is speaking our special brand of foreignness at a restaurant, it is likely because we are making fun of the people at nearby tables.

3. The "what to wear to interviews" suggestions are continuing to crack me up.

• I learned that "fishnet-style hosiery" is not appropriate. Dangit.
• Dark colors are safer...does this mean I can't wear yellow pants?
• Cover tattoos. But there are just so many...
• Remove any body piercings except earrings. Notice this doesn't specify how many earrings. Loophole! Also. How does one go removing a piercing?
• Wear your hair out of your eyes. Not gonna happen. It's 3 inches now.
• Looking ahead in this article/course, there is a "body language" section. Uh oh. Prediction: "Try to look less short. Use stilts as necessary."
• Give a proper credible handshake with a full firm handshake. Okay, leaving aside the fact that I think handshake evaluations are ridiculous, I have a lot of trouble with handshakes. Can someone help me out? Credible Handshake Training?
• Uhh, what.

4. Are my links becoming too predictable? There should be more about reality TV, right?

#1

This is the part where I become so completely terrified of and paralyzed by my to-do list that I don't do anything. Hello there, first panic attack of the school year. Nice to meet you.

Except it's different this year. I have never been a senior before. I have never been through a major life change--next year, regardless of how everything plays out, I will not be in a normal academic environment.

Planning for this trip is starting to freak me out too. I've never been away from my parents for more than a couple of days. There are basic like skills that I'm becoming painfully aware I lack. I don't want to blame my parents for this. They stopped being my primary sheltering force years ago.

Anyway this probably isn't coherent. I've barely slept in four days and am starting to get sick. whine whine whine etc.

Um, hopefully will get it together before being responsible for keeping a rat alive through cranial surgery on Wednesday.

Also have been notified that my background color or text color needs to change. It will happen at some point.