On the other hand I love..

-The feeling of satisfaction I get after working out.
-When guys pay for my food! =) or when guys open the door for me.
-Happy, hyper Tequila when I get home.
-Beauty products from Bath & Body works/Sephora. [I can't stop spending on these!! AHH!]
-Ebay and how easy it is to buy/sell stuff on there. [on the flip side I hate paypal right now..]
-Being able to fit into clothes properly again, all while looking good in them.
-Las Vegas.
-making new friends in class

I hate to sound pessimistic (as I did in my last entry). Things are going fairly okay in my life right now. Two interviews left and I am officially done with it all. I won't have to worry anymore about rx school, because I'll have done everything I can at that point. All I'll have left to do is sit tight and wait. As for school, classes are going fine, except maybe for plant molecular biology. I didn't do as well as I wanted on the test, but it still averaged out to a B. I need that A though..

The days are getting prettier and prettier, despite the heat that comes along with it. It's a good time for pool side tanning!

I hate...

-Warm temperatures above 75 degrees in February where when you walk home you are sweating balls already.
-Shiesty people, or people with money unwilling to spend and instead mooch off of other people when clearly, they can afford to pay for themselves.
-Dog poop on the sidewalk, with half of it stepped on. Nasty!!
-Plant molecular biology class.
-Overdrafting my debit card.
-Spring break diet/boot camp.

The weather has turned hot for a change and I don't like it. Please cold front, come in an rescue me from these fiery depths of lukewarm air hell!

Although being really really cold sucks, I would take that over a hot, humid day in an instant.

The longer I live here, the more I want to get out of Texas. *sigh..but then again, that statement isn't justified because I have no idea what it is like to live elsewhere in the first place.

My name is...

So today I got called something very unusual.

A young girl (and by young I mean 18) came in today with two young kids, 1 at each side holding her hands. Since the kids were walking on their own comfortably, I'd have to estimate their ages to be around 3 or 4. She didn't look too poor and was not rude at all. Instead I would guess that she was from a Puritan like or Orthodox community, judging from what she said next. While I was helping locate her prescription, she saw my necklace (that says Dior on it) and told me she liked it. Then she asked if my name was DIOR.

Uhhhh...

I don't think I have to even write anymore.

Speaking of cake..

I want to have my cake and eat it;
Not have my cake and not eat it.

Informative Speech... blah.

I have an 'informative speech' coming up, and I have absolutely no idea what to talk about. The teacher told us to talk about something we're passionate about. So, I started thinking about what I was passionate about.

Everything that amuses me is science based, especially drugs (and by this I mean mechanisms, not how they feel perse!), genetics, evolution, animal behavior, and diseases, etc. Now how could I go about picking a topic in one of these subjects and keeping the interest of a class of 30 NON-SCIENCE majors?

Perhaps I shall talk about color blindness, because a google search has linked me to a site stating that it is an interesting topic. But the more I think about it, the more boring it sounds.

I could talk about Plan B becoming over the counter, but I want to save that for my persuasive speech.

I would love to talk about evolution, but that also is mmore of a persuasive speech topic, and since practically nobody in the class is a science major, they are more than likely religious and would be offended by my arguments.

And so what is left? Drugs and Diseases. I could talk about drugs, but which one? And how to make it 3-5 minutes long? Or there's diseases like the BIRD FLU! I could qualm their fears and tell them what it's really all about.

Yes..maybe I shall do that.

In other news, I sold my sidekick 3 today for $215.00! I know, I know. I was in love with that thing in the summer, but it has betrayed me. It just doesn't float my boat anymore. It's too bulky for what it's worth, and I'm just tired of it. It's features don't impress me any longer. Poo. It's okay, I bought myself a sweet Samsung E900 to fall back on.

My crazy, hardcore thug life Itinerary.

My schedule just got a lot more chaotic over the course of an hour.

Texas Tech silently likes to torture their Pharmacy school candidates by quietly sneaking in an invitation to an interview which can be discovered only if the applicant feels like logging into their application online. If I hadn't logged into see if they received my last recommendation, I wouldn't have even found out in time!

So now...here's my new schedule:
Thursday March 8th: Finish classes around 3:30PM and then drive home to Houston.
Friday March 9th: All day interview at UH College of Pharmacy
Saturday March 10th: Prepare for Texas Tech interview, shop for last minute Vegas necessities
Sunday March 11th: Flight to Amarillo Tx at 7ish PM, Arrive in Amarillo around 8:30PM
Monday March 12th: All day interview at Texas Tech College of Pharmacy, Flight to Houston around 7PM, Arrive home around 10PM
Tuesday March 13th: Flight to Las Vegas, NV around 7ish PM
Wedesday March 14th-Saturday March 17th: GO CRAZY FROM ALL THIS HARDCORE INTERVIEWING!!, Fly back on Saturday 11PM
Sunday March 18th: Arrive at like 8am or something (YES SHITTY ASS FLIGHT!!), Sleep for a few hours, Drive back to Austin, TX
Monday March 19th: Presentation for BIO359K, 2PM

I have no idea when I'm going to prepare the presentation for BIO359K.. Oh well. IT SHALL BE DONE somehow.

Whopeee for a fun-filled, hectic spring break.

Senioritis alll over again.

School is becoming harder to focus in these days. Every day brings me closer to my graduation in May, and I know somewhere in my mind that anything I make this semester (an A, B, or C) doesn't really matter. This is because I have already finished applying to pharmacy schools and I feel like I will get into at least one. Unless I need to reapply (which I aforementioned will hopefully be unlikely), then my grades this semester won't matter. Of course the grades this semester will affect my overall GPA, but really, nobody will be looking at my GPA after this semester.

However, there is this nerdy side in me that still wants to strive for an A in every class. I received university honors last semester and it really feels damn good. I want to feel that rush of excitement again this semester; knowing that I'm at the top of all the vast students in natural sciences makes me feel smart. And while I don't necessarily need the university honors to tell me that I'm smart, it does really reinforce it and give me additional confidence.

So the trek continues, as I half ass study. I just need to keep telling myself that this is the last semester, and last semesters should end with a BANG, not a whimper.

And by whimper, I mean bad grades.

Again you say?? Yes, again. and again...and again!

It's official. I'm going to Las Vegas for spring break.

Yes, this will be my THIRD time going to Las Vegas this school year. What can I say? I just love the bright lights, unlimited gambling, and freedom fun that Las Vegas exhibits.

And this time I'm going with a crowd of friends! The more the merrier, right? There shall be some funny ass, 'what happens here stays here' stories created during this trip. It's going to be so fun, and I am uber ass excited.

Damnit, I will be paying off this trip for awhile, but I think my parents are rewarding me with extra Chinese New Year's money for all my hard work, and nearing proximity of graduation/rx school. At least this is what I'm hoping will happen.

WHeeeee I can't wait!

A sigh of relief from a hard, long week.

*Long sigh of (not really) relief.*

This week was very tedious, and tiresome. I had to muster up my communication skills (which I have completely lost through all these lecture type natural sciences class I've taken for the past 4 years), prepare perfect/ideal answers, and ponder my stand on many ethical issues this week.

So, I bet the burning question in your mind is....How did MY interview go????

Well, All I can say is that I had a hard interview. And I'm not sure if it went well or not, because I always think that it didn't go well, but then in reality I'll have done very well and get in. Or I'll think I did really well and then things were actually very bad, and I won't have got in.

So on the UT Pharmacy website, it says that each candidate will be interviewed by a faculty member such as a professor, and a student if possible.

Well, lucky old me got the Assistant Dean AND a current Pharmacist.

Pretty great, huh?

Now this could work both ways for me. It could be super excellent, because if the Assistant Dean really liked me, then he will definitely put me into the school, no questions asked. It could be super horrible, because if the Asst. Dean thought I was a complete dumbass, I could be rejected right away.

Let's just hope that the case in point is the first scenario.

But alas, I still have an interview with UH coming up in March. At that point, if either school lets me in, I'm going to decline my interview with Texas Tech. (Can people do that??) What's the point of going to another interview if one of your top two schools already let you in? Exactly, there is none.

Now school will resume as normal, and I can sigh a breath of relief for awhile.

Except I have another presentation coming up soon. God, I really LOVE having 60 eyes AND a camcorder looking at me with their cold, unwelcoming faces for 10 minutes as I talk about something they don't even care about. I wish I had a knack for public speaking, but I just DON'T.

Oh well, such is life and I really hate to sound like a whiny bitch. And in fact, I don't mean to, because things are actually finally looking up in my life. I've worked for 4 years for pharmacy school and I have real high expectations of getting in. And if I don't, that's fine too. I'll just take a (muchly desired) year off and travel around the world.

update from the middle of hell week

Greetings from the middle of my stressful, hectic week.

2 days down, 5 more to go.

today consisted of stress, stress, and just more plain ol' stress.
The kind of stress that arises from back to back classes and trying to visit your professor between the tiny 15 minutes in between classes because he told you to come at exactly that time, even though you have a test in the hardest, most abstruse kind of biology (PLANT) known to mankind ever in like 10 minutes (and it takes like..10 minutes to get there). AHH! and then finding your teacher wasn't there in that tiny-i-really-need-him-to-be-there 15 minutes and running back and forth between classrooms just to ship off your last minute recommendation overnight for $15.00!

*breath in, breathe out.*

tomorrow will be better, right? All I have is research, mock interviews, suit shopping, last minute presentation touchups, cardmaking for presentation, and rehearsal for presentation.

Thursday marks presentation day. Thursday I will get a little more relaxation/breathing in, but it is also the day I need to go in to talk to my BIO359K teacher.

Friday will encompass research and work, plus last minute interview preparations. At least I'll get to solidify and go over some issues with the rPh's on duty.

SATURDAY is the big day. Interview is in the afternoon, so I will be up in the morning to read over some issues and my personal statements. Then after the interview is more observing of the froggies.

Sunday will mark the end of the hectic week. All I have on Sunday is work (which is what usually happens anyway).

P.S. UH college of pharmacy scheduled me for an interview today! yipeee! This is without my letter of recommendation. They must want me BAD!! Hoping that is the case.. :)

O's restaurant = teachers from hell gathering

So on Mondays since I have research and then discussion an hour later all by the far away RLM area, the only place I can really get lunch is at O's Cafe.

Usually I just sit at one of the outer tables, play on my laptop and do catchup reading or studying.

So today began like any other day - I got my food, opened up my laptop and started eating/studying. Then in walks Dr. Jost, my crazy evolution teacher from the summer. I like to call her the evolution Nazi Marilyn Manson wannabe. Seriously, she looks like a Marilyn Manson even though she's a woman, if you could imagine that! She does roller derby and all that good stuff too so she's kind of butch.

Anyway then I go back to typing on my computer and reading.

Then later the teacher from my HIS350L class of hell (that I dropped just recently) walked by and I was scared. She had an even more monstrous look on her face than usual and I hid behind the white shelters of my laptop screen.

I'm debating whether or not to come eat here anymore if this keeps happening.

Seriously.

Speaking of black history month..

Today things got a little slow at the pharmacy around 8PM so the pharmacist on duty, Al, and me started talking about the past. As you guys may or may not know, Al is African American. He went to pharmacy school at the peak of racism and when anti-Black feelings were at their highest. He was a young adult in the 60s at the height of KKK and all that dirty business.

UT was racist against blacks at the time; they wouldn't even except African Americans into their pharmacy school then.

So Al went to TSU. And he became one of the first black pharmacists at his age.

And he told me the stories of first-hand racist acts against him and his people, yet today he is such a kind man.

I really gotta respect the man, because I know if a different race oppressed my race, I would not even be able to face them. I would be so full of anger and hatred, yet a man like Al serves the race that oppressed him for so long and helps them out so much.

But anyway, Al told me some great (but janky on his behalf) stories, like this one point in time where blacks weren't allowed to swim in pools designated for whites only - so Al and his friends would swim in the whites' pool at night and one time someone called the cops on him and they ended up draining and refilling the whole pool. Isn't that f'ed up?

It's just interesting to see how, of all animal species, this racism tends to only be apparent in humans.

Anyway, all of this is kind of ironic because it IS black history month. I learned me some firsthand history!!

good news!

as class is about to begin and i watch my professor fumble around with his recording device for class, i find time to sneak a blogger update.

today in my other class i received an email mid-class, and i, being a email OCD, checked it immediately.

it was an email from UT pharmacy school informing me that I was selected for an interview!

Now that's exciting.

And now it's back to boring translational regulation of RuBPCase LS by SS (???!??! what the hell are we talking about?!!)

Time to start breathing again; things are going to be okay after all..

Finally. I've sorted out the whole graduate missing history credit deal with my advisor. So it turns out that I alreayd received a writing credit from RHE 309 which I took in the summer last semester, so all I really needed was a damn US History credit, which I could have taken as a lower division-easy-ass-high-school-type-class. But now it's too late to add anything to anywhere, so I have to take it online now through UT Correspondence or ACC.

However, UT doesn't like it when you're enrolled in two universities at once (yes, UT Correspondence is NOT considered UT material), so I had to petition the Dean for concurrent enrollment. This usually takes 10 days for a response.

Luckily however, the woman who is in charge of approving graduation applications and the man (or woman) who approves of concurrent enrollment petition sit literally next to each other in the natural sciences office, so I got approved for concurrent enrollment for UT correspondence within an hour. I guess they looked over at each other for once and said, "Oh, hey. This is the same girl. APPROVE."

So it is solved. Now I get to take a $500 UT Online history course. There goes $500 down the drain - what a waste. This $500 mistake could have been easily avoided if only my advisor told me in time that the class wasn't the right one.

But, who am I kidding. UT Advising is a joke. There are way too many students and way too few advisors. I don't blame them, they have to keep up with, like, 5000+ students every semester. Oh well.

And oh yeah, I got to drop that disgusting HIS350L class. Thank God (Not really God, because in my book, he doesn't exist. But for the sake of cliches..)!

Survival of the "Fittest", or ... the most selfish?

The book I'm reading right now suggests that in nature, the fittest and ones that survive in the struggle for existence all have one thing in common - that they are selfish.

This makes sense. If there are 2 birds and only 1 worm, and the survival of the birds depend on getting that one particular worm, then the selfish bird who goes for the worm survives. The altruistic bird dies and does not / can not find a mate, and his genes are never passed along. The selfish bird continues to live, and may find a mate, passing his genes along. And this kind of thing really does happen in nature, because organisms propagate at a rate much faster than resources.

Now, humans are a paradoxical species. To be selfish is looked down upon in human society. But unknowingly, it's true that the ones most selfish get what they need or want more often than those who do not. It's true that the altruistic sacrifice some part of their needs for others at the risk of their own property. The benefit of selfishness, however, is hard to see immediately in humans, because we don't get rewarded directly for it. Instead, we get criticized and snubbed by our peers.

Therefore, society has programmed us to do believe that being selfish is "bad". conversely, however, to be selfish is to be fit, which is really something good in nature. Did humans ever rise above nature? Some would say yes, but I still believe that we are subject to the forces of nature.

This helps explains why some of my motives seem selfish, and it also explains why I have become independent after all these years - - because I truly believe that the 'fittest' are the most selfish.

Let me equate this thought in more common terms. Whoever thought of the quote/theory "Nice guys finish last.." presents a belief quite similar to mine, but not exactly. It's just that nice people get walked all over, and their needs are met last.

Oh yeah, and on a side note..
Darwin talks about the dangers of inbreeding in his book, yet he married his cousin. Is it just me or isn't that a bit demented and hypocritical?

Some of my favorite things..

I love The Killers, Sephora products, and Starbucks coffee.

THE KILLERS!! I have a pair of tickets to their upcoming concert in April! I am sooo excited. The only city in Texas they're playing in this time around is Austin. Yay I can't wait!

SEPHORA..has awesome ass products. From shimmery powder for the face to luxurious cream for the body to anything beauty, they have. I want to buy the whole store. There's so much to look at in there that I would need a whole week just to know about everything they had. I spent around $55 there on 2 pretty eyeliners, some eye shimmer, lip gloss, and a cuticule pen.

And finally, STARBUCKS. Starbucks has yummy coffee. Their lattes are rich and creamy. Seattle's Best is pretty good too, but I still like Starbucks the best. I think I'm addicted - I haven't not had a cup of joe everyday for the past week.

Oh yes, and I had today off which felt really good. This has been one of the first Saturdays I haven't had to wake at the ungodly hour of 8AM in awhile. I did, however, go in to research today. I tested female frogs for the first time, which wasn't that bad. It was pretty interesting, but I can see how this could get tedious, staring at a video camera image of a frog jumping toward one side or the other.

*EDIT. Now I just blew an addition $95.00 on goodies from Sephora. Damnit, Sephora will be the death of me. Oh well, at least I will have cum-cream pretty skin on my face. {from nip/tuck}