Oh no!, Its, its, ...retrospect!!! AAHHH!

And so we come to the end of another weekend. A real one though, not one spent studying or working or doing anything remotely stressful. I watched a lot of basketball, did some relaxing, both by myself and with friends, and had an all-around good time.

I'm just about done with my first year here, and it was a nice night, so I was just sitting on my front porch relaxing, and I had a couple thoughts I thought I would share.

First, I've got it pretty good (not to brag, I just forget that sometimes). In reality, my biggest problems in life right now are things like "oh no, I have to study ALL NIGHT", or "I have to read all of that by WHEN?". And there's nothing stopping me from imagining a whole other set of problems as well. But in reality, it could be SO much worse.

Second, I need to relax... I spend so much time studying and obsessing over my grades, and studying all the time, that, well, its just not healthy. Moreover, I don't think that it helps all that much. I mean of course I need to learn the stuff, but does that last hour spent going over the material for the 18th time really help that much more than if I spent that same hour doing something else like (heaven forbid!) sleeping? I think not. (But of course, I say this now, in one of my "sober moments", at the end of a weekend--its a lot harder to say that the night before an exam)

So in the future, I plan to work had to finish out my last class of first year (I mean its only 3 more weeks, right?), but I don't plan to kill myself with overstudying. Maybe I won't get an "Honors Pass", but then again, maybe I will. What I am going to do is learn as much as I can, as well as I can--not because of a grade, but because it's important.

And the sign said...

There's a few signs near my place that just don't sit well with me. I thought I should share...


Apparently, the permit that you get is a permit to NOT DIE! I'd like to get one of those.


This one bothers just bothers me. There's a giant face on it, and its not reassuring, its acutally kind of unnerving, especially if you're driving by at 2 in the morning...

And on another note...

...in case anyone wants to move in next door!

You wouldn't hit a kid with glasses, would you?

Well, today has been quite the day... It all started out with the big Immunology final. No big deal, I just memorized everything, so it shouldn't be a problem, right? Well, I guess it all depends what you mean by not a problem. Did I ace it? No. Did I pass? Yes, without question. Which is really all that matters. Because sme of the things that we had to learn for that test may never come up again. Like which ligand for which receptor is downregulated is what reaction under what expirimental conditions, bla bla bla... lymphocytes...phagocytosis...macromolecules...DNA...Guillain Barre Syndrome...

Well I guess I better really know about Guillain-Barre Syndrome. That could be important.

After the test, I spent some time making my apartment clean again (time well spent). Then I had to do a Standardized Patient Interview this afternoon, which unfortuantely was not the greatest. Apparently performance suffers due to lack of sleep. But you knew that already, right?

After that, I watched some basketball at home, went out and watched some basketball with friends, and had an all-around good time. Good, first and foremost, because there was no studying involved.


So that was my day. In addition, today I became a "maverick non-conformist", deleted Windows from my computer, and installed Ubuntu linux. Because my old computer stopped working properly. So I decided that now was the perfect time to stick it to the man and start running linux, the open source operating system. In fact, I'm using it was we speak to write this post, and it is AMAZING!

By the way, the penguin is the Linux mascot.

In some ways, I'm a lot like Forrest Gump

Today has been a day filled with lots of studying, and not a whole lot else. Actually, this whole week has been... same story as always, right? I guess I haven't just been studying, I've been doing some running, in preparation for the 5k that's a week from Saturday.

I've been pleasantly surprised, actually. I mentioned that I wanted to run one this spring to a couple of friends, and they both said they would like to run one as well, and so we decided to see if we could get more of our classmates to run with us, and so we've got quite a few people (i.e. more than just me) who're going to run a 5k together. We're like the medical school cross country team. I've never been on a cross country team before (there's a reason for that...)! So I'm looking forward to that.

Something out of the ordinary did happen this week... so, my school is located "on the campus of the University of Notre Dame", but really its across the road from the main entrance. So there's a pretty well-trafficked street there. That's fairly important to the story.

In addition, there is a group at Notre Dame (some sort of acting group or theatre thing) that's putting on the play "The Vagina Monologues". Well, being the Catholic university that ND is, there was some opposition. The local (arch?)-Bishop said that it was not allowed. But the president of the school gave the group the go-ahead anyway. Anyway, its been the "hot topic" around campus for a couple of weeks. Anyway, there were some people out protesting it on the corner by our building on Tuesday. They were very offended by the play, they see it as "immoral".

Actually there was a pretty general consensus among the people in the medical school that these protesters were being ridiculous. One of the graduate students that I know was leaving early, and he stopped and talked to a few of the protesters on his way out and one of them (oddly enough named Matt), told him that they were from Pennsylvania and they were protesting because they felt that the play was immoral and vulgar and shouldn't be put on, especially not at a well-known Catholic university.

Well, I guess I didn't realize that it was such a big deal. First of all, I never really knew what "The Vagina Monologues" was. I looked it up and got the general feel of what it was about. I guess (after just reading the plot synopsis) I just didn't see what all the fuss is about. I mean, obviously I'm all for morality and personal responsibility and doing what's right and all of that. I'd be interested to hear what you all think... (i.e leave comments!)

In other news, the local high school told Hillary Clinton that she couldn't come speak there on Friday... that was a GREAT idea. Nothing like NOT participating in politics...

I've created My(own)SQL!!! (actually I haven't)

I had a quiz this morning. It was no big deal though. Just 20 questions, multiple choice. Not that grades really matter... I just spent all weekend studying for it. Actually, I know how I did already, because right after we took it, we then went over all the questions as a class and what the right answers were and everything. Unfortunately, I didn't count how many I missed, so I don't REALLY know how I did. Again, it's not like grades actually matter or anything.

After that, I went for a jog over at the fieldhouse. Then I spent a lot of time studying this afternoon. This evening, I decided that I wanted to try to be an IT professional and make my computers work. Well, really just the old one. It went crazy. So that's what I'm doing as we speak. Backing up files, and hopefully reinstalling the operating system. I just hope I get EVERYTHING backed up that I would ever need.

On a related note, I bought this big external hard drive at Best Buy (it was on clearance) so I could do all this "backing up", and it said on a sticker on the packaging "500 Glorious Gigabytes"! Which I thought was funny.

For the record, I DO realize that backing up files doesn't make you an IT professional. For that you have to do things like talk about proxies and "server downtime"... And get paid for it!

Easter

Happy Easter everybody! (don't worry, I won't be telling you what easter means today...)

I hope you all are having a great easter. I am spending the day studying... like always. I'm halfway done with my Immunology class, but its only 2 weeks long, so I have to have half of immunology memorized before tomorrow!!! No big deal though, I pretty much have it down. Seriously. The only problem is that, like everything else I've learned in school, I'll probably only remember about 20% of it for more than 1 week after the class is over. Oh well, I guess if I ever need it, I'll just have to look it up.

So, on to the question of the day...

The question:
Should Bobby Knight go back to coaching at IU?

The answer:
Yes, and I will give him as many chairs to throw as he wants.

March Madness

Its also the start of March Madness! I can't believe its already here!!! Can you? I have to admit, I haven't followed basketball AT ALL this year, and so my bracket that I filled out may get broken later on tonight. I mean, basically, when you pick Notre Dame to win it all, you're taking a gamble. Which is what I did. Hopefully they won't be the 5 over 12 upset this year.

Also, I've got a 3 day weekend! Due to Easter and Good Friday, we don't have lecture tomorrow. Unfortunately what that really means is that I just have more time tomorrow to study. But at least we won't be getting pages and pages of new material. So maybe I'll get caught up (or get ahead...wait that couldn't possible happen!) However, tonight I plan to watch a lot of basketball. In honor of Maundy Thursday.

Which brings us to the question of the day. Today, the question is:

What does Maundy mean?

The answer:

Maundy, which sounds an awful lot like 'Monday' comes from the old English words "mawn" and "dein". "Mawn" means "before" (loosely), but the use of the 'w' denotes that the thing that is "before" also comes first in a number series. Who knew the old English had such crazy words (for the record, the alternative spelling replaces the 'w' with 'gg' and changes the meaning of "maggn" to "before" in a "causal sense"). "Dein" is simply an old English word roughly equivalent to "Friday".
So the real meaning is Mawn-dein, or "Before Friday in a number series". Thus, Maundy Thursday literally means "Before Friday in a number series Thursday". Which doesn't make a lot of sense and is quite redundant. However, in some languages, repetition denotes emphasis, especially with regards to royalty and religious topics, therefore this refers to the day before Good Friday.

And you don't have to take my word for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maundy_Thursday