Tuesday, February 1

Re-enter the blogosphere.

Since the last time I blogged, I've become taller, thinner, wittier, and more interesting.
Of course, this is false. If anything, I've gained a slight humpback and a few lines on my face thanks to various stresses including but not limited to biochemistry, looking for summer research in Boston, and the slow but sure destruction of my apartment (more about that later). So I'm actually handwriting this blog post with hopes of typing it up later. If you're reading this, that means that sometime in the future, I will have overcome my laziness. Yay

By the way, my laptop is evil. I think it may have been assembled in hell by the devil himself. It's not even that old, but it's so pro at foiling my attempts to get work done while also devouring up my music, pictures, and documents leaving no hope that I will see them ever again. It's like one of those cars that cost so much to repair that it would be cheaper just to buy a new one. I've had to reformat this devil-machine at least three times during its life and even had to replace the hard drive once. The sound will turn off depending on the laptop's mood at the time. The fan utterly fails as a fan and as an added bonus, emits an asthmatic Darth Vaderesque rasp when you turn on the laptop. Anyway, at the moment the devil machine isn't booting up and I think it may have finally reached the end of its pathetic life. It won't even let me boot ubuntu, which I co-installed on the hard drive anticipating something like this would happen. I guess I could replace the hard drive again, but I won't because this laptop deserves to be taken outside and shot.

So recently, friends made me feel super guilty about abandoning my blog. And I realized that if I am ever to look back at my first year of medical school with any sort of fondness, I better record the memories, at least the un-unpleasant ones, while they are still fresh. If I actually blog about good memories, in the future when we read about them again, we may be able to fool ourselves into believing that all of medical school was fun (if you read old posts about penn state, they make it seem like such a riot).

I should mention that I am sitting on the megabus to Boston, indicating that we just finished an exam. Not just any exam, but the Biochemistry final! Out with a bang it goes, the hardest class I have probably ever taken in my life (thus far).

Valuable lessons taught to Sowmya by Biochemistry:
1. It is possible to survive on <3 hours of sleep a night for 5 days straight and then take an exam. Of course this is incredibly unhealthy, but it is possible.
2. Pregnant women should really take folic acid.
3. Coffee actually doesn't taste that bad if you drink it when its hot enough to scald your taste buds. Also, a caffeine induced crash can be warded off be preemptively consuming more coffee.
4. If you don't take folic acid when you're pregnant, you will have spinal-defect-babies.
5. The week before a final exam is the wrong time to decide that you want to learn how to play a new musical instrument.
6. Ignoring and trying to forget about the lectures that you have skipped while playing a musical instrument makes them go away. Haha jk. No it doesn't.
7. Take the damn folic acid if you pregnant. Just do it. 400 micrograms.

In additional to all of this, if I am to live up to the job of prog historian, I should definitely outline to you the few but memorable exciting highlights of the past month, starting with the most recent and going back in time.

Jan. 28 7:10 PM: I decide to make a new blog post.
 Jan. 28 12:30 PM: We celebrate the end of Biochemistry by going to Portofino for lunch.

Jan. 28 6:48 AM - 7:30 AM: I have the shortest "night" of sleep in my life (not counting all-nighters).



Jan. 25: My new electric guitar, a Squier Affinity Strat, is delivered.
Jan. 22: The last remaining teenager in our year finally turns 20!



Ramya's birthday dinner. I made fettucine with alfredo sauce. Everybody brought a dish (making it fattier than necessary since it was a party) and packed up all the leftover food into ziploc bags, to consume it over the next few days. We've totally become aunties.

Jan. 16: A large hole is made in the apartment wall.

It was a perfectly sane night of playing Catchphrase, eating brownies, and telling scary stories in the dark. And I had just gone downstairs for a MINUTE to buy some Red Bull. This is what I saw when I returned.

Harsha and Jon pose next to their work of art.

I think I'll stop here partly because I don't think many of you will make it reading this far and mainly because I haven't held a pencil in my hand and written continuously for this long since high school. If I continue, I may develop an open sore on my finger. Mad props if you read up until here. Actually, props to anyone who still reads this blog.
Thanks!
Sowmya

Photo credit: Jenny Mao

4 comments:

Sharon said...

YO your blog is awesome ;D

Nipunn said...

Is this the part where we guess what happened when you came back up?

Did someone become pregnant and then fail to consume folic acid?

Sowmya said...

Haha, no.
The part about folic acid was just drilled into our brains during biochem

Nipunn said...

Wait, so what happened?