I have a gap year since I graduate in December coming up that I’m trying to figure out what to do with. Current thoughts:

• Become a cat foster parent
• Get into a paid research program and stay at CSUF one semester longer to graduate at the normal time of Spring (the stem cell one at school pays for your tuition anyway plus gives monthly moolah)
• Volunteer at a hospital
• Teach English abroad (Taiwan?) for three months to a year
• Study for and take MCAT (this will happen regardless of whether I’m swimming in abandoned kitties or sweating to death in Taiwan while throwing flashcards around)
• Just keep on researching for free for a whole other year

I’m leaning towards doing something aboard right now if I can because of a number of reasons that I honestly don’t feel like getting into on my casual Tumblr blog. I’ve been talking a lot with some professors recently about PhD stuff (since I want to do that too), essentially. Just blah blah blah get PhD in USA do postdoc in Europe (preferably Germany, apparently) and other places win win win win. Plus some other suggestions but this is really not interesting to people who are not interested in biochemistry academia and is not new information to people who are interested in biochemistry academia.

Also, working abroad = some money, plus yay fun yay experiences yay something new yay yay yay. Continuing to do research is more unpaid work. Plus, I have a lot of research experience— I have been told already that I essentially have enough research experience when it comes to applying to grad schools by now (three years of research and counting, three different labs).

If I can get into the stem cell research program, that would be ace because that’s money, free tuition (I would love to have a second major or another minor, honestly— I love school that much fo’ sheezy), and awesome research that’s new to me. I’m being trained to do different research this summer though— worm stuff, yay. KILL ALL THE NEMATODES! This reminds me that I still need to finish proofreading Amy’s thesis! Ahh!

Fostering cats also is an exciting prospect, haha. I have a buddy who fosters dogs (cutiepatootie bulldogs), and I’m sure that’s a fairly different experience but he and his family are enjoying it very much.

Volunteering at a hospital is something I’m going to do eventually, but I can actually just do that… now and not during my gap year. So. Ehh. Ehhhh. I like keeping my options open too because I am actually fairly keen on getting a PhD even if it’s a rough, rough life in many ways.

Some other people I’ve talked to have suggested just running off with my degree and doing a job for a year— so getting paid to wash dishes in a lab somewhere sob sob sob THIS IS THE LIFE I CHOSE. Actually, I wouldn’t mind that too much because I just like being around science and I could deal with it for a year.

Anyway, my summer plans are all figured out. I’m going to finish up my volunteer hours at the WoMen’s Center (which is apparently going to be a ton of fun because summer is when all we really do there is watch movies all the time and do potlucks) and take some summer classes to make my fall semester lighter.

I have also decided that if I get down to my goal weight by my goal time (July 4th) I will do something nice for myself, but I haven’t decided what.

Also, I have been very proud of my recent face-ups hahaha SHE IS SO COOL LOOKING :,33333 <3

asidapsodigapsdoifasopd okay battle plan time

Spring 2012

• OCHEM + OCHEM lab (part-time) OR just take full-time but keep the load light— like three classes and one lab
• Interview for CCE
• Study for MCAT
• Get letters of rec

Summer 2012

• Submit primary applications (opens in May)
• Submit secondary applications
• Go to Taiwan
• Take online writing class at IVC?
• Take MCAT in August before semester starts
• Cry

Fall 2012

• Finish up last classes
• Interview season
• Graduate

Spring 2013

• Retake MCAT to see if I can improve my score since I can resubmit scores up to the January of the year I start
• Wait
• Cry

Summer 2013

• Cry

Fall 2013

• Med school (IF I GET IN)
• Hopefully run out of tears by this point so I can stop crying all the time

CRYING ALREADY MAYBE…!

Anyway, that means things to next week should be

• Contact CSUF
• Contact admissions officer
• Prepare boxes of tissues for tears

Still haven’t written my paper on Superman, which is due in fourteen minutes, because after watching a documentary (“Comics Confidential,” by the way) I’m having an existential crisis about what the hell am I doing with this gorgeous art medium called comics and why am I not doing more with it and on that note my silhouettes are weak and my overall art is weak and I really wanna work on my form and silhouettes and achieve something that is strong in an aesthetically pleasing way that is dynamic yet still has this sense of beauty that I look for when it comes to art and now I have been exposed to the wonderful art that is Love and Rockets that manages to mix the cutesy, glossy black lip style of girls from Archie with steel-toe boots and fade haircuts and lesbians and many other wonderful fantastic magic realist stories about other subjects that are hardly related to lesbians with short hair going shopping for shoes and I need to start reading it because holy shit I love beautiful black and white art and and and and and—

Do I write this paper now? It’ll be utter crap. I think I will write it tomorrow and take the hit that I’ll get from it being one day late. I meant to write it all day but I’ve been busy saying good bye to my friends and burning through my money when I celebrate with them about things. I’ve been breaking out and picking my face out of nervousness so now I’m going to have scars again. I slathered on a bunch of the prescription cream a a result so my face feels tired and so does my brain. I did only little things with face-ups today and I tried to take photos but the sun went down too quickly.

Tomorrow is my last day of school. I was going to bring bagels for the class but I realized that I don’t like anyone from my class except for three people and the rest of the people either don’t talk to me or have gotten into an argument with me somehow. For the record, the reason why I got into an argument was that I got sick of hearing the same three girls trashtalking on an esteemed and highly respected professor at school since the start of the semester just because they didn’t get the grades they thought they deserved. I snapped last week when the loudest of them proclaimed, “Nobody in that class got about a C, and everyone else failed!” I very pleasantly but assertively said that such a statement is far from the truth, because I did fine while my labmates who were also in that same class made off with A’s and A+’s.

I was immediately overtalked by three girls demanding answers. “Yeah, how many of you guys are there? Well that’s four out of a hundred people that failed!” Not true, there are only about eighty people in that class and I know that only about twenty people failed at most because the curve was so ridiculously generous. Since they had C’s, that means they must have been scoring in the twenties on the tests because I scored in the sixties and made off with a B+ while my labmates were scoring nineties and getting what they deserved. They are the true people who deserve the grades, and the rest of us are just riding the very generous curve that he didn’t even have to give us when they were clearly people who were able to master the material and consistently score in the mid eighties to upper nineties.

One of the girls is the same person who had an argument with the SI leader (SI are student-run review sections paid for by the school) for that class last semester over how she did not think we needed to know chemistry to do medicine or pharm so there’s no point in learning it or making it so hard.

>don’t need chem to understand pharm

>mfw

I spoke up then too, saying that if we’re all trying to go to professional school later than lower division classes like said chemistry class are nothing in comparison and should not be something that discipline can’t eventually tackle. This was GenChemB, by the way, so it was things like kinetics, acids and bases, plus early structure stuff and crystals.

SHE AND HER MINIONS DO NOT DESERVE MY BAGELS. I don’t want them anywhere near my delicious bagels okaaaaay. The other people in class are not bad, just not very social and I will most likely never see them again so I don’t feel like spending 20+ to feed a bunch of faceless people who don’t even bother talking to me even when I try to talk to them. I don’t even approach people awkwardly like, “derp I’m Chien let’s be friends.” Just, “Morning! Do you know how to do this problem? Oh you do? Actually, I’d love to have some help on this problem please— by the way, I’m Chien” and then handshake and even then I get STONEY FACES WITH FROWNS.

THERE ARE MOSQUITOS IN MY HOUSE AND I AM BEING ASSAULTED clearly I am too riled up to write my paper so I am going to go to bed and write it tomorrow after I finish having my last lunch meeting with my friends till I get back from WSU.

AND I HOPE I GET MY DOLL SOMETIME NEXT WEEK SO I CAN PAINT HIM GRRRRRR.

On the plus side I’ll most likely be painting Alogue’s beautiful boys and oh man Volks resin is luxurious. It’s hard to decribe, but there’s a very lovely slight translucency to it and it’s got such weight and feels kind of… chalky? I don’t know, but pastels blend so easily on Volks dolls. I never have any issue with graininess when it comes to Volks dolls. If all dolls could be made with Volks’ secret resin formula I’d be happy to pay the higher price because MAN OH MAN IS IT SEXY RESIN.

Superman paper I will write you tomorrow when I can focus on things other than how much beautiful art I’m wasting by not doing in the lovely medium of comics (I was gushing to Michael yesterday about the glorious awesomeness of comics telling stories in ways only comics can do and how it’s such a shame that so many comics are trying to tell stories cinematically instead of seizing the tools and the beautiful advantages and disadvantages of doing things with comics for the sake of beautiful beautiful comics ahhhh) and how my art has no structure and that I don’t want to spend my meager dollars on people who don’t even give me the time of day in Physics class (I’m sure they’re very nice, I just don’t feel motivated to give them my hard-earned dollars through food— unlike my microbio lab, where I was more than happy to serve them up deliciousness at our potluck on Tuesday) and that reading more and more about comics just moves me to tears because COMICS AHHH COMICS.

And yes, I am very fond of run-on sentences as a way of expressing the anxiousness of my thought process.

Reminder to self: pick up my labcoat to bring to WSU before I cheerily run away from school to go do research in Washington, make a shopping list, find time to see childhood friends before I go, try not to cry too much about how much I miss Lou which is so much that I already had dreams about me going to WSU and missing him so much my heart felt like it was breaking

I need distractions at WSU for my empty weekends where everyone goes to party and I stay indoors for the sake of my pancreas and the reputation of my school. I’m not of age and I got into this program partially due to a favor from the head of the department who knows me and finds me capable, so I don’t want to embarrass my school when I’m there to represent them. It’s a party school, however, and almost all the stories I’ve heard from people who did this program involve them partying the entire summer away. The two people I know who are going are of age and partiers, so it’s cool if they go off and do that. I’m sure I’ll make friends to hang out with. Raymond made a joke about me making a sign that says, “I CAN’T DRINK” to just wear around so that people get the hint before they start trying to drag me off to parties (which is already my week to week life at school right now).

It’s why I’m hoping Ray and Mike will come visit. It’ll be a blessing to have them around. I wish Lou could visit too but I understand that it’d be a money suck for him and he has things to do. Ray and Mike just want to vacay— and Mike is familiar with tons of people from there since he did the program before too so he just wants to see people before he graduates and vanishes. Apparently, his hopes and dreams involve working at UCLA doing research with other PhDs and staying the hell away from undergrads.