I want to strangle the Bio department...

What was I doing this morning at the unholy hour of 6 am? Sleeping? HA!
No... I was getting ready in my dark(no lights work on the 2nd floor) broke-down apartment to brave that oh-so-special arctic Pittsburgh weather and register for my bio advising appointment. This dept. has a long history of screwing with me, so naturally I planned this early morning sneak attack to ensure the registration process be a painless get-in/get-out kinda deal (insert mocking laughter)....lies!

A lesson: It doesn't matter how freaking early you THINK you're getting up...there's always gonna be that one (or three) person/people that set their alarm for 3:30 am in a deliberate attempt to lock up every goddamn upper division class that doesn't completely SUCK. ...they shall only be called Bio Psychos.

But I should preface this story with why my slacker behavior was momentarily sidelined by a burning drive to beat the aforementioned psychos (in LINE...jeez..i'm not that violent.) This week, a random visit to my advisor who shall remain nameless, (look her up...she'll be under "DEVIL"...god I hope she isn't reading this) revealed the following:

1. Certain courses that I thought counted towards my major....actually don't mean jack shit in the grand scheme things.... and I find this out too late due to massive miscommunication with the advisor. Example: Costa Rica lab course, where the term "field component" was dissected within an inch of its' life. Bottom line: I was tooling around "Plant Biotech" this summer analyzing trangenic corn for no fucking reason at all. Excellent. Well...atleast I got to discuss the finer points of the FARC with my Columbian prof. Calderone... no...no I'm still pissed.

2. Next semester aka my last semester (god willing) I will be stuck with a suicidal courseload if I want to graduate with my B.S. in B.S.:

• Biochemistry aka. The Class that Sucks Worse than OChem but by the Time you Take it You're Already too Jaded to Care.
• Animal Physiology : Human phys, vert. morph.... why not just round out my undergraduate career with more irrelevant anatomy vocab lodged in my already shot memory?
• Genetics: I HATE this subject.... Needless to say, the Pass/Fail option that I've been saving up for 3 years will be spent barely scraping by in this semester long suck-fest.
• Animal Physiology Lab: ... the pain involved should be implicit in its title.
• Microbiology Lab: That's right.... lab numero dos.
• Bio Writing: Where my love of writing will be swiftly destroyed by having to pen thesis papers about dead otters, mutant salmon, and corn ....(GOD why are 9 out of 10 bio research projects about CORN! ...wait I know this...nevermind.)

Que mas? ...I'm using my remaining 6 credits for:

• Spanish: I love this class...and its 5 credits are the only salvation for my plummeting QPA.
• Phys. Ed: It would be incredibly hilarious to add something like "Body Sculpting" or "Step it up!" to the litany of shit bio courses I'm going to be taking.... That's right, 1 credit worth of sweaty work out sessions to bad techno..YES!

Anyway, back to the story.

The set up: 6:05 am... outside Langley, freezing my tail off but soothed by the fact that I'll be the first in line given that I'm a full 85 minutes early for the beginning of registration. HAHAHAHAHA! Oh ..wow, what WORLD do I live in where BIO majors aren't totally INSANE?! I walk up the stairs towards the entrance only to be virtually shoved into the bushes by another young hopeful (probably trying to steal my spot in lab...bastard)... He dives into the elevator, while I square my shoulders and sprint up two flights of stairs. A quick glance at my watch reveals the time is.... 6:06 am. I arrive a second earlier than my rude peer, scanning for the door of my advisor, where I plan to camp out with my Population Bio notes. Well I didn't have any problem finding it because there was already a line of 8 people! I reiterate...this was a mere 8 minutes after the bloody BUILDING opened. Unreal. Every two minutes, another 10 people showed up in their Registration getup (I see this every semester: sweatpants, sweatshirt, some fat textbook in preparation for an exam for an upper division course, and the same "What the..fuck? I thought I was EARLY!" look as they helplessly take their place at the end of the line which is now well into the Baltic Sea.

At 7:10... the line is so enormous it's almost comical. The advisor, finding some humanity in her soul at the zero hour, opens her door early allowing me to get an appointment within the next few minutes. As I leave, I hear another bio senior about to join the line mutter disgustedly "I fucking hate bio majors." So do the rest of us.

Quote of the Day:

Dr. Kelso: Dr. Dorian, I owe you an apology. Obviously I was unclear when I said, "Stay in the MRI room with that patient", it must have sounded like, "Leave and do other things".

--Scrubs

Mas Randomness!

Well, once again I have neglected the sacred blog....but I do have an excuse this time; the miserable week of midterms is upon me. Oh what's that? College only started last month, and so to have midterms already would be illogical not to mention sick and cruel...Yes, I know.. and so I've spend the last couple weeks doing the following; in keeping with my love of lists, i've categorized the events (no one needs to yell "NERD!" at the screen...i'm doing it as I write this):

THE GOOD:
1. Went to the Lifehouse concert- Okay, this one's really a mixed bag. In preparation for my last midterm (this week anyway), I was going to study the entire day, allowing myself half an hour to see one of my favorite bands play. But, as has been proven countless times before,..I have no freaking willpower. As soon as I got there, precisely at the dot of 5:30, the combination of hearing Jason Wade's amazing voice and laughing myself sick at the goth guy next to me who was soulfully mouthing all of the words and swaying side-to-side, conspired to keep me there until the concert ended....at 7:00. It was an awesome concert though (my first one too...a sad, sad fact given that I'm 20) and it was free! I took an embarassing amount of pictures even though after the first few, it became quite clear that Jason looked precisely the same in all of them...and that the freakishly tall person in front of me wasn't going to move his big ass head anytime soon.) Anyway, wracked with guilt, I spent the next 4 hours at Kiva Han "studying" and downing poisonous amounts of coffee (at one point, the guy at the counter just looked at me and asked "Another Macho Mocha Freezer?". I could totally feel the sting of his silent disapproval as I paid him with fingers that were shaking in that "mucho cafe sobre un estomac vacio" kind of way. Oh well.
2) Made Indian food twice.... Body Count: ZERO! woo...
3) Amnesty is going really well....25-30 members a week, and they actually care (a rarity on this campus)...
4) Went to D.C. protest- I sidelined studying (once again...this is becoming a pattern) to get up at the ungodly hour of 4am to head to the anti-war protest in D.C. And although, due to some issues with the bus (oh yeah..what was it? Oh.....there weren't ENOUGH!), and the fact that we had to come back before the Operation Ceasefire concert got underway...it was still cool. It ain't protest porn, but still, I got pics of counter-protestors, angry old bible thumpers, PO-lice (actually, a disproportionately large amount), etc....not to mention a hasty (and rather frantic) purchase of Subcomandante Marcos shirt (if all of you have forgotten how friggin cool he is, here's a pic up for your viewing pleasure..

4) Internet- Oh sweet sweet internet, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.... After only a week of "sharing" music, I have in my possession a bizarre collection of spanish songs, some of the so catchy...they start working their way into my goddamn dreams. As if my dreams aren't weird enough... I get chased by a laughing clown wielding sharp scissors....and I hear "Dame mas Gasolina!" in the background. Sheesh.

THE BAD:
1) My restlessness with being an undergrad is getting more acute; neither cheery latin pop songs, nor constantly reminding myself that I'm almost done are helping with this. I have this strange feeling of inertia (make no mistake, it's been lying dormant since freshman year, surfacing at random inopportune times...like now, when I'm experiencing a very shitty, difficult course load to complete my B.S. major (hahaha...).. Not even thoughts of my post-graduation trip is doing much to shake me out of this mood. It just seems so far away (1 year!), and there is that small matter of raising the necessary funds, somewhere in the ballpark of 5 grand (yeah, "brother, can you spare a dime?")
2) Hay mucho midterms! (yeah I know I mentioned it)....but I'm getting damn sick of gulping down mocha freezers and memorizing obscure terminology relating to frog embryos. Knowledge, I might add, that has no relevance to my future career. On the other hand, in spanish, every once in awhile I learn a cool word. This week: "repuesto" (part) and "ambos" (both). Alright, I'm a word nerd... sue me.

THE UGLY:
1. For one reason or another, I've had more than a few conversations with the parental units concerning the "ghetto" nature of my residence...lies...lies I tell you! I'm forced to field off potential visits with "Ma, I don't live in a ghetto...(mumble...I live NEXT to a ghetto)" or my favorite "Why don't we talk about something else...what did you want to tell me about the importance of daily protein and calcium intake.. please forget that I'm a bio major and know this already." No mas..por..favor...
2) I have a job...at the Nationality Rooms(yeah, you read right, the same bastards that deemed me "finalist" for their study abroad scholarship because my immigrant burden story wasn't pathetic enough,) And sure, I only put in 5 hours a wk (that's 30 bucks a wk, watch out Donald Trump) but it's so soul-crushingly boring that I have to fight urges to sneak into the copy room and make prank calls to the office just to mess with my W.A.S.P-y "boss" Laura.

On the other hand, this is actually a decent semester. I'm keeping really busy so I don't have have last semester's valuable lesson driven home ("Bombing several finals due to a pre-med crisis isn't an acceptable, or remotely logical rebellious statement.")

Quotes of the Day:

"Thank you dear god, for this smorgasbord of food. We thank you for all the blessings so that we can see thee more clearly, ...love thee more...dearly, follow thee more nearly, day...by day...by day." Greg

"I thought you said you milked your sister's cat Focker!" Jack
"And the cancer ate away her organs...like an unstoppable rebel force." Jack
--- Meet the Parents