listening to the twilight soundtrack WUT WUT

HAY so its been a while! i'm in st. louis in a new apartment with new roommates and new books for my classes that start tomorrow. and yeah i am listening to the twilight soundtrack, and yeah it is as dramatic and spooky as you think. there is a song on there by iron & wine ("flightless bird, american mouth") that has been stuck in my head for a few days. also i am feelin kinda emo at the moment. i just had a really perfect weekend with nate, and now that i'm going to be in class/studying constantly, he and i are going to see eachother way less. and with 2e working him up to 60 hours a week, he is exhausted most nights anyway. i am so happy that we're actually in the same city again, with the option to see eachother whenever our schedules (sleep, work, or otherwise) allow, but after spending something like 48 straight hours with him, it almost feels like we're 2,000 miles apart again. and now i don't even have the benefit of being in california. oddly, i kind of hope i end up being too busy to be bothered by seeing him so infrequently. i guess i'll have to wait and see.

so, for my own sake, here is a recap of this weekend:
friday: we met up at SubZero, a sushi/burger/vodka bar. it was sort of mediocre but still fun. i ended up passing out rather abruptly back at nate's.
saturday: we slept late and then went on a few errands, including getting nate an adorable used stationary bike. we hung around my apartment a little, and went to dinner at a new-ish japanese restaurant in clayton, and then walked to get gelato. then we saw up, which was pretty good. later we met nate's coworker austin and his girlfriend at a wine bar in the central west end. on the drive over there we passed through some truly beautiful pockets of st. louis. there was some sort of event at the art museum in forest park and it was lit up and outside there were people in formal attire waving sparklers.
today we got up really late and drove to wal-mart for some car stuff (one of nate's windshield wipers flew off his car on the freeway) and had a huge awesome lunch at sensai. then we took a long nap at my apartment and my roommate's cat curled up and fell asleep on nate's crotch. we eventually got moving and went to dairy queen for a brownie batter blizzard. it was really good, but even though nate and i shared a "mini" one, i feel like i ate waaay too much.

after that nate dropped me off back at my apartment and headed back to his. so i'm back here and my apartment is empty and i'm feeling sad, but looking forward to tomorrow. i just hope it gets here soon.

as tan as i get

sooo i went to hawaii last week and it was way less fun than you might imagine. partly because i was mulling over my choices for the post bac thing, and partly because my dad and my sister and i were crammed into a one-bedroom place and we all drove eachother nuts. actually they didn't have problems with eachother, but i definitely was pissing them off and they definitely were pissing me off. anyway i survived and i don't know if i have ever been happier to be home. i am pretty sure i mean that.

i also decided that i am going to do wash u. tomorrow morning i'm waking up at 5:30 am to be the very first to register for physics I and II, and calc I.

also i need some fairly extensive dental work and braces, which is sort of a surprise because my teeth have generally been pretty healthy and they are still pretty straight from the first round of braces. apparently shit does not line up AT ALL when i bite down and as a result, i have worn through the majority of the enamel on pretty much all of my back teeth. today i went in and did a "bite adjustment," which involved using a rotary file to remove even more enamel in hopes of evening things out in a way that will prevent further wear. now my teeth feel awful. i'm going back in on thursday for more fun.

IN OTHER NEWS, my sister is thinner than me for the first time since she hit puberty. i am not pleased.

harder decisions, etc

nate is visiting!!! here's a link to the countdown.

in other news, i found out today that i actually got in to mills. i know i had said i was pretty set on going to wash u, but now i am much less sure. i got a little more information from mills today that shifts things a little. so far, here is my list of pros and cons for both:

MILLS
pro:
-location -- it is an hour away from home, and the weather is not shitty at all.
-structured program -- i wont be competing with undergrads or taking night classes.
- med school admissions rate around 90%. that one speaks for itself.

con:
- lack of research and volunteer opportunities -- this one is big. i reallly want to work in a lab or even conduct my own research, which isn't really an option at mills
-EXPENSIVE. close to $45,00 for the whole program.
-apparently, MCAT prep and help with applying to med leave something to be desired.

WASH U
pro:
-affiliated with my top choice for med school, wash u.
-pretty good MCAT prep.
-about $20,00 for the whole program.
-lots of opportunities for research and volunteering.
-NATE!

con:
-location -- i hate the weather... and the city
-i would either be going to night school, or competing with undergrads in the most notoriously heinous of weedout classes
-medical school acceptance is about 40%, not much higher than the national average

sooo yeah i am having a pretty hard time deciding. i'm visiting mills on friday to meet with the director of the program, sit in on organic chemistry, and talk to a family friend who is finishing up there and getting ready to apply for dental school. hopefully that will help a little, but currently i'm pretty evenly split.

decisions etc

after a marathon of four rejection letters, i finally was accepted into a post-bac program at wash u, which is a HUGE relief. i still have one application up in the air at mills college, a well-respected program in the east bay area with very good medical school admissions rates. i haven't been admitted, but they invited me to sit in on some classes, which i took as a pretty good sign -- or cruel and sadistic, depending on whether or not they actually want me. regardless, i wrote up a list of pros and cons for both mills and wash u, and wash u won by a landslide. i am probably going to call mills and see if i can get some more info, but i am 98% certain i am going to be back in the dirty sweaty 'lou in a few short months. HOORAY mostly!!

in a bizarre twist of fate, the st. louis condo we have had sitting on the market for nine months got its very first bid yesterday, while i was blissfully wandering the aisles of the dermatology conference vendor booths. a contract was written up and signed today. it is still possible that the deal wont go through, but it is looking like i wont have a place waiting for me in st. louis after all -- other than nate's, of course.

HELLA LOTION

today i went to the AAD (American Academy of Dermatologists) conference in san francisco. my uncle, being chief of dermatology at kaiser santa clara, got me a guest pass. guests don't get to go to lectures or see the bizarre live case studies, but they do get to see all the vendor booths full of FREE SHIT. the amount of samples and gratis i amassed is epic. i could barely carry it all. ultimately i doubt i'll use 90% of it, but i'm so in love with the idea of free skincare/makeup that i could hardly say no. so, here are some pictures of my loot:

The samples:


A few from clinique:




I also got a ton of (HUGE) full-size products.








Neutrogena was by far the most ridiculous. I didn't even get everything they were giving away.


Here's a view of most of the loot:


so, that is how i spent my sunday. now i have to figure out what to do with all this fucking lotion.

DEPRESSION, lol

lately it seems like a lot of people are feeling pretty depressed and desperate. it is definitely that time of year. it seems like, around february or march, the persistent lack of sunlight seems to stretch people to their limits. two good friends (both of whom share my both my diagnoses of ADD and depression) have approached me for advice or reassurance within the last week and a half. honestly both of them seemed to be breaking down, totally unsure of themselves, depressed, and at a loss as to what to do with themselves. and honestly, i'm not in a much better position myself.

the application process has proven to be a lot more stressful than i anticipated. i feel like a lot of that is due to factors beyond my control, but that whole mess has thrown me quite a lot. i'm very frustrated and my options are dwindling. i know in the end i'll be fine, even if i don't get in to a post bac program, i have several other things in mind to do until i can apply again next year. what is more problematic than not getting in is my response to the prospect of not getting in, and to the bumps i encountered along the way. i thought i was controlling my response reasonably well but right around (or, exactly on) my birthday, i realized i was horribly depressed beyond the point of being able to treat myself. so i made an appointment with a new psychiatrist and things have been getting steadily more unsteady. last night i full-on sobbed in front of both my parents, which was totally humiliating. but i think things are gonna get better.

the psychiatrist i'm seeing has undergone psychoanalysis, which is pretty rare and extremely cool. after several sessions spent getting a good grasp on my situation, we agreed that the best treatment option for now is intensive psychotherapy. intensive means more than twice a week, and ideally four to five times per week. it also means a ridiculous amount of money. money that i absolutely do not have. the idea of asking my parents to pay for it induces so much guilt and shame that my vision starts to blur. but i'm sure that this is what i want, and what will ultimately be best for me. i considered taking out a loan, but debt is not something i can take on with so much more school ahead of me. instead, i'll be paying for half and my parents agreed to pay for the other half. this means i more or less sign over my paychecks to the psychiatrist, and meet with her twice a week. to translate, i earn in a week what she earns in an hour.

ultimately i think it will be worth it though. there are so many things about who i am that i need to work on, and i've reached a point where i can't do the work on my own anymore. the help will be very, very welcome.

i lost my rejection-letter-virginity

today i got my first ever rejection letter, and it fucking SUCKED. johns hopkins wrote me a shitty little letter being all like, no you can't come take your pre-med requirements at our program SORRY. i mean i guess that's reasonable -- the johns hopkins post bac pre-med program is probably the most comptetitive one in the country, and it seems like these programs are getting more and more popular. if i'm gonna get rejected, i guess i'm ok with being rejected by johns hopkins. still, i thought i was a pretty excellent candidate. i have an ok GPA from a really good school, a killer essay, experience working as a medical assistant, supposedly-wonderful letters of rec, and a totally bodacious bod. so what went wrong?

i'm gonna call the admissions department tomorrow to find out. what i'm really upset about is that it took them all of like a day to decide that i shouldn't be allowed in. that makes me wonder if my application was bad for some reason, and that none of the programs are gonna let me in. so stay tuned, i will keep shit up to date.

PS here's my nose