Fearless

So I guess it's been quite a while, like a month and a half since I've written. If I ask myself why that is, I'd say it's a combination of being super super busy this semester, being pretty content with life and its happenings, and having a boyfriend with whom I end up spending all the free time I used to use to write. It's not a bad thing, but definitely I should write more. Probably this summer when I'll be staying at Duke to (finally!) do Alzhemiers research! ---------- I guess the first thing I wanted to talk about was Dhoom. Being co-captain this semester has been such a wonderful experience and I hope will continue to be. This is the first time I've felt the real struggles and rewards of being a leader and I think next year and the year after I'll have so much more of a better idea if what to expect. I think one of the things I've been learning is that as a leader, even though you're allowed to feel guilt when something doesn'...

So, one of my classes last semester and three of my classes this semester decided to use, in some way, shape or form, a new-ish way of teaching known as team based learning. For anyone who doesn't know what that is yet, you pretty much get assigned or choose a team of people in your class and complete many activities as a team, including some quizzes and problems and what not. Every so often you have a quiz first that tests your own preparedness for the class and then take the same quiz again but now with your team or group. Then you do other stuff with your team and write up a contract on who does what and what rules you're going to abide by. This, friends, is why the only class I will thoroughly enjoy this semester is Chinese 102, because it is the only class in which none of this nonsense happens. Okay, I exaggerate, I don't actually think it's nonsense. Working in groups is actually a helpful tool in trying to solve problems and help each other to learn and tea...

I came upon the realization that everything that I am in the process of learning in my years of college are things that will be directly applicable to my career. This is pretty obvious, but like in high school, how we learn stuff only to prepare us for college and relearn it all over again. Tell me that didn't happen with bio and physics and you'd be lying. We come to college and it didn't matter if we forgot all of it, because it was just going to be retaught. I'm in Neuro201 right now and we're going into more detail than we ever did in 101, but the course still started off "this is a neuron." Yes this makes sense. But what I mean is, there will come a point when our classes will require us to have a large basis of knowledge to understand what is going on or otherwise be completely lost. Not that this isn't already starting to happen, but in med school I'm sure it'll be like, cool so you know about the body so let's talk about hypergloss...

And so we're done the year and I feel like I literally just wrote an end of the year reflection post but it's crazy that it's been 365 days since then. So here goes. Some things I've done in 2013: > Brought up my grades > Kissed and swam with dolphins > Snorkeling > Walked from West to East Campus in snow and ice > Joined a dance team that reminded me why I love to dance > Became a Cameron Crazie at Cameron Stadium > Finished taking orgo forever > Took a photo with Aladdin and Jasmine > Shadowed a neurologist > Bought a snapback > Watched Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham 3 more times > Spent Thanksgiving with my best friend > Roadtripped to New Jersey > Performed in my first Awaaz > Developed a better relationship with my sister > Made some new, super close friends > Found love(: And some things I've learned in 2013: > First relationships tend to be more about finding out what you want and don't...

Conflict lies where you don't know whether to let yourself remember or not. Remembering feels so good, feeling can feel so good, but you know it'll be bittersweet because it'll just leave you aching when the hole in your heart that you never knew existed expands to swallow up every other thought you're trying to have and leaves you with only the one that pains you. We want sweatshirts and music and memories to remember them by because the smell and the tune and the emotions make us feel wonderful. But then comes heavy breathing and loss of focus because there's nothing we can do to get them back at this point in time when we need them most. I'm being overdramatic, I know, it sounds like it in words. But you know what this feels like. Missing someone so much that it hurts, missing him so much that it's no longer a pleasant feeling, like missing can sometimes be. It feels like someone is squeezing your lungs and won't let enough air into them. And that su...

So I've only been really jealous once before in my life, but it's coming like a wave again but on a much different subject. Jealousy is a really weird feeling. You know inside that you really have nothing to be jealous about, that your abilities or life is just as good as anyone else's and that although you can pinpoint a reason or cause, it's something that you know not to be truly, only superficially true. From how I see it, the person you're jealous of either knows you are or not, and you're either friends with them or not. If you're friends with them, you start to become angry or distant because you hold animosity for no fault of their own. If you're not friends with them, it's just kind of weird because you don't really have any basis to hold animosity and you don't really dislike them, but you still kind of do, also for no fault of their own. Or at least this is the way it is seeming to happen for me. I'm not a bad jealous person, ...

I'm sometimes not sure if I want to grow up faster or I don't want to grow up at all. It's not like I'm not enjoying the time that I have at college, because trust me, I'm enjoying it to the max. Sometimes it just feels like the perks of being older are so close but so far away. I want to be old enough that my parents will take the decisions I make completely seriously. I want to be old enough that I have an academic and social life set for me. And it sounds really hypocritical, but I am very much enjoying the process to get there, college is great. Sometimes I wish I was already at the result. I wish my brain was fully mature so they believed me when I talked about how a great of a guy he is and how we're really good together. I mean, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex that determines our sophisticated behavior is pretty much fully matured at around age 20, and okay I'm not there yet, but he's there, he's almost 20. If you think about it neurologic...