Fearless

To my female community, I'd like to introduce you to an epiphany that I had about boys. It's one of those things that has probably already been discovered and I may have even known it before this week, but only recently verbalized it and applied it. So here goes. So you know how there are those times when you're in that crack between liking a guy, knowing it won't work out, and accepting him as just a friend? When it's like, I know this isn't good for me, but there's still that drop of acid in water that you can't get rid of no matter how much you try? I hope this is making sense. Well, here's a solution: pursue another male.  Yes, I'm objectifying males. No I'm not, just kidding. But actually. I don't mean it in a objectifying way; all I mean is that finding qualities or personality traits in another person that seem like they would match with yours or are attractive to you helps you get over this guy that probably wasn't right fo...

Dang, almost a week. This might be the longest I've gone without a post. No worries though, it only means that life has been rather uneventful. Except I got my orgo test back, but we're definitely not discussing that. I do have some stuff to talk about though. Right now I'm at my family friends' house in Raleigh because I really needed to get work done and knew I wasn't going to get much done back at the dorm. Also, I wanted good food. And booy did I get it; dosa, sambar, idli and hot chai. I'm so grateful for connections. But anyway, the family is actually my sister's friend's mom's sister and her husband and son. I've only met them twice but they really made me feel at home. It's a strange feeling, spending a night somewhere other than on campus. I don't think I've done that a single day yet. Not a single night have I not slept in the bed in my dorm. It's good to get out. But at the same time, it's super weird. I miss m...

It's a beautiful day at Duke University. Absolutely beautiful. It's even better now that the Orgo test is over. But that's something that we are not discussing.  Taylor Swift's new album Red came out today. I can't say I'm very impressed, but there are select songs that do kind of still sound like her and some of the other ones, though they aren't the greatest lyrics, are super catchy. She's still one of my favorites regardless.  My sickness is beginning to recede which is always a good thing. Just a strong cough and a little throat tickle every time I swallow. I wouldn't call it a tickle though, more like... needles pricking my esophagus. But it's not as bad as before, don't worry.  I had lunch with a senior friend of mine here at Duke who was my camp counselor at Gov School last summer. I can't believe I haven't seen her since now. It was super nice and we just talked about how our years have been going so far and how ...

Dang, it's been almost an entire week since I last posted. Probably because nothing really has been happening. Except I got sick. Like, icky sick. Sadness. Yes, I feel the weakness. It's so frustrating. I wasn't lying when I said I though sickness was weakness, and obviously I'm really weak right now. Icky sick. My friend calls me Sanjay because I sound like a man. I met a bunch of new people today at FoodFest and it sucked because I don't want anyone to think I actually sound like this. If anyone has medicine, hit me up like, now. And to put the cherry on the top of the cake, there's an orgo exam Monday and I don't actually know orgo.  Speaking of FoodFest, it was awesome. Tons of international food and so many happy people on a bright sunny day on BC Plaza at Duke.  Dang, I go here. In other news, I tried Turkish delight for the first time today. It wasn't as good as The Chronicles of Narnia made it sound. Definitely not addictive. V...

So it's 5 in the morning and I'm writing a blog post. My best thoughts seem to develop at night, but then there are those random times during the day when I have epiphanies that I know I will forget if I don't note down and eventually do forget for that reason. I've started to feel like I wouldn't be able to get through college without this blog. Even though it's only been a few months, I've realized how much writing things down consolidates my thoughts. Otherwise I have all this different stuff in my head and it's hard to make sense of it all. I've always been a fan of that, making things concrete. I've realized this week that I've been extremely content and there is absolutely nothing to be stressed out about at all. It's the best and oddest feeling in the world, especially for someone who is stressed out 80% of the time about something or another. I have great friends here at college, I have great friends who keep in touch back at h...

First things first, mega mega congratuations to Dr. Robert Lefkowitz, Professor of Medicine at Duke, for winning the Nobel Prize in chemistry today! Along with  Brian K. Kobilka, a former student, he won the award for more than 35 years of research on G protein-coupled receptors and related things. I'm so proud to be part of a school with such magnificent people!  Second things second, today on my way to my linguistics seminar, I saw this white board with the little magnetic words on them. You know, like the ones you can make sentences with and stuff? I pass it every Wednesday and Friday when I go to class, but today I actually read some of the stuff on it. Last week, I had moved a couple of the words and started a sentence "I am." I never actually finished it because I realized that I was late as it was. So this time when I looked to see if those words were still there, I saw this instead: Whether the question and answer for this were the work of the sam...

Bum, bum bummmm. 2000 pageviews! Yaaay. And then I think about how many people just click and close, and then I'm like lol. There are probably only 500 actual pageviews in those 2000. It's okay, children, it satisfies me. First things first. I took my neuro101 test today that I was stressing about this weekend. Let me take you through my mental processes as the hour and a half of the test progressed. 5 minutes before  Ahh, this is going to be so hard... Let me just look over my stuff one last time and get off Facebook.. 10 minutes into test Ehh, don't feel so great about that one. I'll just skip this for now. 30 minutes into test Okay, I sort of know this. This isn't too too bad... An hour into test Okay I feel good about this. Not as bad as last time for sure. Let me go finish those questions I skipped. Google, help me. 15 minutes left till end SHIT, I PUSHED THE BACK BUTTON. NONONONO. ALL ANSWERS GONE. HAVE TO FILL EVERYTHING IN REALLY QUICKLY. ...

Here's one of those posts that actually has to do with the original theme of my blog. Last night, I went to my very first college party! If you know me, you'll know that obviously I didn't drink at all and stayed completely sober. There's quite a lot that I have to say about this specific topic of drinking and partying so lemme get started at point A. The party was okay. Dancing with friends was fun, of course, but the party itself was just okay. This is the first time I've ever been to a party at all with drunk people. It was just really strange for me knowing that some of my friends and the people around me weren't completely, 100% themselves. Just the fact that they weren't perceiving reality in the way that I was made me feel... I can't think of the right word. But you know what I mean? One of the guys that I'm kind of, sort of friends with was pretty drunk and he asked me how I could be enjoying myself at the party while being sober. I couldn...

I post this first because I am actually pretty content right now and I'm just waiting for life to screw it up again. It always does that. But, you take what you get, right? Like today, Freeman Center for dinner with apparently really good mac and cheese. Awesome. If you have the time, take out about ten minutes of your time to watch this video. It was posted by a classmate of mine to our FOCUS group on Facebook after a heated conversation about time perception in different cultures in class. And then you can read my commentary on the topic. Or whichever one you want. Are you past or future oriented? Or maybe present hedonistic? I would consider myself the last option because I try never to think too far into the future and not to dwell in the past, though I do that all the time. It's a habit that's difficult to get out of, but I'm getting there. I try to live within three or four days of the time that I'm in and focus on the task at hand. Sometimes I wis...

So everyone is stressed out right now. Last week and this week are midterm weeks here at Duke and evverrryone is stressed out. The thing that many of my friends and I here have begun to realize is that we are no longer at the top of the academic food chain. Plain and simple, we're just not smart anymore. Okay, well maybe that's not completely true. We are smart, it's why we got here. One of my friends posted in his blog last night, "When you float in a sea of extraordinary, you just become...ordinary." This is the cold, hard truth about college, but there's one thing that's important to remember: The fact that you're ordinary in a sea of extraordinary means that  you're extraordinary too.  That's why you're here. Otherwise you'd be extraordinary in a sea of ordinary. And that's never any fun.  No matter which school you're at, there's probably a good reason you're there. Hopefully you belong there academically and it...