Fearless

So it's New Year's Eve and I'm going to do one of those end of the year posts that is super cliche and expected but you know, WHATEVER because it's a great way for me to reflect! It doesn't feel at all like the New Year, and I'm not sure why that is. Maybe because there are a lot of bigger things on my mind this year than to focus on New Year's Day. Maybe because things feel more like a continuation than a fresh start. Yeah, I think that's it actually. It doesn't feel this year as if I'll be able to start new goals or anything major will change with the year number changing, rather as if everything that has happened this year will just jump the page onto a new month. Maybe this is what getting older does to you... I think the beginning of an academic year begins to feel more like the "New Year" than New Year's Day itself because that's when all the real starting fresh begins. Regardless, there is a lot of emotions that I'...

I have a really bad habit of biting at the skin around my fingernails. I don't even remember how this became something that I was just okay with. I don't remember when it became a habit. I try so hard to stop it, but I always unconsciously end up right where I began, deteriorating something that I should be keeping clean and beautiful. I bite them because it's an impulse but I tell myself it won't happen again the next time. Our country is creating a really bad habit of making decisions against our national standard. We don't even remember if this is something that began or something that just never really ended. We try so hard to create equality and justice, but this country always ends up right where it began, deteriorating something that we portray to the world as diverse and welcoming. Mindsets are so difficult to change, so people just tell themselves it won't happen again the next time. And then what happens? It does. It happens again and again...

HEEEYY! I could give every person I know a big Sonal bear hug right now, that's how happy I'm feeling. If you read me a month ago, I was bawling my eyes out and complaining about the many pressures I'm dealing with lately. I said that this semester has been a roller coaster of emotion and that it felt like even in a week I couldn't maintain one state of mind. See, I'm really serious, two weeks ago I was crying and now I'm listening to Taylor Swift's new album and smiles every moment of every day! It's actually incredible. I'm just afraid it'll go downhill again, but I'm hoping for the best (today). Awaaz 2014 was incredible. The best Awaaz, of the two I've been in, so far. I literally don't know if it could've gotten any better. My team felt like a strong united group of people who loved to dance and had a common goal: to excite and impress and have fun. That's what I've always wanted from my dance team, a community t...

So it's been a while and it's not like I have time to be writing, but I think it's really necessary given all the stuff that's been going on lately. This semester has been an emotional rollercoaster, as I've discussed with a handful of my friends already, and there hasn't been a week where I've felt one constant emotion. It's great to feel happy for a full week obviously, but if I'm going to be sad, I'd like that emotion to be continuous rather than constantly interrupted by other things! I Skyped a friend and in the range of 3 hours I legitimately cried, laughed, and got angry. In three hours. It's exhausting not being able to keep up with your own feelings. While sophomore year felt like a slump, monotonous and repetitive, at least it was consistent. It made me jaded, but it did not prepare me for this semester, where I've done the absolutely opposite of felt consistent. I miss stability. Being a Dhoom captain is something I thought ...

Why is it that when we see friends around campus and they ask how we are, almost all of our default answers involve being "busy but good"? How often do we take the opportunity to actually understand how we are feeling and why we are feeling that way? Maybe we won't reach an answer because even our state emotions are very dynamic, changing minute to minute according to what's going on around us, but we would've at least delved further into ourselves and understood something. We are never feeling nothing. And since when has "busy" been the first word that comes out of everyone's mouth even if it's not true? Here at Duke, we don't want anyone to think that we're falling behind and not doing as much as the next guy because that would apparently mean that our aspirations and goals aren't as high. We must constantly be volunteering or working in the lab or at some sort of meeting or practice otherwise we're not doing enough. I don'...

So it's been almost 2 and a half months since I last wrote, and why I haven't in so long I have absolutely no excuse for. Yeah, I was busy, but I definitely still had time. I guess I just couldn't find anything substantial enough to write. As I get older, even in the past year, I feel as if the things that are worthy of discussion or thought are becoming more and more specific and of a smaller range. I think I've forgotten the freedom that I wanted from this blog when I first starting writing it. Some people really like it, which I'm so thankful for, but some people also think I'm too dramatic and/or personal, and I've never been good at taking negativity, I suppose. That's why I was unsure what was important enough for me to write, but I should be able to write whatever I want, right? Sure. I guess the first thing I'd want to address is the fact that we are hella old now... Juniors in college... It feels like just yesterday I was being left out...

Today I volunteered at the Triangle Caregivers Conference, which is a collection of vendors/exhibitors as well as sessions for caregivers who are taking care of spouses or parents or relatives with a debilitating disease. It was a really interesting experience and I enjoyed the many conversations I had with people who were interested in the only Indian girl under 30 at the conference. By that I mean, only Indian, only person under 30. Both things.  One of the things that really struck me was how careful these caregivers have to become in what they say to their impaired loved one and also to the children of the family who will take offense to the mood swings that their grandparents are having or be so hurt that their grandparent won't remember them. You have to lie to your loved one sometimes, just to keep the peace and hold down the fort. You have to give children only age appropriate information. You have to do this without guilt. That's something I would have a lot of trou...

So I haven't written in a while or had any life crises or anything so I figured I'd just write about what I've been doing and learning life wise this summer. I'm doing research at Duke through the Bass Connections program so I get lots of money to live here and then go to a neuroimmunology conference in Montana in the middle of July. I'm looking at how overexpression of a protein whose gene has been shown to predispose Alzheimer's disease affects a mitochondrial stress response called the unfolded protein response. Pretty much it means that when there are a lot of unfolded proteins in the mitochondria, there are pathways that cause more chaperones and proteases to be transcribed and translated to deal with it. It's an interesting project, though it's hard to see the real world application right away. It was for me anyway. If this mitochondrial stress response is an implication of Alzheimer's, we can try to treat the cells with drugs and see how th...

My sister just put her head in my lap before falling asleep for school tomorrow and broke down crying. Crying that it wasn't fair that everyone else got to see their brothers and sisters every day and I was 500 miles away. Crying that she couldn't come home from school and have me waiting there for her and "not care" about everything she told me about her day and have me laugh at the silly dances she did or have me sing while she plays Disney songs on the piano. Crying that she didn't want me to leave on Saturday. And here I am crying because I don't really want to either. Maybe this is something that everyone has already known but I just now realized it but I love my family so much. I know I've been so bipolar about my family in the past two years and I've felt the repercussions of that too, but I feel like something hit me when I came home this time. I feel so much of the pain they feel, every bit of stress from handling family conflict and work d...

I think one of the hardest things for us to do is to be truly honest with ourselves. Sometimes I'll try to sit down with the sole purpose of allowing myself to just take it like it is, but even when you do that, it's hard to not suppress the feelings and facts of yourself that you wish weren't true. It's really easy to convince yourself that something about you is true in order to make it work with what you want or what others want of you, but isn't it better that we face the truth early rather than let our lives continue with lies? It's ironic how I always want others to be brutally honest with me but I can't do the same for myself, but that's also true of a lot of things. Sometimes I'd say it's the fact that we're really afraid to confront the truth and make a change to act on it, and I am plenty guilty of that. Even as I say this and know that some of the decisions I've made are due to familial pressure or personal desire, I'm sti...

This week is the first week in a really long time, maybe ever, that I have literally nothing to do. I've watched at least 30 episodes of Friends in the past three days and felt like an absolute potato. So tomorrow I'm going to man up and go make some food and run a little and clean my room and stuff. It sucks that everyone is busy the week I'm just sitting around. I've still been just been by myself all day, even though the weather is beautiful. I just don't know what to do with myself. The past couple months more than ever I've felt multiple occasions of the sentiment towards multiple people that goes, "Wow, you really fucked this up for me. You've sucked the enjoyment out of something I love because of the way you've handled it. Thanks a lot." Unfortunately, you can't say this to people because it is socially unacceptable and will often end your relationships with them.  The great hopes and plans and the fun I remember from last year...

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...