Wednesday, September 29, 2010

My favorite poems

I really enjoy poetry, as long as it's traditional poetry- ie, has a rhyme scheme and rhythm. Free verse poetry is not my favorite, nor do I like haikus, which seem kind of pointless. I especially like poems with a deeper meaning, symbolism, or irony. Robert Frost is probably my favorite poet, and the following are my favorite poems:

1. The Road Not Taken- Robert Frost
2. In Flander's Fields- John McCrae
3. If- Rudyard Kipling
4. Daffodils (aka: I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud)- William Wordsworth
5. Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening- Robert Frost
6. The New Colossus- Emma Lazarus (poem on the Statue of Liberty)
7. The Star Spangled Banner- Francis Scott Key (our national anthem is only the first stanza; the rest of the poem is amazing too!)
8. Sonnet 18- William Shakespeare
9. Trees- Joyce Kilmer
10. Choices For a Girl- Ramona K. Cecil

The last poem is an inspirational Christian poem that I had on a plaque hanging in my room. I would read it all the time- I loved it. Sadly, the framed poem somehow got lost when my family moved into their new house. Luckily, I had big portions of it memorized, or else I would NEVER have found it on the internet. As it was, I could only find the complete poem on one website- a blog of a girl from India- go figure! Since it's so hard to find, and since no one else has probably ever heard of it, I'll type it here on my blog.

Choices For a Girl
Your whole life is before you
A page so clean and white
All that will be written there
You must choose to write

Remember that you're special
God will always be with you
A woman doesn't follow
What "all the other girls" may do

Prayerfully consider
Every choice that you must make;
How you choose to live your life-
The husband you will take

With Christ as your example
You need never be afraid
Or have cause to be ashamed
Of the choices you have made
(Ramona K. Cecil)

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Looking back

Everything seems easier in retrospect. When I think of college, I remember it being a lot easier than I know it was at the time. I look back at my childhood days, and I think of them as the best days of my life. But I know bad stuff happened, and when you're a kid, you feel like the world is coming to an end every time something bad happens. So my memories aren't reliable. I know there have been plenty of bad moments in my life, but when I look back at different time periods, I tend to remember the good stuff. It suddenly struck me that, despite grad school being tough and tiring right now, one day I might remember it fondly as the "good ole' days". I realized that I should probably try to enjoy grad school now and appreciate what I have while I have it, instead of years down the road.

I wrote a poem about the unreliability of memories and how things change from a different perspective. Don't laugh.

Reflections on the Past
Some days, in quiet reflections, I
Look back on days long past and wonder
If I was really happier then
Or did I change things in my mind’s eye
Making sunshine from days of thunder?

Because in my memories I see
Bliss and happiness and carefree days
I don’t remember tribulations
Although I’m sure in reality
They were filled with them in many ways

If I ponder long and hard, I can
Remember both the bad and the good
And I realize that life was never
Perfect, but a transient mental scan
Paints a flawless picture of girlhood

I wish I could go back and enjoy
Time with no expectations, issue,
Or worry; the past is alluring-
It’s safe, there’s nothing hidden or coy
About it; yet once, before we knew
What would come, the past was the future.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Tuesday catch-ups

I love Tuesdays almost as much as I dislike Mondays. On Tuesday, I only have one class, so it's a chance for me to get caught up on all the things I don't have time for the rest of the week. Today I slept in, got my laundry done in the morning, and finished typing up an assignment for my Professional Aspects class. After class I got some other homework done and took an online quiz, which turned out to be harder than I thought.

Dinner was great tonight. Kelly made chicken covered in some kind of buttery, crunchy coating. I'm going to have to get the recipe from her! She also made sweet potato fries and cupcakes for dessert. And this morning she made cranberry oatmeal muffins, so I got a warm one for breakfast. It was a good day.

Despite things going pretty well in school, I find myself getting homesick more than usual. I think it's because I don't have the Christian fellowship here that I did at Liberty. I have friends from my class, but they're not super-close friends like my friends from LU and camp. I just always feel this barrier, beacuse I can't talk about things like God or politics with them.

When I heard someone say that they'd get an abortion if they got pregnant during grad school, I felt sick to my stomach. When I hear people talk about their drunken experiences and hook-ups, it makes me uncomfortable. I really like some of the girls in my class, but I know they have liberal political views and live with their boyfriends, and that makes me sad. It's just a different world. I like these people, I get along with them, they're my friends- but I don't agree with their lifestyle at all. That makes it hard to be close friends. I've kind of accepted that, but it just makes me miss my family and closest friends all the more.

Monday, September 20, 2010

When Monday morning comes around...

After an awesome weekend, it's hard to get back into that "study zone". Sigh.

First, the good part! I had such a great time with Tristan and Emily this weekend. Tristan was supposed to come visit me in Richmond, but she had to dog-sit on Saturday, so I decided to drive to Harrisonburg instead. It doesn't matter what we do when we get together, we always have a great time.

Some of the highlights from this weekend:

Tristan and I went to Ross where I found a really cute dress that we decided looked like something Taylor Swift would wear. So I had to get boots to go with my Taylor Swift dress to complete the look. Then Tristan had to get boots to go with one of her dresses so she could have a Taylor Swift outfit. (We're both obsessed with T.Swift- I think we watched her new music video "Mine" and listened to "I'm only me when I'm with you" about a dozen times this weekend). We're both going to wear our outfits the next time we get together!


When Emily got back into town on Saturday night, the three of us decided to make a music video to Katy Perry's "Waking up in Vegas". We wore party dresses and did outrageous hair and make-up. Then we set up a gambling table, complete with money and dice, and lip-synced the lyrics. For the last scene, we decided to jump into the pool after-hours.

We made delicious mint brownies. (Ok, Emily made them. Tristan and I just ate them. But it was my idea!) We just pressed Andes mints into the top of the brownies before we baked them, so there was a layer of chocolate and mint on the top. They were so good!

But now it's Monday and back to classes. I miss my weekend already.

Friday, September 17, 2010

The study zone


I love getting together with a study group. There’s something about going over the material together that encourages and motivates me. I don’t feel like I’m struggling alone, because there are things that no one else understands either. We can bounce ideas off each other, explain things to each other, and come up with ridiculous mnemonics to memorize something. Sometimes I study more effectively just by getting out of my apartment and being in a different setting. It’s nice to be able to get a study room, spread out our notes and Netter’s all over the table, and learn new things together.

The best part is that sometimes I get to a place where I actually enjoy studying. This usually occurs when learning becomes more than just memorizing information and turns into a desire to really understand what’s going on. This happened for me yesterday for neuro. I wouldn’t say I like neuro exactly, but finally understanding some of the things that happen in the brain is truly amazing.

For instance, we’d been talking about the circulation of cerebrospinal fluid in class. I learned that it’s produced in the choroid plexus, that it circulates in the ventricles, and that it eventually winds up in the subarachnoid space, where it’s reabsorbed by the arachnoid granulations. But I couldn’t understand how the CSF got back to the choroid plexus, or why it was reabsorbed into a dural sinus (which contains blood). I had a light bulb go on in my head when I finally realized that there’s CSF in blood! Suddenly everything made sense. The choroid plexus “makes” CSF by filtering substances from the blood. When the subarachnoid granulations reabsorb CSF, it goes into the venous system and the cycle continues. Before this, I usually thought of CSF as a static fluid surrounding the brain, but now I realize there is SO much more going on.

I had another “aha” moment when I learned that female fetuses already have all the oocytes they’re ever going to produce. Before they’re born, females have already started the first steps of reproduction. Crazy, but kind of fascinating! Another revelation occurred when I realized that the embryo develops only from the epiblast layer of the bilaminar disc. The list of new mental discoveries goes on, but I won’t give any more boring details. Suffice it to say, I was in the study zone.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Why I deleted facebook


I finally did it. I deleted facebook. There are many reasons why I decided to deactivate my account. It was becoming a huge time-waster for me. The application and group updates on my newsfeed were getting annoying. But the biggest reason is the hardest to put into words. For some reason, it just started feeling so fake to me. Facebook is supposed to connect you to everyone, but I was feeling more disconnected than ever. For instance, when I go on facebook, I always scroll through my newsfeed to see what’s going on with all my friends. If anything’s interesting, I’ll click on it to get more info. I ended up knowing what was happening in everyone’s lives (at least what they posted on FB), but I had little to no interaction with a lot of those people, even on FB.

I had some facebook friends who got married this summer- people I don’t really talk to or stay in touch with, but I could see all their wedding pictures online. They didn’t send me the pictures or tell me about them, but the pics popped up on my newsfeed. I knew when my friends got sick, when they had a big test to study for, when they broke up with their boyfriends, even when a friend had diarrhea (that was a status update that was a little too much information). I said “congratulations” when a friend got engaged, and “happy birthday” when I got the notification that it was their birthday. I was in the loop about everything.

Yet somehow, in the midst of keeping up with all these people, I felt like I was missing out. I knew so many details about people’s lives, but I didn’t have a real relationship with a lot of those people anymore. I was going on facebook to stay connected to people, but I ended up getting too much information about friends I barely knew, and not enough about friends that I really cared about. I finally decided that the friends who matter to me are the ones I’ll stay in touch with no matter what- whether I have facebook or not. As for the others, well, some friends are meant to be in your life for only a short time, and then you move on. Facebook was a way to artificially keep them attached, even after the real friendship had long since disintegrated.

So, what am I going to do now that I no longer have facebook? First of all, I hope to have more meaningful interactions with my friends. Instead of posting a status update that anyone can see, I’ll write personal letters, e-mails, and blog posts. Secondly, I hope to make better use of my free time. I want to spend time doing activities I used to enjoy before-gasp- facebook. Things like reading, for one. Finally, I hope to eliminate the control facebook has in my life. I don’t want to go through the day thinking “oh, that would be a good status update”, or “I wonder how many people have responded to the event invitation”, or “I wonder if anyone’s replied to that funny note I posted earlier”. I think I’ve realized that facebook will never be fulfilling. We all want to have that feeling of validity and acceptance in our lives. We want to know that we’re not alone, that people care about us. Facebook attempts to offer all of the above, but ultimately it’s a fraud. Maybe we don’t even know what we’re missing. I’m about to find out.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Show me the money, honey

Money, I’ve discovered, is a constant concern in grad school. Now that I’m on my own and paying for myself, I have to be wise with how I spend my cash. Not that I wasn’t careful with money in undergrad, because I was. I budgeted my money even then, making sure that my hundred-dollar-a-month allowance would last until I got my next check. Back then my parents were paying for college, and I’m immensely grateful for that. I don’t know if I would have decided to go on to grad school if I’d had undergrad loans to pay back. Now, though, I'm on my own, and I'll have to pay back money that I borrow. In three years, I don’t want to regret money I’ve spent frivolously, as I struggle to pay back huge grad school loans. So I’m trying to be careful now and save as much as possible.

I used to play this game in college where I’d see how long I could go without spending any money at all. Usually after I’d bought groceries and gas for my car, I could go a couple of weeks without spending a dime. (Okay, maybe I’d scrounge up 6 quarters to go see a movie at the dollar theater, but that doesn't count!). Really, when I wanted to I was highly successful at not spending money. Grad school is a different story, however. Little costs always seem to creep up on me. I seem to constantly have to pay for one thing or another, whether it’s a bill, class supplies, or extra groceries (I seem to run out of food a lot quicker now- I’m not quite sure why).

Plus, living in a city is expensive. If you go downtown on the weekends, you have to pay for parking (unless you’re incredibly lucky). If I go out to eat with classmates, I can expect to pay an arm and a leg for a burger, even if we just go to a little diner. Fortunately, I’m starting to find some places that have really great deals, so that’s always a plus. Actually, the fun side of being frugal is trying to find good bargains. I love it when I can use a coupon or get something on sale. (Once I got free coffee for an entire week, thanks to McDonald’s coupons promoting their new frappes). I guess my conclusion is that while money can be stressful, it’s just another resource that God gives us. Our job is to use it in a way that is glorifying and honoring to Him. We can spend it carelessly or worry about it needlessly, but the real challenge is finding that balance in the middle- being responsible with what we have and trusting God for the rest.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Moving forward

This week in class I learned that the physical therapy catchphrase is "move forward". I think that slogan really captures what PT is all about. We're involved with helping people move, obviously, and all the muscles and nerves involved with movement; but we're also involved with helping people move on when something traumatizing has happened in their life. We help them find ways to cope and adjust so that they can move forward with their lives.

I'm speaking theoretically, of course. I haven't actually been able to do any of these things yet. Hopefully some day I will. For me right now, "moving forward" means ploughing ahead after an overwhelming first week of classes. It means accepting that neuroanatomy is going to be insanely difficult and coping by working hard and studying a lot. Neuro is going to be harder than anatomy by a long shot. Anatomy was a lot to memorize, but in neuro I'm having a hard time orienting myself and conceptualizing the information. I liked anatomy, but I doubt I'll be able to say the same for neuro after this semester. According to the second years, neuro was the bane of their existence at this point last year.

Despite neuroanatomy, my classes haven't been bad so far. The kinesiology and rehab labs have been kind of fun- we got to palpate each other, position people in a bed, and learn how to use a wheelchair. So we've already learned some useful, albeit very basic stuff. The hard part about having so many classes now is that I'm often in class from 8am to 4pm, so I'm exhausted by the end of the day. I'm still trying to work out a schedule where I can go to class, study, work out, and eat in the most efficient way possible. I have a feeling this semester is going to force me to be very organized with my time.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

My best friend in anatomy


Netter is pretty amazing. We got to know each other really well this summer and have become really close friends. He's there when I need him. When I have a question about anatomy, he's got the answer. Most importantly, he doesn't bore me with non-essential information. It's just the clear, stark truth- not fancy words and complicated explanations. He's honest and reliable. Pretty much my best friend ever.

The real Frank Netter. :) He really does a great job of combining art work and anatomy!