Day 2: 9 things I do every day.

Okay, so it's been...significantly more than a day since I last posted.  On with the challenge (and more about my Thanksgiving break...before Christmas, ideally):

1. Listen to NPR (Morning Edition) while waking up and slowly getting out of bed.
2. Check email (and Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot, Wordpress, Yahoo! Sports...)
3. I technically have seven things now...but walk down the hill to take RIPTA to the library.
4. Grab coffee from Dunkin' Donuts (medium French vanilla, cream and sugar).
5. Write things (papers, applications, blog posts...)
6. I'm getting the impression that I don't do much of anything ever, but does play Angry Birds count?
7. Listen to music, often while walking.
8. Perform activities required for survival (I eat and sleep normally now)!
9. Give hugs.
10. Think about life.

Yeah...that's all I have, and I had to strain to come up with anything after the first two.  Any ideas on how to diversify/spice up my life?

Day 1: 10 random facts about me

1. I love coffee ice cream.  A lot.  Green tea ice cream is a close second.
2. My body shuts down when I am cold...if studying, I tend to drift in and out of consciousness.
3. I am very easily highly amused (and laugh really loudly).
4. I am very absentminded (coincidentally, I skipped over this number while writing this).
5. I am legally blind from being born 12 weeks premature due to a condition called retinopathy of prematurity.  Also, blind jokes are my favorite (seriously).
6. I may or may not have an unhealthy obsession with Mario Kart Wii.
7. I have wanted to do public health ever since I did the Disease Detectives event from Science Olympiad my freshman year (and the rest of) high school.
8. I am a huge San Antonio Spurs fan.
9. I love travel of any kind, but especially international.
10. I think in song lyrics.

10-day challenge

I stole this idea from a friend of mine; may as well do day 1 before I head to bed.

Day 1: Ten random facts about yourself.
Day 2: Nine things you do every day.
Day 3: Eight things that annoy you.
Day 4: Seven fears/phobias.
Day 5: Six random things in your room.
Day 6: Five things you can’t live without.
Day 7: Four memories you won’t forget.
Day 8: Three words you can’t go a day without using.
Day 9: Two things you wish you could do.
Day 10: One person you can trust.

An apple a day...

will make me happy and give me much needed calories/energy/serotonin to finish this lit summary before I go to bed (at a reasonable hour, preferably before 2am).  I need to make these posts longer.  And less...stressful.  I feel bad for whoever is reading this, but I promise I will post longer, more amusing, happy things soon.  Like the blazing red leaves that I saw in a pile outside on my walk to the bus that I didn't snap a picture of!  Also will put more pictures up once I figure out this Blogger upload thing.  And make a concerted effort to blog at least once a day, even if it's just a short life update.  Except that contradicts with my "let's make these posts longer and more fun" promise.  Hmm.  I'll figure it out.  After eating my apple.

Oh, Angry Birds...

This is exactly how I feel now after beating all 195 levels of Angry Birds.  Yes, I could get three-star ranks for every level, but it just doesn't feel as satisfying, not to mention particularly necessary.  Same for when I beat Mario Kart Wii - after I unlocked every single mode and character, there was no point going back and trying to get three stars for every course.

Well, I guess I have to wait until more levels come out.  Not to mention the mighty eagle...

Banana bread makes me happy

Woke up sad today because I realized how much work I had to do and how little motivation I had to do it.  For me, long-term stress turns into sadness, which turns into depression...so I guess the solution isn't to "become un-depressed and just do it" so much as learn to deal better with stress.  Or reduce the number of stressors in my life.  In any case, I'm not sure what this lack of motivation comes from - or when I lost it - but part of it has to be the fact that doing literature summaries won't catapault me into grad school, or into my dream job.  It won't give me any "skills" that I can use to catapault me into said goals.  And I get impatient.  And frustrated.  And then I end up staring at my computer all day because then I don't have to think about all this.

So.  Instead of thinking, this afternoon I decided to go bake some banana bread.  Not enough bananas and not sweet/buttery enough for my tastes.  But good enough.  Good enough to act as comfort food.  Good enough to make me suddenly realize that skill sets are built, not magically acquired.  And building takes time.  Sometimes you're going to hit your finger with the hammer.  So what do you do?  Patch it up, move on, get back out there.  Eventually, with enough help, there will be a building where once there were only materials and dirt.  So yeah, doing these literature reviews now may not be exactly what I want to do.  But I can learn how to read and analyze a journal article, to manage my time effectively, to meet deadlines, to wake up on time for meetings.  And we'll go from there.  15 hours and counting before my next deadline...maybe I'll have some banana bread tomorrow morning.

The art of journal reading

So apparently, results are pretty important when one reads a journal article.  I have always been told that if you want to quickly get the gist of an article, read the tables.  For the literature summary that I'm doing on neurocysticercosis (the wiki is rather...lacking in details about NCC), I went straight through the paper and looked for the important points.  The problem is, I didn't analyze any of it, didn't question the authors' assumptions, data, or methdology.  I assumed that since they were smart and probably knew what they were doing (much more so than someone who doesn't even have a college degree yet), my mentor would simply want a summary of the paper.

Not so.  I arrived at our meeting today expecting to go through the paper quickly, answer a few questions I had, and leave.  Two hours and no sunshine later, I left with a new article to analyze, and a new assignment: don't assume, question everything, and get this done in two days.  Time to work!