Applying to medical school is like a race that has no end. Since I began working on my application back in May, it seems like it has been a non-stop process. After the primary application, there are two more long steps: 1) secondary applications and 2) interviews. Both of these steps take as long or longer than the first step did. The other thing that stinks about it is that after you interview, you can wait up to another three to four months before finding out which universities have accepted you. That can be January or February of the year you actually enter medical school. The thing that stinks even more is that when you find out, you may have just gotten put on a waitlist. This means that you may have to wait all the way up until a year from when you started your primary application to know if you got in. My older brother decided to apply to law school instead of medical school. It was WAY easier – let me tell you! He only had to do a little bit of community service, take the LSAT, and apply to three schools. I, on the other hand, had to shadow physicians, get a decent number of hours of research in, volunteer constantly, get really good grades, and apply to eighteen schools hoping to get into one of them. You tell me that that isn’t a stark difference. This is exactly why you hear pre-medical students always complaining about the process they have to go through to get into medical school. It isn’t fun by any means. However, it is definitely a rewarding process when finished and for the years to come. I decided I for sure wanted to go into medicine about two years ago. At the time, I was looking at Dentistry as an option. I wanted to go to dental school and become an oral/maxillofacial surgeon. The real reason I was looking into that is I was interested in becoming a surgeon that could do some good in the humanitarian world. However, when I came to the realization that going to medical school would afford me many more choices in my final specialization, I decided that that would be a better route. So, here I am going through the grueling process of applying to medical school. My mom and my grandpa have both worked in the medical profession. My mom worked as a nurse for the first 14 years of my life. On the other hand, my grandpa has worked as a doctor for the last 45 years or so. Both of them are very dedicated to medicine and love working in that field. It is partially through their own enthusiasm about medicine that I have gained some of my own. It is a profession where you truly get to use your skills to help people. That is what I seek in a profession – the ability to always help someone.
I don’t know what to write about. I think I will write about my interview this weekend. I went to Fort Worth, Texas for an interview for medical school. I don’t like airplanes. I got sick every time. All those bumps and the feeling of a sinking stomach and popping ears, yuck. Speaking of sick, while I was in Fort Worth, my hosts took me to a huge candy shop where they had chocolate covered bugs, real scorpion succers, and cheese flavored dried centepedes. That was gross.
My interview went well. It was at Texas College of Osteopathic medicine. I liked the school. The facilities were really nice, especially the anatomy lab. They said that Harvard came to base their anatomy lab off of the one at TCOM, which I thought was pretty impressive. They also had a nice library, and nice classrooms. The classrooms were huge though. I don’t know how I feel about having every class with 229 other students. I like smaller classes better. The patient simulation lab was also really neat. They had manequins that can do anything a human can do- vomit, blink, respond to medications, give birth, etc. Good practice so that students don’t mess up on real patients. I’m excited for medical school.
I had two interviews durring my day at TCOM. One was with a PhD from India. He had a really thick accent and was hard to understand. I kept having to say “sorry, could you repeat that?” I hope he didn’t mind. My other interview was with a gastroenterologist. He asked me some questions I wasn’t expecting, like “What word would you use to describe your sense of humor?” He also asked me how I would handle being a rural physician in a small town when a woman whose family I know well came in and asked for an abortion from a pregnancy from an extra-marital affair. That was a tough question. He also asked me about Obama Care and other current events in medicine. That interview went pretty well, I think. Now I have to wait until October to find out if I’m excepted. My next interview is in El Paso in a few weeks.
Besides the school itself, I really liked the area. TCOM is right next to the cultural district. There are four museums within a block of the school (including the cowgirl hall of fame, go figure.) I wanted to check out the modern art or the natural history museums, but my hosts and I went to see the stockyard instead. It is a big rodeo surrounded by a couple of old-west themed streets. Twice a day, the cowboys drive their herds right down the middle of the road. Kind of like the running of the bulls, but people are on the sides as spectators, not running for their lives. They also have a lot of stores and shops there, like that candy store I mentioned where they sell those gross bug candies.
So now I’m not really sure what to say. I said I have an interview in a few weeks in El Paso. I’m very excited. It is right on the border with Mexico! I love Mexico, I served my misison there. I think Texas TEch El Paso is one of my top choices becuase it teaches medical spanish and border medicine as part of its curriculum. I like that. I want to be a doctor that works with underserved populations, especially immigrants from Mexico. I would also be a lot closer to my mission and could maybe go back to visit. I would like to go visit Mexico, especially my mission, but I’m not sure how realistic that is. I served in areas that are the center of the drug war, it was bad then, and that was more than two years ago. I remember several times when we didn’t go outside becasue there were gunfights going on. One time, I had to go pick up a companionship who had been robbed and beaten by some drug dealers who were looking for someone else and got the wrong house. I also remember when they would take cargo trucks an dblock the freeways so that no traffic could get in or out of the cities.
Today is my last day of classes, ever! Well, except for the fact that I am going to be a teacher. It’s weird to think that I am just about done with college, and I just have student teaching left. I feel kinda weird, like I’m really old or something. I never thought I would actually finish - like all this hard work would actually end someday. Although sometimes I wonder what I was thinking when I decided to be a teacher, and a math teacher at that. My math classes have been very hard, and have definitely taken a toll. I wonder why I had to take so many tough math classes in college, when I will never teach anything past calculus. I feel like it was pointless, especially since I didn’t learn much from them, and I got very frustrated as I went through them. I sometimes wish I had done something like biology, which would be so fun and I love studying about life, but then again that would be way too much chemistry, which I don’t like. I remember why I wanted to be a teacher. Well actually there are several reasons that I wanted to teacher. I wanted to be able to coach and teach, because I had one of the best coaches ever, and he influenced me to become better through running. I want to be able to help my student-atheletes learn how to become better and also gain a love for a healthy lifestyle. I think one of the reasons I love running so much is because I am really competitive, and oin running I can be competitive with myself. I just want to beat my previous time each race, and become a little better than I used to be everyday. I also wanted to influence students - young people - for the better, and I feel like I can do that through teaching. I will be able to spend a little time each day with them, helping them to learn math and life skills like problem solving and reasoning. Many people (especially young students) say that they hate math. I cringe every time someone says that to me. I think that there are so many great things that math teaches you, and really it’s a great thing to learn. I think it is one of the languages of God, but that is just my humble opinion. If I can teach well enough that my students enjoy math and really learn skills that will help them throughout their life, what a great reward that will be. Well that is what I am studying and what I want to do with my life in the near future, but what I really can’t wait for is when I am old enough (maybe a better phrase would be rich enough) to own my own bakery and bake all day, everyday. That has been a dream of mine since I was really, really young. I learned how to bake from my grandmother - who would bake with me every time we visited her in Pennsylvania. It was kind of like our thing, just what we did together to spend time together. Now I love to bake! And what I love even more (besides eating all the baked goods) is sharing them with others and seeing how they enjoy what I have created. It’s kind of amazing how you can take so many ingredients (that are really quite untasty if you eat them on their own) and mix them together in different amounts to make an unbelievably delicious creation. My favorite thing to bake is apple pie. My grandma has the best recipe, and I think what makes it so good is that she bakes it with love. I can’t even describe how delicious it is! I know that it is unlimited in heaven.
Today I was asked to type and type whatever came into my mind. This turns out to be harder than I thought initially. It requires me to not only type, but to think and try to figure out what my goal while writing. My first decision is: what do I want to write about? Some thing that has been on my mind a lot lately is my new promotion at work. I found out last Wednesday that I would be the new Zone Coordinator in Zone 32 in the MTC. This means I will be in charge of five classrooms of missionaries and about a dozen teachers. I am surprised at how much I have enjoyed my new responsibilities and the creativity it requires. My first thought that I shared with the zone this past zone meeting was: Missionaries do not learn by telling, or seeing, but by feeling. I have felt this to be true throughout my two years at the MTC. Much better than just showing a missionary how to do something, is to help them do it themselves and help them recognize how it should feel when they do that activity. This applies in their personal studies. I could sit down and outline a detailed plan of steps they need to take to be successful. Or I could study with them, ask them what they think will be most important, then coach them toward effective study strategies. When I feel like the moment is right I ask them, “how does it feel to study like this?” They will usually answer that it feels awesome. I invite them to make all their studies feel like that, whether they use the exact same method or if they come up with new ones, they will know what it should feel like. I feel like the same thing applies in Spanish speaking. A missionary should feel what it feels like to speak and think only in Spanish, and until they understand that, they won’t do it. The second principle I’d like to focus on for the zone is: We will have power to invite missionaries to do things only to the degree in which we feel them. In other words, if we don’t feel the power of an activity like personal study in our lives, we will be ineffective in inviting others to do the same. My hope is to create a culture of revelation, where the teachers are guided daily by the Holy Ghost about the needs of their missionaries. These are the teachers who will be successful in helping their missionaries feel what it should feel like to study. The final principle is: Christ is always the answer. I sense we spend a lot of time at the MTC trying to find fancy answers to complicated questions and situations missionaries are going through. I’ve been guilty of sitting for long amounts of time with missionaries trying to help them figure out what they can do to be better at a particular task. I soon realized I don’t know all the answers, but Christ does. A missionary who comes to Christ in humility will know what they need to do. For example in teaching, a missionary might ask: How can I teach more to the needs of the investigator? The answer is: How would Christ teach this person? Would He speak the whole time, or would he express sincerity and love while listening to the feelings of the person being taught. When Christ is brought into the picture the answers quickly become clear. I’d also like to try to implement a new Spanish teaching tool. I’m glad I’ve had the chance in this class to work on it.
Well once upon a time there was a tiger named bob. Bob didn’t really like people. IN fact he would go around eating people all the time. Once there was a forest ranger named rick. Rick went to his job which hwas of course the forest. When he got there he met the tiger. At first he didn’t know what to do, but he quickly rememberd the training he received at ranger school. He calmlyh went up to the tiger and asked him how his day was. The tiger sighed and responded that it definitely wasn’t the best of days. You see, he said, I have this terrible issue with my family. None of them like m at all. Well, the ranger said, why don’t they like you? The tiger replied sadly, well, it is because I don’t have a raur, it is more like a cat’s meow. I don’t enjoy having a meow like a cat, but I just can’t help it. One day when I was stalking prey I tried to scare it into standing still, but the little rabbit ran away. I was really hungry that day and so was my family, but to my shame, I did not catch anything for them. This isn’t just any situation of going hungry though, the tiger explained. We live like they do in the poorer countries. All of my families and grandparents live in one little hut, so when I don’t bring food home I am basically condemning my family and ancestors to death! Well my, the ranger replied, that is quite the story. Have you tried going to speech therapy? Well, no. I have not tried speech therapy. Do you think it could work mr. forest ranger sir? Well, I’m not certain it will work, but it has a very good chance of working. Perhaps if you tried this lady (ghe gives the tiger his friend’s business card). She is excellent and helped me remove a stutter I had when I was in the second grade. Do you mind if I tell you a story about her? Her name is mrs. Smith, but I will just call her smithy. Smithy was just an ordinary lady. Before she was very old her parents knew she was something special. She would seek out the little 8 month old children, grab them by the throat, and command them to speak in Aslan’s name. It was actually quite extraordinary. One day while I was playing with all of my blocks she came up to me and told me that my life was going to change. Do not ask me how I understood her, for I was only five and a half months old, but something touched me that day. That something, was her fist. She didn’t grab me like she did the other children, instead she sucker punched me right in the throat. Boy, it was something special. It was harder than anyone had ever hit me, including my aunt, Susan. Well anyways, as soon as she hit me she pulled me up by the ears until my eyes were at her level. She asked me a question and I answered. The best part however, was that she asked me a question in French! How awesome is that?! From then on I would seek out smithy and ask for my daily dose of language assistance. It has not helped me in any way when it comes to physical looks, but I have become quite the public speaker, in all countries of course. So, the tiger asked, what the heck does that have to do with my speech impediment. Well, the ranger said, it doesn’t. what I wanted to show you was that I wanted to be an astraunot at one point in my life. Ok, the tiger replied, I would like to hear this story too. The ranger (rick) proceeded to tell the tiger about his experience trying to get into nasa. It wasn’t easy. Back then there were lots of tests you had to go through before you could even apply. One of them was very interesting and was quite accurate to a movie I recently saw called rocket man. Well what we had to do was blow into a pipe for as long as we could. This pipe was connected to another pipe which had a ping pong ball in it. The piung pong ball was white, not that it really matters, but it did to me at the time. So I would blow as hard as I could into that little tube to make the ball go as high as possible. It went really high as well.
Logan Williams Word Count: 437 I think a lot of people are ignorant towards metal music. Most people just scoff at it when they hear it. Others think it’s all about devil worship and satanic lyrics. These are all just misconceptions. There really isn’t much of a devil influence in metal music. If there is it’s just a ploy to get more attention. Some bands will admit that they are anti-christian though. Most of these bands come from Scandinavia where they believe Christianity was kind of forced upon them. Even if they are anti-christian so are a lot of other musicians. That’s what I don’t understand. Especially when people listen to rap and hip hop adnd then shun metal. They shun metal just because they hear screams and growls and really heavy music. But then they go to todays top hits radio station and listen to all the lil wayne and drake they can get their ears on! I think it’s pathetic! That stuff is way worse than metal! Way worse! Seriously, I really don’t understand that and I think it really shows just how ignorant some people are. You can’t judge something you don’t know anything about. Escpecially if you’re going to bash it by saying it has bad lyrics and blah blah blah. If you do that you better be ready to back yourself up about the kind of lyrics are in your kind of music. Even country has some pretty provocative lyrics. People just seem to think that because it’s soft easy listening and catchy it should be okay. Or, they think that because it’s what everybody’s listening to it should be okay. IT’s like an accepted norm that no one dares question. They all just blindly accept it like sheep. But they’re definitely ready to fight metal music at whatever cost! IT’s like they have a huge fear of the unknown, and they don’t know metal, so they’re scared of it. Since they’re scared of it, it’s bad and no one should listen to it. Anyone who does listen to metal is, in their eyes, bad as well. They might even label that person a devil worshiper. I think this is pathetic and people really need to stop judging things they don’t know anything about. Some people., like myself, don’t even listen to metal for the lyrics. I’m all about the musicianship of metal music. I could care less about what they say….you can’t understand what they’re saying more than half the time anyways so who cares. It’s all about the technical skills they have and how they employ them to do something different and make differnet music.
TYhis morning has been a crazy one! I eoke up at 6:30 to cook hashbrowns for our class. You see, our teacher Travis from English decided that he’d give 2 points extra credit for amyone that brings in a savory tereat for the class. II decided with Kevin and Bryce that we’d bring in breakfast burritos. Kevin was going to bring in the eggs, I had the hashbrowns, and byrce had the tortillas. I woke up at 6, but of course hit the snooze three times before acutally getting up. I finally got up at around 6:30 and started cooking the hashbbrowns. I had pre-cut everything the night bewfore. There was this nifty food slicer thing that I had purchased a few months back at Costco that Id never really used so I thought Id give it a try. When I reached up to grab it last weejk, I caught one of the spikes on the cutter and dug into my finger. It was knarly. My finger bled and bled and bled! Yesterday, I was much more careful with how I reached into the top cupboard! I sliced the potatoes into little suqares… and then onions and green peppers. I tried to cook them all at once but that obviously wasn’t a very good idea. They just sat there, burned, turned to a mushy mess… So I pulled out several pans and started a few hashbrowns in each. This was getting somewhere! And hour later I was almost done. But it wasn’t fast enough! I threw some hash browns into a bowl and put them into the microwave for a minute at a time. This sped things up quite a bit.
Finally I had a full zip-loc bag full of hjasbrowns that I could take to travis’s class.
On my way to school – Bryce sent me a text telling me that he had forgotten the tortillas and was on his way back home to get them. I laughed out loud – Bryce is a funny guy. He had actually sent em several text messages over the weekend about burritos. Once he even sent me a text wishing me a good morning, followed up with sunshine. This was a few days back when we were in the same group working on an early morning project. We decided to cook cake in the microwave. We had to come up with a set of instructions that would make it so simple, even a caveaman could do it. It was called 3-2-1 cake! It is as easy as 3, 2, 1! I thought that it was funny how people were so comfused with the instructions… do I start with the 3? Or with the 1`? It’s called 3, 2, 1 cake bud – start at the very beginning, like most instructions do!
The cake had frosting and whipped ceram to go along with it. I acutally brought a banana to put on top of mine for breakfast. Other gourps did a cheese sandwhichw maker tuype thing. They had a toaster and bread and butter and cheese. You l;ay the toaster on its side and put bread in each slot. Then , when it pops out, you have a cheese sandwich!
Where was I? Oh yea… Bryce. Well he had forgeotten his tortilla s back at his house so he sent me a text that he was on his way to retriece them. Later he called me and told me that he couldn’t find them at all!@ His wife had put them away in some uinknown place! He looked everywhere… not under the counter, in the panty, I bet they’re in an obvious place light right by the door ready for him to go to school. So the dude called me and told me his problem. I told him that I’d rteun over to the creamery to pick some up[ and that he has no need to fear, for David is here~! I went to the corner market first… they open at 7:30… but you wouldn’t believe that they were closed! Must be a normal school=-year schedule and not year round. Super irritating. Mostly because it had taken me forever to get the4re in the first place. Trafiic is terrible over there! They’re construction on every street… lines of cars, cones everywhere… I couldn’t really get through Andf so I parked, got out, saw that they were closed, and then had to get back on the street and go somewhere else. I went to the creamery on 9th south a;lksdhjf a;ldj
Who is excited for BYU football? I sure am. Today the all sports pass goes on sale. My wife and I are going to buy tickets with my some of my friends.
BYU football is in an interesting predicament, now that we are independent. It seems we will never have a meaningful game in the month of November again. No more conference titles, just plain old bowl games. If we went undefeated we would have a shot at a BCS bowl game, but only a shot. The fornt of our schedules will be perpetually loaded with tough games. This year all the tough games happen to be road games as well, and considering BYU’s all time record for away games is around .400, we will need some serious help. Returing to the teamthis year is Riley Nelson, a dual threat quaterback who took over the team last year from Jake Heaps, who has transferred to another school. Returning is Cody Hoffman and Ross Apo, two recievers whose physique has never been seen at BYU. Both have great hands, are 6 foot 3 inches (?) and have breakaway speed. One of the bigger questions will be the running game. The first half of last season, BYU had terrible running stats. However, towards the end of the year, with RIley running the option occasionally; the runnign game picked back up. Michael Alisa showed promise in the end of last year, and will be the first string back going into this year. We must remember that our tight ends, a historical strength of BYU, will be more experienced. On offense the biggest advantage is that we have a quarter
My wife and I aare going to the Dominican republic this month. In fadct we are going thiin two weeks on the 16 th of August. I am very excited to spend a week on the beach with my wife. M= we have been going to school for over a year straight without even one break . we have been attending summer classes for the past two summers and it has been rough on us. This will be my first vacation since I went to the grand canyon in 2008. Needless to say I have been looking forward to this vacation for a while. In fact I have found it very difficult to focus in my studies. I have procrastinated most of my assignments this past week. I have a large assignment due today at midnight for my doctrine and covenants class but I haven’t worked on it at all. Last night I sat down fir the first time and started writing. The nice thing about religion classes is that I can work on the homework on Sunday without feeling guilty. But back to my vacation. Last night we went to Sandy to have a meeting with my in-laws about all the details of the vacation passports, travel arrangements, safety, etc. my little bro-in-law is bringing a friend of his. Her name is sam and he is a little worried about have to be with her for an entire week. They are god friends but he has never spent that much time with her. It reminds me of a trip I made to cali with my school. I went with my girlfriend because we were in the same chorus group. We sat next to each other on the bus for two or three days straight. It goes without saying that we got kind of sick of each other and spent thae last leg of the trip sitting in different sides of the bus. I hope that my bro-in-law will be ok. with the arrangement. Another issue with him is that he is constantly playing his ipod. I hope that he doesn’t bring it with him on the trip. I can’t imagine sitting on the beach in the D R and having him stay in the hotel playing the same game that he does when he Is home. I am very excited again for this trip and can’t wait.
I am excited for this weekend. My wife and I will be traveling to Idaho to visit my family and see my new nephew be blessed. We haven’t seen my family since Thanksgiving of last year! It’ been a long time. I feel kind of bad. We only live four hours away from my house. Some of the reasons why we haven’t been able to go is because of work, school and the money for gas. Our car is a gas hog. It just drinks and drinks gas so it can be really pricey to just to drive four hours. So anyway, we are headed up there this weekend because we will have some time in between semesters and some time off work. However we will still have to bit the bullet for the cost of gas. When I talked to my brother, he said that we will try and take the boat out and go wakeboarding on Friday. I haven’t gone once this entire summer. Which is crazy because usually my cousin who lives down here in Utah invites us to go all the time. By this time last summer, I would have already been out on the lake about five times. I love the water especially on a hot summer day. The best to go wakeboarding is during the evening when the sun is setting, the air is a little but cooler and the water is as smooth as glass. That’s the perfect time to go. Usually, by this time during the evening, many of the other boats and water machines have already called it a day and are out of the water, so it leaves the lake almost all to yourself. Summer is nearly gone and fall is almost here. I am ready for the colder weather.
You know, sometimes life is a very terrible thing. Don’t get me wrong, I love my life. I think I have a great life. However, sometimes I just get the feeling that life is against me. This morning I was all excited (well, ready) to come to class when suddenly my stomach exploded. It was very dramatic actually. I mean, obviously my stomach is still intact, or I would be in the hospital, but I almost couldn’t come to class. I went to the bathroom, and what a pleasant experience that was (sorry for the TMI everyone). Once I got out of the bathroom I was light headed and all I could do was take some TUMS and lay on my bed. I was thinking “well, how am I going to go to class? I have presentation to give in my 10:00 class, will I make it? I just don’t know.” Luckily, after laying down for a little bit I started to feel much better. I knelt down in prayer and asked the lord to help me feel good enough to make it through the day, and so far it’s worked. I made it to class, although I walked on campus very slowly. Prayer is such a cool thing you know. I don’t know where I would be without it. The experience that I related above reminded me of a time when I was a freshman. I had a test that I had to do in my CS class. I picked up this test on Monday at 9 AM and I had to turn it in by 6 PM on Tuesday. I started it immediately and made a nice plan. Latter that afternoon I actually started to work on it. I quickly realized that it wasn’t going very well. Nevertheless I kept on working. I worked all afternoon until FHE started. I had made little to no progress. I told myself that I needed a break and that FHE was the perfect break. I took my computer to my bedroom and thought, “well, this is going to be a rough day, I have no idea what to do.” I was in that moment that I realized I hadn’t prayed for help yet. I decided that I would before I started working on it again. I walked out of my room and I realized what I needed to do. I felt so blessed. I hadn’t even prayed yet, but just by showing humility and planning to pray, God blessed me to figure it out. After FHE I worked on my lab some more, and made some progress, but then I got stuck again. I prayed again and slowly made more progress. This continued until 3 in the morning. I went to bed, knowing that I needed sleep. At 7 AM I woke up and went straight back to it. I was praying all day that I would get it done. The biggest blessing was that the lord helped me stay awake all day.
I’m so happy! This past week has been amazing! Scott and I are more in love than ever. We went to the club house earlier this week to watch the Olympics and to play cards. I won both games, haha. We also have been asking each other a lot of questions from the “300 Questions LDS Couples Should Ask Before Getting Married” book. It’s been a great thing for us to do together. On Friday we went to the Provo temple together. It was around 6:30 at night and there was no one there. I’ve never seen anything like it! We walked in, got our jump suits, went to the locker room, walked into the confirmation room, walked in to the baptistery and then we were done! Usually it takes anywhere from one and a half to three hours to go through. Since we finished so much earlier than we expected Scott suggested that we walk around back. I had never been around the back of the temple and it was so pretty out; it smelled wonderful too with all of the flowers. We ended up sitting on the grassy hill and looking up at the sky and the temple I couldn’t help but think to myself how wonderful life is. Scott leaned over and asked, “Are you happy?” I told him I was and that he was my best friend. He then said, “You’re my best friend too; I can’t open up with anyone like I can with you.” Saturday was a full day! We woke up early and went to the park to play tennis. Scott played in high school so he’s pretty good and I’ve never played at all but he’s been so patient with me and we have a great time. I really love to play now and am getting better. We also played on this big spider web thing in the playground. After tennis we went home to get cleaned up and I had a brilliant idea! Bratwursts! Scott and I drove to Macey’s to get brats, buns, chips, and a drink. We also had left-over ice cream from the BYU creamery (Graham Canyon!!!). We went over to his brother’s apartment and threw in a load of laundry while we fired up the grill. We ate outside on the porch and the brats were SO good! After lunch we walked down to the park to throw the Frisbee around.
I hate finals. And I hate assignments that are just busy work. Maybe I’m supposed to learn something from it? I don’t know. I’m not learning much. Ugh. I am so bad at math. I don’t know how to do it. And I’m graduating in a year. What a disgrace to society I will be when I go out into the world and can’t do anything I was supposed to have learned for four years. Oh boy. Here comes the glory. Not. I need to find something else satisfying and fulfilling in life. What? I need to discover. Discover is such a frilly word. Discover makes you want to go out and change the world. But I don’t want to do that. I need a more realistic and down to earth word. Find? Bleh. Too plain. I just need to go and DO. Do is good. I like doing. But I also like lazy. Morgan asked me what I do in my free time. Free time? I honestly have no idea. I legitimately have no free time. Homework. That’s all I ever do. I can’t do the things I really want to because I am always doing homework. I can’t watch the Olympics…I have homework. I can’t go swimming in the summer weather…I have homework. I can’t go home and visit Idaho…I have homework. I can’t just sit down and watch a movie with Dan for crying out loud!!!! Because I have homework. I should change my attitude I guess. I don’t want to. I like hating homework. It gives me something to despise, to curse. I have turned all my anger of other people towards homework. So in reality, it is better for human kind that I hate homework. Now I won’t take it out on anyone else. Maybe the professors. They deserve it. Or do they? Let me think…yes, yes they do. They could still get their point across and we could still learn even without bucket and boat loads of homework. I promise they can. Yes, we need to do (there’s the do word again) our own part and learn on our own, but when it’s all just busy work, or like in math classes when you go to class and then go to do the homework and you have no idea what anything means. Nothing,. Nada. Zip. Anyways, when it’s all like that, I really don’t feel like I learn much. Maybe it’s because of my attitude. I hate homework so much that I don’t learn anything from it. I am so obsessed with the hating that I forget to do the learning. So it’s all my fault then. Not the professors. Well that’s not fair! I didn’t assign myself all this homework! How rude. I need to find something else in life. I hate wasting my life away doing homework. I need more fulfillment. I know that someday I will wish I was back in school where all I had to worry about was homework. But I can’t bear that thought now. I just want out. For good. Never come back. I’m bitter. I want to throw things. Like a pillow. Or an eggplant. They’re gross. Even in Ratatoulli. Lexi 534
It has only been one semester and I think I am going to miss this class… tear, tear. I am just kindding. It has been fun, but I have been so busy it will be nice to have a couple of weeks to relax. I wish I could have more, but then school starts back up all over again. Then I will be working 35 hours a week, taking 16 credits, doing research, and serving as a second counselor in the bishopric. Life is going to be so hectic, I think pretty much for the rest of my life. Sometimes I wonder how I am going to do it, but at least right now it will be good preparation for medical school. Why does medical school have to be so competitive? I feel like I have been working so hard, and I will continue to be for so long, and I still won’t necessarily get accepted anywhere. I feel like everyone I meet who is pre-med does so much, it is nerve wrecking to think about. All I can do is work hard and hope that I will get accepted somewhere. I hope we can go to to Colorado’s med school. It would be nice to be close to both our families. Especially if we want to have kids. It would be especially helpful for my wife to be close to family, considering she gets home sick so easily. Today is her 21st birthday and she has to be alone pretty much all day. I fell bad about it, but I have class in the morning, and then I have to go to work until 6:30. She will be spending most of her birthday alone and it makes me feel so bad. But I tried calling up some of her friends to take her out and to see if there is anything they can do to keep her somewhat busy. The will be picking her up around three and will go do some fun stuff with her. Then they will get her dressed up and drop her off at a restauraunt where she will meet me, holding flowers and then we will have a date, just the two of us. I hope that makes her happy. It’s not normally too lonely for her, but during the summer it’s been a little bit harder because she is not in classes, and only works about 15 hours a week at her job. So a lot of her day is spent alone, and that can’t be fun. Despite my busy schedule right now, it will be good for school to start again so that she can hae more human interaction. She has been going through a dilemma of whether or not she wants to change majors right now, and I
When I was in 6th grade I began public school after being homeschooled for all of elementary. It was a huge transition for me as I have never been around such large groups of kids before. I learned a lot and was very quiet at first. I did have my best friend Ryan with me to help ease into the transition. It was hard but rewarding. I started band and played the clarinet with Mrs. Jackson. What a great time I had there. Math was easy for me and school overall was easy, but the transition with friends was way hard. I found it got easier as I made more friends and began to open up a little. It took a long time though. My favorite part of my sixth grade year was when I joined a club called forestry. It was all about trees, nature, and the environment. Every Wednesday in the spring we met and learned more about the forests. We started out with compass reading and orientation. We also learned how to measure our pace so we could calculate distances by walking. Then we went to tree and plant indentification. A part of that section was memorizing the scientific names. This came easy for me and I excelled in this section. Then we did log scaling where we learned how to calculate the amount of board feet in a log. Next was timber cruising where we used a clinometer to calculate the board feet volume in a standing tree. This was done by measuring the diametere adn also the height of the tree. Then we used a chart to figure out the board feet. Another section was tree and plant health, where we had to learn all the diseases that were common to trees in North Idaho. This was the hardest section for me. Then we learned about silvaculture where we had to pick which trees to keep in a bunch for repopulation in the future. This section I felt was more up to subjection and was a hard one. We also had tool identificiation and a maps section. Both of those were easy too. So we practiced every week and then the first Thursday in May we went to the Idaho State Forestry contest. I ended up getting third place!
305 Words....times like these remind me how much I hate thinking about writing!!
I am not sure if it is the fact that I have been to almost seven semesters in a row now, but I am really, really tired of all this school stuff! It actually would have been eight if I didn’t need to take off this past spring semester to study for the ridiculously retarded MCAT. This past winter semester I was taking the second half of organic chemistry, the second half of physics, the physics lab, genetics, and participating in mentored research dealing with Alzheimer’s disease. Besides going to school all day, everyday, I was also enrolled in a MCAT prep course. This course could have easily taken thirty hours out of my week. However, since I was also working part time there wasn’t anyway that was going to happen. It was a shame that I didn’t get to put in as many hours as I would have liked into the prep course, but school full time and work part time doesn’t leave you with much time. It was also a shame considering that prep course ended up costing almost two thousand dollars! Anyway, now it’s summer semester and all the courses are packed into half the time and I am trying to study for the MCAT again! Unfortunately I didn’t do as well as I would have liked so I am taking it again in a week and a half. Hopefully I can find myself more relaxed the second time and do as well as I feel I should. I seriously just need to tell school to take a hike (school’s for fools, look at me!!!!) and go on a very long vacation that doesn’t involve using any brain power. I never thought that I would be asking to do something mind numbing, but after these seven semesters I would greatly appreciate it.
“Politicians tell lies to cover the truth, artists tell lies to reveal truth.” I never looked at cartoons with much of a critical eye until rooming with several animation majors. their outlook on the cartoon world was so deep, it was inspiring. And I’ve never been able to watch cartoons the same way since. Distorted head sizes, exaggerated reactions, comical quirks hidden in the scenery... all these things add the character of the movie and the tone it’s creating and the morals it’s trying to teach. Now, this isn’t to say all cartoons are good. Some are poorly animated, whereas others don’t have high standards they’re teaching. Anyone who’s seen Avatar: the Last Airbender knows that even a well-implemented cartoon can teach impassive emotions toward lying and cheating. Or anyone who’s seen the Nazi cartoon propaganda knows that cartoons are sometimes teaching the opposite of what the younger generation should learn. In fact, that’s another amazing thing about cartoons. Like other forms of media, cartoons can infiltrate an entire society’s worldview. Look at the progression of Disney movies since the 50’s: Snow White is helpless without her Prince Charming. She blindly walks into an unknown cottage and eats an apple from a suspicious stranger. Later Pocahontas enters the scene. She changes the history of two cultures, who otherwise would have destroyed each other. Much more recent is the star from Brave. She rights her wrongs against her family. Not only does she actively pursue her destiny, she goes against the norms, has an indelicate side to her nature, and yet achieves peace again amongst her family and tribes.
Today has been a bit crazy. I got up really early to go work on my poster for English 316 because I had to use the school computers. I would have worked on the poster more at home this weekend but I don’t have the mapping program that I needed to use. So, I got up and (with sleep still in my bones) made some lunch and breakfast for myself and took a shower. Then I booked it to the library. Seriously, I left my house in Orem at 7:07 and got to campus at 7:11. That is really really quick! Then, I downloaded some map layers when I got to the library and worked on colors and what not for my posters.
I wonder if I need to go to graduate school and study social work. I might study something else in the graduate program. I love helping people, but I believe that there is varies ways besides doing social work to help others. For example helping our neighbors. We do not need a degree to help others. We just need to be nice to others and be willing to help those who are in need. I do not know what I am going to do after I am done with school. I know I will do something, but I am not sure quit to do next. I love languages. I hope one day I will be able to speak Spanish or Korean Fluently. I want to travel all over the country. I will love to go back in Hawaii. Hawaii is such a beautiful Island. The weather is most of the time sunny and the beach is gorgeous. I love the beach. It is a perfect place for relaxation and to have fun with my family and friends.
Here I am again, just writing in English about something which still hasn’t reached the forefront of my brain to let me know what it’s going to be. Perhaps I’ll write about something that happened last night, or this morning. I just combined rice and salsa to make an even better salsa, but that’s about all I have to say about that. There’s also the fact that I got ready this morning in five minute segments separated by ten minute naps. Do you call them naps if they take place that early in the morning? I have an idea, I’ll talk about the coolest thing that happened last week. My wife and I went to the doctor for an ultrasound and were able to see our little daughter curled up inside of my wife’s belly as she reached the half-way point of her life in the womb. She had her hands in front of her face the entire time, obviously well trained in avoiding the paparrazi that will some day haunt her for whatever spectacular thing she will accomplish. She refused to move from that position, so we had to schedule another ultrasound so that the doctor can get a picture of her face. They told us that Annie (the wife) needs to eat more sugar before going in so that the baby will be hyperactive. I’m ok with a calm baby though. I was thinking about what I’m going to do with her once she decides to venture out into the real world, sometime in December. As the first child she will have to suffer through my endless need to build forts, cardboard weapons, and such. I guess I could also apply some of my less manly skills as well though. My wife recently taught me how to braid hair, that should do. Or there’s always my guilty pleasure of arts and crafts. I have to be careful what I make at home because my wife will, without fail, display it all in some place in our house and assure that everyone knows that it was me, and not her, that created it. Anyway, there are plenty of other things I want to do with the new baby girl. She’ll most likely look a lot like her mother, so one of our activities will no doubt involve beating off teenage boys trying to invade our house. Maybe she’ll want to come along to pick out her first taser, or to decide on which type of pepper spray seems most effective. It’s possible that she’ll even want to come to help me pick out my first date attire. I don’t mean that I will be going with her, that would be a little over-protective, but I need to look... menacing when the first one comes.
Applying to medical school is like a race that has no end. Since I began working on my application back in May, it seems like it has been a non-stop process. After the primary application, there are two more long steps: 1) secondary applications and 2) interviews. Both of these steps take as long or longer than the first step did. The other thing that stinks about it is that after you interview, you can wait up to another three to four months before finding out which universities have accepted you. That can be January or February of the year you actually enter medical school. The thing that stinks even more is that when you find out, you may have just gotten put on a waitlist. This means that you may have to wait all the way up until a year from when you started your primary application to know if you got in.
ReplyDeleteMy older brother decided to apply to law school instead of medical school. It was WAY easier – let me tell you! He only had to do a little bit of community service, take the LSAT, and apply to three schools. I, on the other hand, had to shadow physicians, get a decent number of hours of research in, volunteer constantly, get really good grades, and apply to eighteen schools hoping to get into one of them. You tell me that that isn’t a stark difference. This is exactly why you hear pre-medical students always complaining about the process they have to go through to get into medical school. It isn’t fun by any means. However, it is definitely a rewarding process when finished and for the years to come.
I decided I for sure wanted to go into medicine about two years ago. At the time, I was looking at Dentistry as an option. I wanted to go to dental school and become an oral/maxillofacial surgeon. The real reason I was looking into that is I was interested in becoming a surgeon that could do some good in the humanitarian world. However, when I came to the realization that going to medical school would afford me many more choices in my final specialization, I decided that that would be a better route. So, here I am going through the grueling process of applying to medical school.
My mom and my grandpa have both worked in the medical profession. My mom worked as a nurse for the first 14 years of my life. On the other hand, my grandpa has worked as a doctor for the last 45 years or so. Both of them are very dedicated to medicine and love working in that field. It is partially through their own enthusiasm about medicine that I have gained some of my own. It is a profession where you truly get to use your skills to help people. That is what I seek in a profession – the ability to always help someone.
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I don’t know what to write about. I think I will write about my interview this weekend. I went to Fort Worth, Texas for an interview for medical school. I don’t like airplanes. I got sick every time. All those bumps and the feeling of a sinking stomach and popping ears, yuck. Speaking of sick, while I was in Fort Worth, my hosts took me to a huge candy shop where they had chocolate covered bugs, real scorpion succers, and cheese flavored dried centepedes. That was gross.
ReplyDeleteMy interview went well. It was at Texas College of Osteopathic medicine. I liked the school. The facilities were really nice, especially the anatomy lab. They said that Harvard came to base their anatomy lab off of the one at TCOM, which I thought was pretty impressive. They also had a nice library, and nice classrooms. The classrooms were huge though. I don’t know how I feel about having every class with 229 other students. I like smaller classes better. The patient simulation lab was also really neat. They had manequins that can do anything a human can do- vomit, blink, respond to medications, give birth, etc. Good practice so that students don’t mess up on real patients. I’m excited for medical school.
I had two interviews durring my day at TCOM. One was with a PhD from India. He had a really thick accent and was hard to understand. I kept having to say “sorry, could you repeat that?” I hope he didn’t mind. My other interview was with a gastroenterologist. He asked me some questions I wasn’t expecting, like “What word would you use to describe your sense of humor?” He also asked me how I would handle being a rural physician in a small town when a woman whose family I know well came in and asked for an abortion from a pregnancy from an extra-marital affair. That was a tough question. He also asked me about Obama Care and other current events in medicine. That interview went pretty well, I think. Now I have to wait until October to find out if I’m excepted. My next interview is in El Paso in a few weeks.
Besides the school itself, I really liked the area. TCOM is right next to the cultural district. There are four museums within a block of the school (including the cowgirl hall of fame, go figure.) I wanted to check out the modern art or the natural history museums, but my hosts and I went to see the stockyard instead. It is a big rodeo surrounded by a couple of old-west themed streets. Twice a day, the cowboys drive their herds right down the middle of the road. Kind of like the running of the bulls, but people are on the sides as spectators, not running for their lives. They also have a lot of stores and shops there, like that candy store I mentioned where they sell those gross bug candies.
So now I’m not really sure what to say. I said I have an interview in a few weeks in El Paso. I’m very excited. It is right on the border with Mexico! I love Mexico, I served my misison there. I think Texas TEch El Paso is one of my top choices becuase it teaches medical spanish and border medicine as part of its curriculum. I like that. I want to be a doctor that works with underserved populations, especially immigrants from Mexico. I would also be a lot closer to my mission and could maybe go back to visit. I would like to go visit Mexico, especially my mission, but I’m not sure how realistic that is. I served in areas that are the center of the drug war, it was bad then, and that was more than two years ago. I remember several times when we didn’t go outside becasue there were gunfights going on. One time, I had to go pick up a companionship who had been robbed and beaten by some drug dealers who were looking for someone else and got the wrong house. I also remember when they would take cargo trucks an dblock the freeways so that no traffic could get in or out of the cities.
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Today is my last day of classes, ever! Well, except for the fact that I am going to be a teacher. It’s weird to think that I am just about done with college, and I just have student teaching left. I feel kinda weird, like I’m really old or something. I never thought I would actually finish - like all this hard work would actually end someday. Although sometimes I wonder what I was thinking when I decided to be a teacher, and a math teacher at that. My math classes have been very hard, and have definitely taken a toll. I wonder why I had to take so many tough math classes in college, when I will never teach anything past calculus. I feel like it was pointless, especially since I didn’t learn much from them, and I got very frustrated as I went through them. I sometimes wish I had done something like biology, which would be so fun and I love studying about life, but then again that would be way too much chemistry, which I don’t like. I remember why I wanted to be a teacher. Well actually there are several reasons that I wanted to teacher. I wanted to be able to coach and teach, because I had one of the best coaches ever, and he influenced me to become better through running. I want to be able to help my student-atheletes learn how to become better and also gain a love for a healthy lifestyle. I think one of the reasons I love running so much is because I am really competitive, and oin running I can be competitive with myself. I just want to beat my previous time each race, and become a little better than I used to be everyday. I also wanted to influence students - young people - for the better, and I feel like I can do that through teaching. I will be able to spend a little time each day with them, helping them to learn math and life skills like problem solving and reasoning. Many people (especially young students) say that they hate math. I cringe every time someone says that to me. I think that there are so many great things that math teaches you, and really it’s a great thing to learn. I think it is one of the languages of God, but that is just my humble opinion. If I can teach well enough that my students enjoy math and really learn skills that will help them throughout their life, what a great reward that will be.
ReplyDeleteWell that is what I am studying and what I want to do with my life in the near future, but what I really can’t wait for is when I am old enough (maybe a better phrase would be rich enough) to own my own bakery and bake all day, everyday. That has been a dream of mine since I was really, really young. I learned how to bake from my grandmother - who would bake with me every time we visited her in Pennsylvania. It was kind of like our thing, just what we did together to spend time together. Now I love to bake! And what I love even more (besides eating all the baked goods) is sharing them with others and seeing how they enjoy what I have created. It’s kind of amazing how you can take so many ingredients (that are really quite untasty if you eat them on their own) and mix them together in different amounts to make an unbelievably delicious creation. My favorite thing to bake is apple pie. My grandma has the best recipe, and I think what makes it so good is that she bakes it with love. I can’t even describe how delicious it is! I know that it is unlimited in heaven.
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Today I was asked to type and type whatever came into my mind. This turns out to be harder than I thought initially. It requires me to not only type, but to think and try to figure out what my goal while writing. My first decision is: what do I want to write about? Some thing that has been on my mind a lot lately is my new promotion at work. I found out last Wednesday that I would be the new Zone Coordinator in Zone 32 in the MTC. This means I will be in charge of five classrooms of missionaries and about a dozen teachers. I am surprised at how much I have enjoyed my new responsibilities and the creativity it requires. My first thought that I shared with the zone this past zone meeting was: Missionaries do not learn by telling, or seeing, but by feeling. I have felt this to be true throughout my two years at the MTC. Much better than just showing a missionary how to do something, is to help them do it themselves and help them recognize how it should feel when they do that activity. This applies in their personal studies. I could sit down and outline a detailed plan of steps they need to take to be successful. Or I could study with them, ask them what they think will be most important, then coach them toward effective study strategies. When I feel like the moment is right I ask them, “how does it feel to study like this?” They will usually answer that it feels awesome. I invite them to make all their studies feel like that, whether they use the exact same method or if they come up with new ones, they will know what it should feel like. I feel like the same thing applies in Spanish speaking. A missionary should feel what it feels like to speak and think only in Spanish, and until they understand that, they won’t do it.
ReplyDeleteThe second principle I’d like to focus on for the zone is: We will have power to invite missionaries to do things only to the degree in which we feel them. In other words, if we don’t feel the power of an activity like personal study in our lives, we will be ineffective in inviting others to do the same. My hope is to create a culture of revelation, where the teachers are guided daily by the Holy Ghost about the needs of their missionaries. These are the teachers who will be successful in helping their missionaries feel what it should feel like to study.
The final principle is: Christ is always the answer. I sense we spend a lot of time at the MTC trying to find fancy answers to complicated questions and situations missionaries are going through. I’ve been guilty of sitting for long amounts of time with missionaries trying to help them figure out what they can do to be better at a particular task. I soon realized I don’t know all the answers, but Christ does. A missionary who comes to Christ in humility will know what they need to do. For example in teaching, a missionary might ask: How can I teach more to the needs of the investigator? The answer is: How would Christ teach this person? Would He speak the whole time, or would he express sincerity and love while listening to the feelings of the person being taught. When Christ is brought into the picture the answers quickly become clear.
I’d also like to try to implement a new Spanish teaching tool. I’m glad I’ve had the chance in this class to work on it.
Well once upon a time there was a tiger named bob. Bob didn’t really like people. IN fact he would go around eating people all the time. Once there was a forest ranger named rick. Rick went to his job which hwas of course the forest. When he got there he met the tiger. At first he didn’t know what to do, but he quickly rememberd the training he received at ranger school. He calmlyh went up to the tiger and asked him how his day was. The tiger sighed and responded that it definitely wasn’t the best of days. You see, he said, I have this terrible issue with my family. None of them like m at all. Well, the ranger said, why don’t they like you? The tiger replied sadly, well, it is because I don’t have a raur, it is more like a cat’s meow. I don’t enjoy having a meow like a cat, but I just can’t help it. One day when I was stalking prey I tried to scare it into standing still, but the little rabbit ran away. I was really hungry that day and so was my family, but to my shame, I did not catch anything for them. This isn’t just any situation of going hungry though, the tiger explained. We live like they do in the poorer countries. All of my families and grandparents live in one little hut, so when I don’t bring food home I am basically condemning my family and ancestors to death! Well my, the ranger replied, that is quite the story. Have you tried going to speech therapy? Well, no. I have not tried speech therapy. Do you think it could work mr. forest ranger sir? Well, I’m not certain it will work, but it has a very good chance of working. Perhaps if you tried this lady (ghe gives the tiger his friend’s business card). She is excellent and helped me remove a stutter I had when I was in the second grade. Do you mind if I tell you a story about her? Her name is mrs. Smith, but I will just call her smithy. Smithy was just an ordinary lady. Before she was very old her parents knew she was something special. She would seek out the little 8 month old children, grab them by the throat, and command them to speak in Aslan’s name. It was actually quite extraordinary. One day while I was playing with all of my blocks she came up to me and told me that my life was going to change. Do not ask me how I understood her, for I was only five and a half months old, but something touched me that day. That something, was her fist. She didn’t grab me like she did the other children, instead she sucker punched me right in the throat. Boy, it was something special. It was harder than anyone had ever hit me, including my aunt, Susan. Well anyways, as soon as she hit me she pulled me up by the ears until my eyes were at her level. She asked me a question and I answered. The best part however, was that she asked me a question in French! How awesome is that?! From then on I would seek out smithy and ask for my daily dose of language assistance. It has not helped me in any way when it comes to physical looks, but I have become quite the public speaker, in all countries of course. So, the tiger asked, what the heck does that have to do with my speech impediment. Well, the ranger said, it doesn’t. what I wanted to show you was that I wanted to be an astraunot at one point in my life. Ok, the tiger replied, I would like to hear this story too. The ranger (rick) proceeded to tell the tiger about his experience trying to get into nasa. It wasn’t easy. Back then there were lots of tests you had to go through before you could even apply. One of them was very interesting and was quite accurate to a movie I recently saw called rocket man. Well what we had to do was blow into a pipe for as long as we could. This pipe was connected to another pipe which had a ping pong ball in it. The piung pong ball was white, not that it really matters, but it did to me at the time. So I would blow as hard as I could into that little tube to make the ball go as high as possible. It went really high as well.
ReplyDeleteBryce 778 words
Logan Williams
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I think a lot of people are ignorant towards metal music. Most people just scoff at it when they hear it. Others think it’s all about devil worship and satanic lyrics. These are all just misconceptions. There really isn’t much of a devil influence in metal music. If there is it’s just a ploy to get more attention. Some bands will admit that they are anti-christian though. Most of these bands come from Scandinavia where they believe Christianity was kind of forced upon them. Even if they are anti-christian so are a lot of other musicians. That’s what I don’t understand. Especially when people listen to rap and hip hop adnd then shun metal. They shun metal just because they hear screams and growls and really heavy music. But then they go to todays top hits radio station and listen to all the lil wayne and drake they can get their ears on! I think it’s pathetic! That stuff is way worse than metal! Way worse! Seriously, I really don’t understand that and I think it really shows just how ignorant some people are. You can’t judge something you don’t know anything about. Escpecially if you’re going to bash it by saying it has bad lyrics and blah blah blah. If you do that you better be ready to back yourself up about the kind of lyrics are in your kind of music. Even country has some pretty provocative lyrics. People just seem to think that because it’s soft easy listening and catchy it should be okay. Or, they think that because it’s what everybody’s listening to it should be okay. IT’s like an accepted norm that no one dares question. They all just blindly accept it like sheep. But they’re definitely ready to fight metal music at whatever cost! IT’s like they have a huge fear of the unknown, and they don’t know metal, so they’re scared of it. Since they’re scared of it, it’s bad and no one should listen to it. Anyone who does listen to metal is, in their eyes, bad as well. They might even label that person a devil worshiper. I think this is pathetic and people really need to stop judging things they don’t know anything about. Some people., like myself, don’t even listen to metal for the lyrics. I’m all about the musicianship of metal music. I could care less about what they say….you can’t understand what they’re saying more than half the time anyways so who cares. It’s all about the technical skills they have and how they employ them to do something different and make differnet music.
TYhis morning has been a crazy one! I eoke up at 6:30 to cook hashbrowns for our class. You see, our teacher Travis from English decided that he’d give 2 points extra credit for amyone that brings in a savory tereat for the class. II decided with Kevin and Bryce that we’d bring in breakfast burritos. Kevin was going to bring in the eggs, I had the hashbrowns, and byrce had the tortillas. I woke up at 6, but of course hit the snooze three times before acutally getting up. I finally got up at around 6:30 and started cooking the hashbbrowns. I had pre-cut everything the night bewfore. There was this nifty food slicer thing that I had purchased a few months back at Costco that Id never really used so I thought Id give it a try. When I reached up to grab it last weejk, I caught one of the spikes on the cutter and dug into my finger. It was knarly. My finger bled and bled and bled! Yesterday, I was much more careful with how I reached into the top cupboard! I sliced the potatoes into little suqares… and then onions and green peppers. I tried to cook them all at once but that obviously wasn’t a very good idea. They just sat there, burned, turned to a mushy mess… So I pulled out several pans and started a few hashbrowns in each. This was getting somewhere! And hour later I was almost done. But it wasn’t fast enough! I threw some hash browns into a bowl and put them into the microwave for a minute at a time. This sped things up quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteFinally I had a full zip-loc bag full of hjasbrowns that I could take to travis’s class.
On my way to school – Bryce sent me a text telling me that he had forgotten the tortillas and was on his way back home to get them. I laughed out loud – Bryce is a funny guy. He had actually sent em several text messages over the weekend about burritos. Once he even sent me a text wishing me a good morning, followed up with sunshine. This was a few days back when we were in the same group working on an early morning project. We decided to cook cake in the microwave. We had to come up with a set of instructions that would make it so simple, even a caveaman could do it. It was called 3-2-1 cake! It is as easy as 3, 2, 1! I thought that it was funny how people were so comfused with the instructions… do I start with the 3? Or with the 1`? It’s called 3, 2, 1 cake bud – start at the very beginning, like most instructions do!
The cake had frosting and whipped ceram to go along with it. I acutally brought a banana to put on top of mine for breakfast. Other gourps did a cheese sandwhichw maker tuype thing. They had a toaster and bread and butter and cheese. You l;ay the toaster on its side and put bread in each slot. Then , when it pops out, you have a cheese sandwich!
Where was I? Oh yea… Bryce. Well he had forgeotten his tortilla s back at his house so he sent me a text that he was on his way to retriece them. Later he called me and told me that he couldn’t find them at all!@ His wife had put them away in some uinknown place! He looked everywhere… not under the counter, in the panty, I bet they’re in an obvious place light right by the door ready for him to go to school. So the dude called me and told me his problem. I told him that I’d rteun over to the creamery to pick some up[ and that he has no need to fear, for David is here~! I went to the corner market first… they open at 7:30… but you wouldn’t believe that they were closed! Must be a normal school=-year schedule and not year round. Super irritating. Mostly because it had taken me forever to get the4re in the first place. Trafiic is terrible over there! They’re construction on every street… lines of cars, cones everywhere… I couldn’t really get through Andf so I parked, got out, saw that they were closed, and then had to get back on the street and go somewhere else. I went to the creamery on 9th south a;lksdhjf a;ldj
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Who is excited for BYU football? I sure am. Today the all sports pass goes on sale. My wife and I are going to buy tickets with my some of my friends.
ReplyDeleteBYU football is in an interesting predicament, now that we are independent. It seems we will never have a meaningful game in the month of November again. No more conference titles, just plain old bowl games. If we went undefeated we would have a shot at a BCS bowl game, but only a shot. The fornt of our schedules will be perpetually loaded with tough games. This year all the tough games happen to be road games as well, and considering BYU’s all time record for away games is around .400, we will need some serious help. Returing to the teamthis year is Riley Nelson, a dual threat quaterback who took over the team last year from Jake Heaps, who has transferred to another school. Returning is Cody Hoffman and Ross Apo, two recievers whose physique has never been seen at BYU. Both have great hands, are 6 foot 3 inches (?) and have breakaway speed. One of the bigger questions will be the running game. The first half of last season, BYU had terrible running stats. However, towards the end of the year, with RIley running the option occasionally; the runnign game picked back up. Michael Alisa showed promise in the end of last year, and will be the first string back going into this year. We must remember that our tight ends, a historical strength of BYU, will be more experienced. On offense the biggest advantage is that we have a quarter
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ReplyDeleteMy wife and I aare going to the Dominican republic this month. In fadct we are going thiin two weeks on the 16 th of August. I am very excited to spend a week on the beach with my wife. M= we have been going to school for over a year straight without even one break . we have been attending summer classes for the past two summers and it has been rough on us. This will be my first vacation since I went to the grand canyon in 2008. Needless to say I have been looking forward to this vacation for a while. In fact I have found it very difficult to focus in my studies. I have procrastinated most of my assignments this past week. I have a large assignment due today at midnight for my doctrine and covenants class but I haven’t worked on it at all. Last night I sat down fir the first time and started writing. The nice thing about religion classes is that I can work on the homework on Sunday without feeling guilty. But back to my vacation. Last night we went to Sandy to have a meeting with my in-laws about all the details of the vacation passports, travel arrangements, safety, etc. my little bro-in-law is bringing a friend of his. Her name is sam and he is a little worried about have to be with her for an entire week. They are god friends but he has never spent that much time with her. It reminds me of a trip I made to cali with my school. I went with my girlfriend because we were in the same chorus group. We sat next to each other on the bus for two or three days straight. It goes without saying that we got kind of sick of each other and spent thae last leg of the trip sitting in different sides of the bus. I hope that my bro-in-law will be ok. with the arrangement. Another issue with him is that he is constantly playing his ipod. I hope that he doesn’t bring it with him on the trip. I can’t imagine sitting on the beach in the D R and having him stay in the hotel playing the same game that he does when he Is home. I am very excited again for this trip and can’t wait.
I am excited for this weekend. My wife and I will be traveling to Idaho to visit my family and see my new nephew be blessed. We haven’t seen my family since Thanksgiving of last year! It’ been a long time. I feel kind of bad. We only live four hours away from my house. Some of the reasons why we haven’t been able to go is because of work, school and the money for gas. Our car is a gas hog. It just drinks and drinks gas so it can be really pricey to just to drive four hours. So anyway, we are headed up there this weekend because we will have some time in between semesters and some time off work. However we will still have to bit the bullet for the cost of gas. When I talked to my brother, he said that we will try and take the boat out and go wakeboarding on Friday. I haven’t gone once this entire summer. Which is crazy because usually my cousin who lives down here in Utah invites us to go all the time. By this time last summer, I would have already been out on the lake about five times. I love the water especially on a hot summer day. The best to go wakeboarding is during the evening when the sun is setting, the air is a little but cooler and the water is as smooth as glass. That’s the perfect time to go. Usually, by this time during the evening, many of the other boats and water machines have already called it a day and are out of the water, so it leaves the lake almost all to yourself. Summer is nearly gone and fall is almost here. I am ready for the colder weather.
ReplyDeleteYou know, sometimes life is a very terrible thing. Don’t get me wrong, I love my life. I think I have a great life. However, sometimes I just get the feeling that life is against me. This morning I was all excited (well, ready) to come to class when suddenly my stomach exploded. It was very dramatic actually. I mean, obviously my stomach is still intact, or I would be in the hospital, but I almost couldn’t come to class. I went to the bathroom, and what a pleasant experience that was (sorry for the TMI everyone). Once I got out of the bathroom I was light headed and all I could do was take some TUMS and lay on my bed. I was thinking “well, how am I going to go to class? I have presentation to give in my 10:00 class, will I make it? I just don’t know.” Luckily, after laying down for a little bit I started to feel much better. I knelt down in prayer and asked the lord to help me feel good enough to make it through the day, and so far it’s worked. I made it to class, although I walked on campus very slowly.
ReplyDeletePrayer is such a cool thing you know. I don’t know where I would be without it. The experience that I related above reminded me of a time when I was a freshman. I had a test that I had to do in my CS class. I picked up this test on Monday at 9 AM and I had to turn it in by 6 PM on Tuesday. I started it immediately and made a nice plan. Latter that afternoon I actually started to work on it. I quickly realized that it wasn’t going very well. Nevertheless I kept on working. I worked all afternoon until FHE started. I had made little to no progress. I told myself that I needed a break and that FHE was the perfect break. I took my computer to my bedroom and thought, “well, this is going to be a rough day, I have no idea what to do.” I was in that moment that I realized I hadn’t prayed for help yet. I decided that I would before I started working on it again. I walked out of my room and I realized what I needed to do. I felt so blessed. I hadn’t even prayed yet, but just by showing humility and planning to pray, God blessed me to figure it out. After FHE I worked on my lab some more, and made some progress, but then I got stuck again. I prayed again and slowly made more progress. This continued until 3 in the morning. I went to bed, knowing that I needed sleep. At 7 AM I woke up and went straight back to it. I was praying all day that I would get it done. The biggest blessing was that the lord helped me stay awake all day.
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Stephen Kitto
I’m so happy! This past week has been amazing! Scott and I are more in love than ever. We went to the club house earlier this week to watch the Olympics and to play cards. I won both games, haha. We also have been asking each other a lot of questions from the “300 Questions LDS Couples Should Ask Before Getting Married” book. It’s been a great thing for us to do together.
ReplyDeleteOn Friday we went to the Provo temple together. It was around 6:30 at night and there was no one there. I’ve never seen anything like it! We walked in, got our jump suits, went to the locker room, walked into the confirmation room, walked in to the baptistery and then we were done! Usually it takes anywhere from one and a half to three hours to go through.
Since we finished so much earlier than we expected Scott suggested that we walk around back. I had never been around the back of the temple and it was so pretty out; it smelled wonderful too with all of the flowers. We ended up sitting on the grassy hill and looking up at the sky and the temple I couldn’t help but think to myself how wonderful life is. Scott leaned over and asked, “Are you happy?” I told him I was and that he was my best friend. He then said, “You’re my best friend too; I can’t open up with anyone like I can with you.”
Saturday was a full day! We woke up early and went to the park to play tennis. Scott played in high school so he’s pretty good and I’ve never played at all but he’s been so patient with me and we have a great time. I really love to play now and am getting better. We also played on this big spider web thing in the playground. After tennis we went home to get cleaned up and I had a brilliant idea! Bratwursts! Scott and I drove to Macey’s to get brats, buns, chips, and a drink. We also had left-over ice cream from the BYU creamery (Graham Canyon!!!).
We went over to his brother’s apartment and threw in a load of laundry while we fired up the grill. We ate outside on the porch and the brats were SO good! After lunch we walked down to the park to throw the Frisbee around.
- Nicole Krantz
I hate finals. And I hate assignments that are just busy work. Maybe I’m supposed to learn something from it? I don’t know. I’m not learning much. Ugh. I am so bad at math. I don’t know how to do it. And I’m graduating in a year. What a disgrace to society I will be when I go out into the world and can’t do anything I was supposed to have learned for four years. Oh boy. Here comes the glory. Not. I need to find something else satisfying and fulfilling in life. What? I need to discover. Discover is such a frilly word. Discover makes you want to go out and change the world. But I don’t want to do that. I need a more realistic and down to earth word. Find? Bleh. Too plain. I just need to go and DO. Do is good. I like doing. But I also like lazy. Morgan asked me what I do in my free time. Free time? I honestly have no idea. I legitimately have no free time. Homework. That’s all I ever do. I can’t do the things I really want to because I am always doing homework. I can’t watch the Olympics…I have homework. I can’t go swimming in the summer weather…I have homework. I can’t go home and visit Idaho…I have homework. I can’t just sit down and watch a movie with Dan for crying out loud!!!! Because I have homework. I should change my attitude I guess. I don’t want to. I like hating homework. It gives me something to despise, to curse. I have turned all my anger of other people towards homework. So in reality, it is better for human kind that I hate homework. Now I won’t take it out on anyone else. Maybe the professors. They deserve it. Or do they? Let me think…yes, yes they do. They could still get their point across and we could still learn even without bucket and boat loads of homework. I promise they can. Yes, we need to do (there’s the do word again) our own part and learn on our own, but when it’s all just busy work, or like in math classes when you go to class and then go to do the homework and you have no idea what anything means. Nothing,. Nada. Zip. Anyways, when it’s all like that, I really don’t feel like I learn much. Maybe it’s because of my attitude. I hate homework so much that I don’t learn anything from it. I am so obsessed with the hating that I forget to do the learning. So it’s all my fault then. Not the professors. Well that’s not fair! I didn’t assign myself all this homework! How rude. I need to find something else in life. I hate wasting my life away doing homework. I need more fulfillment. I know that someday I will wish I was back in school where all I had to worry about was homework. But I can’t bear that thought now. I just want out. For good. Never come back. I’m bitter. I want to throw things. Like a pillow. Or an eggplant. They’re gross. Even in Ratatoulli.
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It has only been one semester and I think I am going to miss this class… tear, tear. I am just kindding. It has been fun, but I have been so busy it will be nice to have a couple of weeks to relax. I wish I could have more, but then school starts back up all over again. Then I will be working 35 hours a week, taking 16 credits, doing research, and serving as a second counselor in the bishopric. Life is going to be so hectic, I think pretty much for the rest of my life. Sometimes I wonder how I am going to do it, but at least right now it will be good preparation for medical school. Why does medical school have to be so competitive? I feel like I have been working so hard, and I will continue to be for so long, and I still won’t necessarily get accepted anywhere. I feel like everyone I meet who is pre-med does so much, it is nerve wrecking to think about. All I can do is work hard and hope that I will get accepted somewhere. I hope we can go to to Colorado’s med school. It would be nice to be close to both our families. Especially if we want to have kids. It would be especially helpful for my wife to be close to family, considering she gets home sick so easily. Today is her 21st birthday and she has to be alone pretty much all day. I fell bad about it, but I have class in the morning, and then I have to go to work until 6:30. She will be spending most of her birthday alone and it makes me feel so bad. But I tried calling up some of her friends to take her out and to see if there is anything they can do to keep her somewhat busy. The will be picking her up around three and will go do some fun stuff with her. Then they will get her dressed up and drop her off at a restauraunt where she will meet me, holding flowers and then we will have a date, just the two of us. I hope that makes her happy. It’s not normally too lonely for her, but during the summer it’s been a little bit harder because she is not in classes, and only works about 15 hours a week at her job. So a lot of her day is spent alone, and that can’t be fun. Despite my busy schedule right now, it will be good for school to start again so that she can hae more human interaction. She has been going through a dilemma of whether or not she wants to change majors right now, and I
ReplyDeleteAndrew Black 467 words
When I was in 6th grade I began public school after being homeschooled for all of elementary. It was a huge transition for me as I have never been around such large groups of kids before. I learned a lot and was very quiet at first. I did have my best friend Ryan with me to help ease into the transition. It was hard but rewarding. I started band and played the clarinet with Mrs. Jackson. What a great time I had there. Math was easy for me and school overall was easy, but the transition with friends was way hard. I found it got easier as I made more friends and began to open up a little. It took a long time though. My favorite part of my sixth grade year was when I joined a club called forestry. It was all about trees, nature, and the environment. Every Wednesday in the spring we met and learned more about the forests. We started out with compass reading and orientation. We also learned how to measure our pace so we could calculate distances by walking. Then we went to tree and plant indentification. A part of that section was memorizing the scientific names. This came easy for me and I excelled in this section. Then we did log scaling where we learned how to calculate the amount of board feet in a log. Next was timber cruising where we used a clinometer to calculate the board feet volume in a standing tree. This was done by measuring the diametere adn also the height of the tree. Then we used a chart to figure out the board feet. Another section was tree and plant health, where we had to learn all the diseases that were common to trees in North Idaho. This was the hardest section for me. Then we learned about silvaculture where we had to pick which trees to keep in a bunch for repopulation in the future. This section I felt was more up to subjection and was a hard one. We also had tool identificiation and a maps section. Both of those were easy too. So we practiced every week and then the first Thursday in May we went to the Idaho State Forestry contest. I ended up getting third place!
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Dan Nielson
305 Words....times like these remind me how much I hate thinking about writing!!
ReplyDeleteI am not sure if it is the fact that I have been to almost seven semesters in a row now, but I am really, really tired of all this school stuff! It actually would have been eight if I didn’t need to take off this past spring semester to study for the ridiculously retarded MCAT. This past winter semester I was taking the second half of organic chemistry, the second half of physics, the physics lab, genetics, and participating in mentored research dealing with Alzheimer’s disease. Besides going to school all day, everyday, I was also enrolled in a MCAT prep course. This course could have easily taken thirty hours out of my week. However, since I was also working part time there wasn’t anyway that was going to happen. It was a shame that I didn’t get to put in as many hours as I would have liked into the prep course, but school full time and work part time doesn’t leave you with much time. It was also a shame considering that prep course ended up costing almost two thousand dollars! Anyway, now it’s summer semester and all the courses are packed into half the time and I am trying to study for the MCAT again! Unfortunately I didn’t do as well as I would have liked so I am taking it again in a week and a half. Hopefully I can find myself more relaxed the second time and do as well as I feel I should. I seriously just need to tell school to take a hike (school’s for fools, look at me!!!!) and go on a very long vacation that doesn’t involve using any brain power. I never thought that I would be asking to do something mind numbing, but after these seven semesters I would greatly appreciate it.
“Politicians tell lies to cover the truth, artists tell lies to reveal truth.” I never looked at cartoons with much of a critical eye until rooming with several animation majors. their outlook on the cartoon world was so deep, it was inspiring. And I’ve never been able to watch cartoons the same way since. Distorted head sizes, exaggerated reactions, comical quirks hidden in the scenery... all these things add the character of the movie and the tone it’s creating and the morals it’s trying to teach. Now, this isn’t to say all cartoons are good. Some are poorly animated, whereas others don’t have high standards they’re teaching. Anyone who’s seen Avatar: the Last Airbender knows that even a well-implemented cartoon can teach impassive emotions toward lying and cheating. Or anyone who’s seen the Nazi cartoon propaganda knows that cartoons are sometimes teaching the opposite of what the younger generation should learn. In fact, that’s another amazing thing about cartoons. Like other forms of media, cartoons can infiltrate an entire society’s worldview. Look at the progression of Disney movies since the 50’s: Snow White is helpless without her Prince Charming. She blindly walks into an unknown cottage and eats an apple from a suspicious stranger. Later Pocahontas enters the scene. She changes the history of two cultures, who otherwise would have destroyed each other. Much more recent is the star from Brave. She rights her wrongs against her family. Not only does she actively pursue her destiny, she goes against the norms, has an indelicate side to her nature, and yet achieves peace again amongst her family and tribes.
ReplyDeleteWord count: not first or second.
Today has been a bit crazy. I got up really early to go work on my poster for English 316 because I had to use the school computers. I would have worked on the poster more at home this weekend but I don’t have the mapping program that I needed to use. So, I got up and (with sleep still in my bones) made some lunch and breakfast for myself and took a shower. Then I booked it to the library. Seriously, I left my house in Orem at 7:07 and got to campus at 7:11. That is really really quick! Then, I downloaded some map layers when I got to the library and worked on colors and what not for my posters.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if I need to go to graduate school and study social work. I might study something else in the graduate program. I love helping people, but I believe that there is varies ways besides doing social work to help others. For example helping our neighbors. We do not need a degree to help others. We just need to be nice to others and be willing to help those who are in need. I do not know what I am going to do after I am done with school. I know I will do something, but I am not sure quit to do next. I love languages. I hope one day I will be able to speak Spanish or Korean Fluently. I want to travel all over the country.
ReplyDeleteI will love to go back in Hawaii. Hawaii is such a beautiful Island. The weather is most of the time sunny and the beach is gorgeous. I love the beach. It is a perfect place for relaxation and to have fun with my family and friends.
Here I am again, just writing in English about something which still hasn’t reached the forefront of my brain to let me know what it’s going to be. Perhaps I’ll write about something that happened last night, or this morning. I just combined rice and salsa to make an even better salsa, but that’s about all I have to say about that. There’s also the fact that I got ready this morning in five minute segments separated by ten minute naps. Do you call them naps if they take place that early in the morning? I have an idea, I’ll talk about the coolest thing that happened last week. My wife and I went to the doctor for an ultrasound and were able to see our little daughter curled up inside of my wife’s belly as she reached the half-way point of her life in the womb. She had her hands in front of her face the entire time, obviously well trained in avoiding the paparrazi that will some day haunt her for whatever spectacular thing she will accomplish. She refused to move from that position, so we had to schedule another ultrasound so that the doctor can get a picture of her face. They told us that Annie (the wife) needs to eat more sugar before going in so that the baby will be hyperactive. I’m ok with a calm baby though. I was thinking about what I’m going to do with her once she decides to venture out into the real world, sometime in December. As the first child she will have to suffer through my endless need to build forts, cardboard weapons, and such. I guess I could also apply some of my less manly skills as well though. My wife recently taught me how to braid hair, that should do. Or there’s always my guilty pleasure of arts and crafts. I have to be careful what I make at home because my wife will, without fail, display it all in some place in our house and assure that everyone knows that it was me, and not her, that created it. Anyway, there are plenty of other things I want to do with the new baby girl. She’ll most likely look a lot like her mother, so one of our activities will no doubt involve beating off teenage boys trying to invade our house. Maybe she’ll want to come along to pick out her first taser, or to decide on which type of pepper spray seems most effective. It’s possible that she’ll even want to come to help me pick out my first date attire. I don’t mean that I will be going with her, that would be a little over-protective, but I need to look... menacing when the first one comes.
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