Re: 10 + 5

Damn, I suck at maintaining blogs. To break the dry spell, I'll do the 10 + 5 also inspired by Tracy. Also just doing this because I love lists...

10 Bare necessities of Life (yeah, man!)

1. Hand sanitizer. As much as I love little kids, they have some alternate form of the Midas touch. Everything they touch turns into germs. Touch, try to eat, SAME THING.

2. Water--both for drinking and running alongside. It's far too humid for spring weather, and the Schuylkill River has become my new Princeton Canal. I found out on friday that I'm officially registered for the broad street run, so it looks like I'll be seeing a lot of the Schuylkill in the next three weeks.

3. My watch/Time/Deadlines. I've had it for so long that I might as well get it tattooed onto me. Even if I don't have it on, i still unconsciously stare at my wrist every 15 min to check the time. If I didn't have deadlines, I would get nothing done.

4. My Penn Student ID. It gives me free access to the libraries, online journals, and discounts to JCrew. Too bad it has an expiration date...

5. Pandora. It's my musical companion in work and life. One con is that the selection is limited, so I need to find a replacement. 

6. Trader Joe's. It has a great selection of food, and the staff is always ready to be your new bff. New find this week: tomato basil hummus. YUM.

7. Home decor. I just recently started caring about this. I just got new amber and plum colored curtains for my room, and they make all the difference in the world. I've always envisioned having a wall filled with framed photographs. Now I just need to make it happen. Michaels, here i come!

8. Aveeno Moisturizer. I love this stuff and have it in every form possible.

9. My agenda book. I've kept one every year since high school, and even with the invention of smart phones and online calendars, I'm still a paper and pen type of girl. Plus, I don't have to worry about battery life or damage (give or take a couple coffee stains).

10. Comfy PJ bottoms. Right now I have yellow ones with bunnies on them, and they are my go-to pants the instant I come home.

5 Things the world could live without

1. Teenage flash mobs. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/us/25mobs.html

2. People wearing tights as pants. Considering this trend started last season, you would think people would have grown out of it by now. I guess that's why they started making jeggings, but let's not even get into that.

3. Ringback tones. Listening to Neyo was never part of my job description. 

4. Housewives of (insert state). Makes me ashamed to be from New Jersey.  

5. http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/ Ewww...

My room is a sauna.

My new room is humidity trapped between four walls, and my old room looks like it's been robbed. The stuff in my room is a result of haphazard packing at 2am and traveled in a van that probably harbors Chinese illegal immigrants. I've moved to the point of exhaustion, but excited for what's to come. I'll post pictures soon.

If you get tired during the day, just smell yourself.

Soo, I suck at updating. Like facebook, this blog has turned into yet another tool that I can use to stalk my friends. To give a quick synopsis of the last couple of months, I am resorting to lists because 1) I love making lists and 2) I'm lazy. So, without further adieu (in random, nonchronological order)...

1) Someone stole my car!! Well, not my car, but my mom's acura. No one in their right mind would steal my car. Well maybe if they were colorblind, but even then, no.

2) The police found my car! They pounded on my front door tonight while I was in the middle of Immuno (my online class). At first, I thought it was the person/people who stole my car and was scared beyond reason. I actually turned off all of the lights, and wrapped in a blanket, I crept towards the door until I saw the flashing red and blue lights and realized that he was there to save me and not kill me. Laugh now, but you would be scared shitless, too.

3) I'm going to be published! Finally, working at McLean has paid off, and our paper will be in the glossy pages of Schizophrenia Bulletin in June. I'm going to be famous. :)

4) I love my job. I'm starting to get into a rhythm at work, and I really like the environment. It's wonderful being surrounded by people who love what they do and have a genuine interest in health care reform. Plus, my coworkers are fun, and even though I don't really know them, my office neighbors are pretty quirky (last week, I heard a cow bell ringing in the hall). My mission is to become friends with them. Right now, I'm working on two studies. My main study is a literature search on specialty referral metrics. We're looking at how we can measure different aspects of the referral process using administrative data, surveys, insurance plans, etc., and ultimately, how these measures can be used to evaluate the current referral system and the efficacy of interventions. Sometimes, I can't help but feel incompetent when I'm in meetings with such accomplished people, but I'm slowly learning to overcome my imposter's syndrome. I'm working with a guy who has an encyclopedia of papers hardwired in his brain and whose eyes literally light up every time he reads a paper new to him. Even though there are times when I'm fed up with filtering through PubMed articles, I'm constantly reminded of the study's importance and necessity in changing the US healthcare system.

I'm also working at a clinic, enrolling kids for a study on developmental screening. I don't think I really understood the importance of the study until I saw a 2 year old with delays. I was trying to get consent to enroll her sister in the study, while she ran around the room. She was so eager and playful, but instead of saying what she wanted, she would just point to things with a sense of urgency. I was amazed at how patient her mother was with them. While filling out a questionnaire, her mom told me that she reads to them every night, and when she has time, she likes to indulge herself and reads two books a night, instead of just one. When I indulge myself, I eat a whole bar of chocolate and increase my risk for diabetes.

For the first time, I really feel like I have a purpose. Even though I'm just a disposable research assistant, I feel like I have a say and that I can actually make a change. As corny as that sounds, it's a really great feeling to have.

You know you work for a pediatrician when...

he says that your HR representative made a boo-boo.

SEPTA

So I missed my train yesterday, meaning I had to wait an hour for the next one. While at the station, I heard a mariachi band, decked out in charro outfits, and saw a man will actual 24 carat grill on his front teeth. So I guess ever cloud does have a silver lining, or should I say blingin' gold.

Trick or Treat

So I haven't been able to find my ipod for a couple of weeks; it isn't stuck between the car seats, tucked away in a corner of my bag, or hidden in the back of my desk drawer. Some people might say it's the "L" word, but I'd just like to call it misplaced. I used it as my travel companion on my round trips from my anomalous buchak circle to the deciduous streets of walnut, chestnut, and spruce, and in a way, even when I wasn't on the SEPTA, I was still running on a track of my own. After a few weeks of exploring routes to campus, I found a hypotenuse of paths--a diagonal, linear cut through Drexel's campus that circumvents the sharp, perpendicular corner of market and 34th. From that point on, I've been traveling on an imaginary rail to and from the nut-bearing streets of Penn. With my ipod in hand, I sped along with non-stop service all the way back home. Now that my ipod is floating in transient limbo, I've been able to meet people from all walks of life. Maybe my ipod was like a silent fence for people, because since it's been turned off, I've been approached by other commuters who have been a mix of the good, the bad, and the just plain weird.

Never-See Tanushri is the first person I met outside of class. She noticed that we take the same train back to Princeton Junction and approached me on a whim. She was premed at Cornell who did the Peace Corps for two years in Nicaragua and got married to her husband this summer. After doing the Peace Corps, she decided that she wants to go into international relations, and now she's taking classes at penn in economics and IR. Even though I've only seen her a couple of times, I feel like I know her. Usually I only see her on the 10 minute ride from Trenton to Princeton Junction, but our conversations have been really smooth and unforced. In our limited conversations, we've been able to bond over our fear of heights and shared travel experiences to Teotihuacan, where we both sited women in their stiletto heels climbing up the pyramid walls. Somehow, we never manage to see each other on the longer trip from Philly to Trenton, but we're getting closer! While I was gathering my stuff to leave the SEPTA train, I glanced up and saw that she was two seats ahead of me. So close, but yet so far.

Soccer Steve is a guy who I met on the subway, when I was still experimenting with routes to the train station. Coincidentally, he's in my genetics class, so we commiserated about the unfairness of the first exam. He went to something-ville college in Pennsylvania where he was on the soccer team, and he's also commuting from home. Over the summer, he worked at a clinic serving the Amish community and did research on their family pedigrees.

Then there's Yogi the Bear. I just met him this past week on my way back to the station. At first, I must have looked like I was creepily stalking him because I was always one step behind him on the walk to the station. After he glanced back a couple of times, giving me that "WTF? Stop following me" look, we got to talking, and I found out that he's an undergrad at penn. He was a yoga instructor for 10 years, and he wants an MD in internal medicine following his name. Ultimately, he wants to be a public speaker for health care issues and is planning on getting an MD just for the fun of it. Right now, he's living in an 18th century house in Chestnut Hill, the site of the first paper mill in America. He and his roommates share a communal car run on biodeisel fuel, and get this, they make the biodeisel in their basement. He also has a scruffy semi-beard (probably because he doesn't own a mirror). He's moving out of his house and offered his room for a tempting $350 a month, but I think that I'll pass on this one...

Crazy Girl: She's in my molecular bio class and commutes from Philly to NYC. That's all I know about her, and that's all I need to know to make the claim that she's indeed crazy.

When I first met Tanushri, I was so excited about the prospect of a new friend. After the second year of college, I felt like people were out-of-stock at Tufts, and I had also become so wrapped up with my existing friendships that I no longer looked for new ones. I was so happy to meet someone new that I over exaggerated our similarities, telling Lauren that Tanushri was like me, but married. Now I'm not so sure I could say the same about my other acquaintances. "He's like me, but a yogi living in Amish town, PA," doesn't quite have the same ring to it, so I think the novelty has worn off. Even though my ipod is gone, I think it's helped me regain an appreciation for the kindness of a friendly face. Usually, I've been the one approached by people, but I think that I might take a shot at it. In a sense, meeting people is like going out on Halloween. There's a 50/50 chance that it's a trick or a treat, but it's worth it when the treats are that sweet. Man, I should work for Hallmark.

Also, this commercial is adorable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A2Ap3DyvLg

Happy Halloween!

You never give me your money.

During the summer, I created a jewelry shop on Etsy, a website where people can sell their handmade crafts online. I didn't know if I would have much luck, but I decided to give it a shot. At the time, I had nothing better to do anyway, and it became an addiction nearing the severity of facebook. So after a few weeks of updating and obsessively checking how many people added my shop to their favorites (sadly, only 6), I felt discouraged, but then the most amazing thing happened. Someone bought my necklace! I did my happy dance and told my mom who looked at me like one of those kids who just earned her first quarter at her lemonade stand.

Eager and naive, I packaged and shipped the vintage feather necklace to Illinois. I remembered to stamp, seal, and address the envelope, but I forgot one minor detail. The buyer hadn't paid me. Oops! I'm just hoping that integrity wins over greed, but I'm losing my faith since it's been 2 weeks since the transaction. So, if you want to check out my website, go to http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6135951 or click on my etsy shop on the left!

In other news, I've been studying in UPenn's prehealth program for about a month, and I'm taking three classes: Molecular Bio and Genetics, Clinical Psychopharmacology, and Cell Bio and Biochemistry. I really like Clinical Psychopharmacology; it's a seminar class where we discuss pharmacology and the roles of the FDA, pharmaceutical companies, academia, clinicians, and patients in the drug development process. It is the most stimulating course that I'm taking this semester, especially compared to the other almost intolerable, weekly lecture classes. I'm commuting from home, so I can save some money. At first, I thought that I was the only one making the treacherous, two-hour commute, but I'm not the only fool. I met another girl in the program who is making an even longer commute (Philly-->Trenton-->Princeton Jct-->Princeton) which, I admit, consoles me. I'm relieved to say that the commute has gotten better over time. My SEPTA train is like a surrogate to Tisch library, minus the librarian with the lazy eye.

I haven't been able to explore Philly as much as I had hoped since I only go into the city when I have class. Now that I'm settled with my courses (actually, I should be studying for my midterms right now...), I'm looking for a clinical research job at a local hospital in Philly--either the Hospital of the University of Philadelphia or Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Hopefully, I'll get a job soon, and I'll let you know how it goes!