blog & collective

Post-MCAT, I drove up to San Francisco with Melissa and Thomas to see Something Corporate on their reunion tour.

Together again!

I find it weird that bands I listen to are already having reunion tours. When I told my dad I was going to a reunion concert, he said:

Dad: “Who’s Something Corporate? Why don’t I know them? How long have they been broken up?”

Me: “You wouldn’t know them. They broke up 5 years ago in their early-twenties. Now they’re in their mid- to late-twenties.”

Dad: “Oh. Well that’s lame!”

Thanks, Dad. Well in any case, they still play a damn good show. And the lighting was awesome at the Warfield. Anyway, good concert, fun people, happy times!

They’ll be the death of me.

DAMN YOU DISTAL CONVOLUTED TUBULE

I have learned the anatomy and physiology of the kidneys probably 4 times now (3 in class, once after my first ever practice MCAT) and every time it’s in one ear, out the other. And 80% of the questions I’ve missed on practice MCATs in the biological sciences have been on the kidneys. DAMN YOU KIDNEYS. I have vowed that by the end of today, I will know the kidneys backwards and forwards (dorsal to ventral?).

2 days ’til the MCAT. Forgive the insanity.

So far this summer it’s been like reading a tour guide to the MCAT and watching some sort of documentary on MCATland, but with less than a week left to the day of doom, after which the fate of my career in medicine will be determined, it’s time to get down and dirty with the MCAT.

Luckily, I have my handy friend Princeton Review (also dubbed “Le Prince de Review” avec son ami “Le Barron de Kaplan” roughly 4.5 years ago… let’s not revisit those times, shall we?) to kick my ass into gear as I navigate these treacherous lands.

The conformation of the enzyme prior to substrate binding, with low substrate affinity, is sometimes termed “tense,” and the conformation of the enzyme with increased affinity is termed “relaxed.” ³¹

³¹ Imagine a group of people who can’t get any dates. They are all depressed about it, and they keep each other depressed, which makes it even less likely that any will get a date. They are tense, “turned off,” and inactive. Then one of the depressed group gets a date and gets so excited about it that all the other friends in the group get so enthusiastic that they get dates too. They are “turned on,” relaxed, hip, groovy, and active.

Thank you, Princeton Review. I understand allosteric binding that much better now. I may also go shoot whoever wrote that footnote.

Anyway, it’s time to move into a nice little villa in MCATland and study some more. Friends, you may not hear from me much for the next week — but hey, after that I am down to party.

Really quick, two other accomplishments of August: Extempore Literary Magazine, and these delicious and puffy and amazing snickerdoodles I baked today.

SNICKERDOODLES

It’s the kind of place where you can sneeze and no one will say, “Bless you.” Some days it’s because everyone else is working from home, some days simply because no one dares disturb the silence. I spend all day with headphones in, living in my own little world filled with music and sound, wondering what would happen if I just unplugged the headphones and sent OneRepublic or Anberlin or Spoon spiraling over the quiet hum of computers and typing. But the air conditioning is cranked up so cold that it makes a fair excuse to wander outside at noon to thaw in the California sunshine over lunch.

I sit at the entrance to the pod, facing a blank expanse of whiteboard marred by the faint, unerasable remnants of protein binding interaction diagrams, reaction free-energy coordinate plots, and Big O notation. Some day I’ll bring a dry erase marker with me to work and draw a porcupine dubiously eyeing O(n²). Maybe someone will notice. Not that they’d say anything. I could take over the desk behind me (the one with an extra monitor and shelves) and face windows instead of this whiteboard, but somehow there’s a sense of security in facing the same direction as the post-doc who’s overseeing my project. He never really turns around, yet I’d prefer that I see him on Facebook than the other way around.

I start each workday the same way. Before sitting down, I stow away my keys, pull out my laptop and charger, set my work notebook and a pencil down on the desk, plug my laptop charger into the outlet in the floor then my laptop, and put my backpack on the ground. Then I spend approximately the next 8 hours wondering if anyone can see my feet from the hall, and why I’m here instead of modeling this beta-1-adrenergic receptor from home. I guess something about the silence makes me feel obligated towards productivity.

So here’s to another day at work.

My computer froze on this while streaming the World Cup from ESPN. (As you can see, this was Uruguay vs. Netherlands — I have no recollection if this referee was actually any good, but he looks pretty jolly in this screenshot.)

He looks amused!

In other news, Eric and I went on an epic adventure before the Germany vs. Spain semifinal in search of a German flag. We found the dinkiest place called FLAG HOUSE which was sadly sold out of large German flags and sold me a tiny one for $17. (I later went on Amazon.com and bought three 3′x5′ flags for less than that.)

So now, we say goodbye to the unusual blog post productivity inspired by the World Cup and return to our normal programming. Farewell, World Cup — the U.S. will now proceed to forget about soccer again for the next 4 years.