You Can Take the Boy Out of the Ivory Tower...

I finished three secondary apps to medical school today (UIC, Tufts, and Drexel), when I looked over the essays I wrote and saw I referenced Socrates, Ray Bradbury, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Do the med admission committees appreciate essays with footnotes?

Ironically, my secondary application to UChicago had only one quotation. Not from Durkheim or Nietzche, but Star Trek:TOS. If there is no one who gets that reference on the committee, I'm in the wrong field.

Better Homes and Gardens than Mine

So since I bought/was given for free half of old Shoreland East's furniture, I thought of showing what my room looked like now instead of clogging mailboxes with 360 KB worth of jpegs.

Here's my bed, with its low Japanese frame I bought for $20, oriented horizontally to the room as Vanessa suggested, which actually gives me the greatest amount of walking space and room for Poulos' old desk and my shelves and closet.




Now, time to stop procrastinating and do my secondaries since school doesn't begin till next week...or find some other activity to waste my time.

Guess I Should Stop Pissing Off Those Norse Gods

My reward for finishing the MCATs and not feel utterly broken:

9 medical secondary applications to fill out
$485 to pay out with said apps
3 neuro articles to read before I work in a Parkinson's disease lab
and 40 days to pack until a trip to the Philippines.

No wonder I want to be distracted by power tools, fire and alcohol.

Complete with a Ceiling Crawling Crack Baby

I've been up since 4 AM studying MCAT Chemistry and finished two Med School Secondary Applications. That was such a rush...(puts out cigarette on arm)...I'M ALIVE!!!!
And now I need a fifth of bourbon, a monkey wrench and a blowtorch.

Wonder Boy

Note: This is an old essay I wrote in high school that I recently found.

March 4, 2001


One October morning, I frequented the annual St. James Art Fair, which showcased local crafts and products. While I tried to conduct warmth to my benumbed fingers from a Styrofoam cup of coffee, I gazed at some Quechuan tapestries from Ecuador. The proprietor of the Ecuador stand must have mistaken me for a Hispanic, since he greeted me in Spanish and inquired if I came from South America. I replied no. After he named several other Latin American countries he thought I came from, I curtly retorted, " I'm Asian!" He uttered meekly "¡Ay! You're Asian; then you must be smart."
I contemplated first whether or not I actually did appear Latino. However, the fact that the vendor associated the word "smart" with my race flooded into my mind many thoughts and meditations. The stereotypical Asian has a high IQ, a superior mentality in mathematics and science, and an industrious, competitive and perfectionist work ethic. In short, everyone expects the Asians to be geniuses.
Of course, this view has misconceptions, and it seems racist to correlate Asians with intelligence. But, I too have enhanced this cliché by appearing as the cliché; in public I assume the prototype of the Asian whiz kid. I wear a conservative and unpretentious suit of turtlenecks and polo shirts. I talk in a smug and pretentious voice, as if I do know it all. I even opted to wear glasses instead of contacts because I thought glasses would amplify my highbrow persona. Thus, I have become what everyone thinks I am, a prodigy.
For all the regular people with average intelligence, I would like to apologize for making you look inferior. But, since my mother gave birth to me, my father has always craved a reason to boast about his son. My cousin had an astounding singing voice that my uncle would gloat about for hours. My envious father found no vocal or athletic talent in me; he almost accepted me as average when my kindergarten counselor had me take an Advance Program test and I scored in the top four percentiles. Now, my father brags about his genius son, with his high SAT score at age fifteen, his all A report card, and his thirty academic awards. I feel sometimes that I have not lived up to my father's image of me, but I must continue this illusion that I am some sort of genius. So, I enrolled in a nationally distinguished high school and have tried for the last three years to impress my doting father with academic accolades.
My parents did not put all of this anxiety on me alone. Society placed a great deal of pressure on this generation of teens. I know many of my peers feel overwhelmed by their expectations. Today's world requires everyone to be educated. Politicians habitually clash over the best way to improve education. College admissions have become highly competitive; the statistics from the College Board shows Ivy League schools like Harvard University only accepts 12% of the students who applied there, and approximately 30,000 high school seniors applied.
The title of genius has become more hallowed than before. In the 1980's, genius meant geek, nerd, Steve Urkel. Now, genius means Bill Gates and money. Naturally, I enjoyed when people called me an Einstein. So I carried on this façade by studying for tests four days ahead of time, by typing compositions over until they reached perfection, and by researching until I found the answer to a question. This reputation as a genius, I realized later, gained me nothing internally. I alienated people and made myself antisocial. I had no stable friendship and even those who tolerated me thought of me as a nuisance. When PSAT scores arrived, I became so irate that someone else's score was higher than mine that I forgot my score probably qualified me for the National Merit Scholarships. I berated myself for receiving a B+ in Advanced Placement Computer Science until it dawned that some people, like my friend Cynthia, cannot even turn on a computer without slapping it.
So, recognizing how much of pompous jerk I became, I lightened up. Out of character, I became the manager of the girls' basketball team my freshman year, but that is a different story. Today, I try to balance my intellectual side with my personal side. Sometimes, not wanting to sound condescending, I would say something irrelevant and quirky. I would rather people think of me as an amiable eccentric than an arrogant show-off.
In the classic movie The Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow desperately wanted a brain, even though, he had no guarantee the Wizard would give him an exceptional brain. The Wizard might give him a retarded brain and the poor Scarecrow would have gone on thinking he was smarter than a flying monkey. Still, the Scarecrow did realize he lacked something most people, like me, take for granted. I empathize with the Scarecrow, afraid that I will not fit other peoples’ judgement of aptitude. But, I have learned the only person my intelligence can truly satisfy is myself, so I have begun to live without pressures or contention, and I think I have finally begun to enjoy life for the first time. Humanity can recognize me as a genius or a predestined Nobel Laureate if it wishes to, but I would like it to know me first personally rather than intellectually.