Animating Inanimate Objects

I haven't watched SNL much in the past few years, but I did watch it a few weeks ago when Christopher Walken was on and I was home being awesome on a Saturday night. Anyway, this skit came up and I can't stop laughing every time I watch it.. just thought I'd share the joy.




Along this theme, my sister just sent me a sheet of stickers of cartoony eyes and mouths that are meant to be put on to your various inanimate objects. I might become this man.

Also, for the curious - and those my father has somehow restrained himself from informing - I'll be at Yale in the Fall to attempt to get my PhD in Neuroscience and will probably be there until I'm 30 (if I'm lucky...) That's actually kind of frightening, let's not talk about that. The age part that is, although grad school is also slightly nerve-wracking.

The Best Problems

So in the three (!) months since I last posted, I've been flying all over the place doing interviews. I ended up getting interviews at all the schools I applied to but for one (Stanford, alas,) but I turned down two (UCSF and UCSD) which eliminated all of my California schools in one fell swoop. Too bad I had no options in CA at the end of all that. It's not that i particularly had anything against the region, that's just the way the cookie crumbled.

Anyway, that left me with 7 interviews (which is still way more than any one person should really go to, who knew that people really only apply to like 5 or 6 graduate schools?) which meant I didn't have a single full week of work from Jan 21st - Mar 10th. But it is rather nice to have all these expenses covered trips. Except at schools where they reimbursed you instead of paying upfront, I ended up spending something like $10-20 a trip since they paid for all your food and travel etc. But I am glad to be done with it all, despite being a bit of a change of pace from work, interviewing is exhausting!

The good news is that I've gotten acceptances at all of my schools but for one (waitlist) so now the hard part is here - I have to decide where to go! I won't go into details too much on my thinking as I have been assured by people at various schools, that people from schools actually do kind of dig around on their applicants' facebook profiles and that sort of thing. So I've got alot of thinking to do, but really, too many choices is probably the best problem to have!

So that's basically been the story of my life of late. Other goings-on include a nice time in NY during Xmas and New Years. Being back in New York these days reminds me of how much I want to get back there at some point in my life (hopefully sooner than later). It took living in a different city (no offense, Boston, you have your own charms, but you don't hold a candle..) to realize how much I took New York for granted! Well, one day. And I got a Nintendo DS from my sister, which has been plenty of fun. The reintroduction of video games into my life might be dangerous.

good things

So for the first time in a long time, it feels, we've finally got a good snow storm. Last year Boston maybe had two significant storms, one of which was mostly icy which is zero fun, and the other which was kind of wet and no fun as well. Today, however, has brought about 8 inches of fluffy, white, excellent snow. And although it sucks digging out your car in a city (where do you put all the snow?? not allowed to put it in the street or on the sidewalk, what else is there?) and I'm sure I'll be sore from all that digging, I really love snow. It's not that cold and it's still that time when the plows haven't really started coming through so everything's beautiful (doesn't hurt that I got to leave work at noon today either). Most of the Californians/people from warmer climates that I know seem to detest winters in the northeast, and I have to agree that wintry mix is craptastic, but it makes me sad to think I may have to leave these sort of scenes behind for at least 5 years for graduate school.

On that note, I could be coming to a town near you in less than a year! applications are in full swing, although after this weekend they will die down. The list is scattered across the country:

• East: Yale and Columbia
• West: UCSD, Stanford, UCSF, University of Washington - Seattle
• Midwest: Northwestern, University of Michigan
• South (i know, i wouldnt have guessed it either): Vanderbilt and UT Southwestern
  

And everyone asks me what my top choice is, but to be honest I'm not sure. I guess I'll wait til I actually get interviews to start playing favorites.

Speaking of interviews, I just got an email today from one of my schools (Washington) inviting me to their interview weekend! Totally caught me off-guard, I had no idea they would notify me so soon. woohoo, I may actually make it into graduate school after all.

test

sorry about the absence. There seemed to have been something wrong with the server for a while so I did actually write some posts but couldnt upload them. And now that I look at them I dont think I like them anyway, so all the better.

Hello again.

Superficial

Now that I've finally liberated myself from the devil (i.e ETS), I need to finally figure out where I'm applying to. I've got about 6 schools I'm pretty sure about (all the well known programs: Yale, Columbia, Stanford, UCSD, UCSF etc.) but I'm still hammering out a list. The weird thing is that I realized that i'm subconsciously judging these schools by how nice their campuses look. It's completely superficial and silly, but I guess if I'm going to be stuck somewhere for 5-6 years (who's looking forward to being 30 by the time they get out of school? yeeeehaw) i want to be somewhere pleasant. And if I'm going to be stuck in a lab for most of those years, I want it to be in a nice building with a view (unless i'm in a basement, always a possibility). Is it so much to ask?

Ouch

Yankees.

You're killing me. Aggggh. My hippocampus does not thank you for the extra stress and my heart does not appreciate it either.

I will forgive you if you manage to make it past the ALDS. I cannot take another off-season knowing that you pooped out in the first round again.

(real posts to resume, i hope.)

Good things

A small update to say...

the research that came out of my thesis at Amherst finally got published! Yee haw. I'm officially a published author. It'll be in Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior which isn't exactly a high impact journal, but I'm not complaining.

I'll link to it when it goes up online, which might not be for a while since it just got accepted.

Yay!

In other happy news, I'll be going to Cancun this Saturday. Please please let the weather be good. I'm going to be really depressed if my one big vacation turns into a total bust.