I'm pretty excited for some reason. Today was like a day of opportunities and for the most part, I took most of them.

I went to class today. It felt good because I hadn't been in awhile. I went to the library, caught up with my co-worker and friend from Hollister Co. Dan and we talked for awhile and that was good fun. I went to meet up with my career counselor Lisa and she definitely helped me out with choosing a career. I think I'm beginning to definitely lean more towards a degree in Human Nutrition and Food Science. I took this thing called the Strong Interest Inventory Profile with College Profile test and we discussed my results. It was interesting to say the least.

What it basically is, is a test to determine what your interests are and hopefully it'll help you make a decision about what you want to major in, with respect to your interests. It helps you determine what you'd be good at and what you'd like. There are six themes under which occupations are placed under. It's in a hexagon and the themes that are next to each other share similar aspects. There's Investigative, Social, Artistic, Enterprising, Conventional, and Realistic. The top three for me were Investigative, Social, and Artistic. My top five interest areas were Medical Science, Healthcare Services, Politics & Public Speaking, Counseling & Helping, and Performing Arts. Needless to say, I was very happy to see that Medical Science and Healthcare were at the top of my list; it just confirms what I've always believed that I want to someday have a place in the healthcare field. My top ten strong occupations were Speech Pathologist, Top Executive, Phsician, Operations Manager, Attorney, Broadcast Journalist, Dietitian, Registered Nurse, Elementary School Teacher, and Law Enforcement Officer.

Needless to say, I was once again happy to see that Physician was definitely in my top 3 strong occupations. I was surprised about Journalism and Attorney but anyways, they are topics of interest for me.

Today I also went to Methodist Hospital and went to visit my old volunteer coordinator Gloria. It was nice seeing her again and it made me realize just how much I missed being in the hospital volunteering. I don't know what it was about the hospital that I missed, maybe the smell, maybe the thought and ability to go anywhere in the hospital and having that kind of access but I just definitely missed it. Gloria got a call from the position of Summer Extern that I wanted at M.D. Anderson and she gave me a good recommendation so I'm excited! She also gave me another volunteer application so I might be able to volunteer on Fridays from 8:00 AM - 2:00 PM where I get to go around to patients' rooms and gather information from their charts. It may not be much and I probably won't get paid for what I do, but it'll be a good experience and it'll put me back in the hospital setting so I'm excited!

I want some research positions, some experience in the hospital. I'm kind of jealous of the pre-medical students because they get to do preceptorships at the hospital and they have all this experience. I just want to do the same thing. But I guess that since I'm not being handed these opportunities, I just have to look for them myself.

I'm going crazy. YES I AM.

Great. In a couple of hours I have my second chemistry test. I'm trying to be positive, like, I CAN DO IT! But the amount of information is just enormous. Not to mention the fact that I had all this time to study and I still didn't utilize my time well. It makes me angry when I do that, when I know that I could've done something more to study for a test or something like that. But what can I say, it's my own fault.

And yet, I still don't know how to fix it and it's so irritating.

My doggy is sitting in front o me and she's just dozing off and sleeping away. I miss summers like that when I didn't care about anything else except how many hours of the day I wasted sleeping. Why can't summer just be like that?!

I'm doing the bare minimum in school. I'm getting grades just to pass. And I know I could do better but at the same time, I just don't want to.

I hate this feeling and this sense of failure that I have. I just want to do well and succeed. And it seems so much easier for people like my cousin, like the pre-medical students, but it just seems so damn hard for me and I don't know why. No matter how hard I bust my ass to try to learn something or try to understand something, I still manage to not know how to do it when the time comes to take the test.

It's so frustrating knowing that you could possibly do better but you just don't know how to do it.

So today is a rainy rainy day. My teacher made it optional for us to go to class but I'm really tired and sleepy so I feel like it'll be best if I didn't go to class today. Plus, I really need to study for my test tomorrow over four chapters.

I think it's really come down to me to decide whether or not I want to pursue a degree in Biology or switch to Human Nutrition and Food Sciences. I don't really know what else to do with my major or what else to major in for that fact. I just know that whatever I do, I want to go to medical school. I want to go to medical school. I have a couple of schools in mind but I really don't know how I'm going to get there.

I need dedication, devotion. I need to study. I need to want to go to school. I need some kind of motivation.

And sometimes I just don't feel like I know where to go to find that kind of inspiration.

So, to help me figure that out, I need to put out some goals for me to follow, some guidelines so to speak because otherwise, I really have no other kind of restriction stopping me.

GOALS
01. Get better grades in Chemistry I and Chemistry II
02. Go to class every single day
03. Do well on the last 2 tests and the final exam
04. Study more efficiently
05. Learn how to manage time

That's all I can really think of. I'm having a brain fart right now. Ack. Time to study.

It's amazing how one person can change in the span of one year. It's really not that long of a time period if you think about it. In fact, it's quite fast. I just deleted a whole bunch of entries that I wrote in this blogdrive exactly a year ago. I had just gotten my first job at Hollister Co. and I thought I was the coolest person to walk this planet. I was so childish, so bored out of my mind, so excited about going to college and being in the college arena.

It's amazing how fast time flies.

In that time period, I have experienced so much more than I have ever experienced within my four years at DeBakey. Of course, you experience things differently than when you are in highschool and yes, you are a different person when you are in high school. For me, graduating from DeBakey, going to UH, was a chance for me to clean the slate and start up where I had previously failed to perform well. I didn't exactly accomplish that goal to say the least. I was blindsighted by college life and what it had to offer me. I think it was for the first time a place where it wasn't just about school. It was about having fun also. I didn't have anyone there to regulate the hallways and tell me to get to class or I'd be "tardy". I had classes that didn't even take attendance.

Needless to say, I definitely abused this privilege.

But, in the process of doing so poorly at school, I did meet new people. My sorority, alpha Kappa Delta Phi, the sorority I rushed for, was one of those eye-opening experiences to sisterhood and friendship in the way that I have never seen it before. I have never had something happen to me and have 20 something girls come up to me and ask me if I was okay or if I needed anything. It was quite amazing to realize that you had all these people around you on whom you could depend on. My pledge brothers, from Lambda Phi Epsilon, the brothers in the fraternity, my pledge sisters. You learn so much from them in such a short period of time. It's amazing how you can throw six random girls together and turn them into sisters. It really is a beautiful thing.

I also matured a lot. Many of the petty little things that I thought were cool or were things that "big people" did and whatnot, didn't turn out to be so great after all. The party scene, for example, is fun for the first few times you go. After awhile, it gets old and dies out, that is if you go too many times in a weekend or in a row! Don't think I don't have fun at parties, I certainly do. But sometimes I do miss the occasional sitting at home, doing nothing, watching the television and sitting in front of a good sad movie eating a pint of ice cream. Drinking, is fun when you're not throwing up and stumbling all over yourself. Being the lightweight that I am, it's safe to say that I can't drink that much. I like to drink, I don't like turning red and I don't feel the need to drink to have fun. I can act wild and crazy and hell, I can act drunk to have fun.

But for the most part, I think I can honestly say that what really changed me the most was being surrounded by death. My pledge brother, Jack, died from alcohol poisoning (one of the major reasons why I try not to get drunk or trashed or let Henry do the same either). It was incredibly heartbreaking to see my pledge brothers suffer from what happened and be completely and utterly helpless to do anything about it. I remember Jack when him and his pledge brothers came down from Austin to visit Houston during Asian-American Festival. He had the prettiest eyelashes I had ever seen and he sang "My Girl" to me. It's something that I will never ever forget. And his death definitely magnified the true extent of human mortality.

After that, my grandfather, Lolo Fred, passed away. That was probably the biggest wake up call for me because it didn't affect just me. It affected my entire family. My mother, who is known for not showing any kind of real emotion, cried her heart out and I didn't know what to do. She was so vulnerable when she was supposed to be the strongest one out of all of us. My cousins were a mess, my sister was a disaster, and out of all it, I felt like I had to be the one that was the strong one. But even I couldn't carry that out. It was so hard being strong when everyone around you had fallen apart. Not to mention the fact that it was so unexpected and the weeks we had to grieve were few. I always remember when Lolo Fred said he'd come back for my graduation from college and now he's never going to get to physically see that. I know he'll be watching from up above but I wanted him to be there, physically, so he could hug me and tell me that he was proud of me and that I wasn't a family failure.

Life has been very different. I have fun, I have my days out. But sometimes, in the back of my head, I still have this nagging feeling that I could do so much more, I just choose not to do so. So, this will be the beginning of something new, something different. And we'll see where it goes from here.