First things first, Happy Birthday Dawnie!!

Yesterday we celebrated Dawn's birthday at Prego and it was hella expensive. Super fun, but expensive for sure! I loved spending time with my old friends and seeing old people and it was a lot of fun eating cake with them and just having fun!

Also, I saw the movie Click yesterday featuring Adam Sandler and Kate Beckinsale. I thought it was a really good movie! And Henry decided that our "song" would be "Linger" by The Cranberries. It was a good movie. It basically told you not to fast forward through life and to live it with everything that you got. Adam Sandler played this guy named Michael and basically he was this big-shot architect who let his job get in the way of his family. He basically got to learn that it wasn't the job that mattered but family. And I really liked the movie!

Also yesterday, I finally got to see Henry after his whole week away at Austin. I made an agreement with him not to see him throughout the week but at least get Friday's with him. Excited because I really feel like it's going to help me study more and get my priorities in the right direction.

I have to go to school to study and study and study some more. It's really crazy the amount of studying that I'm doing but it's all in the name of doing well in school and to do well in my future. I am absolutely unsure of what I want to do anymore in terms of major. Pre-medicine? Pre-law? Pre-business? Not sure anymore.

Sometimes I just want someone to decide for me so I don't have to make the decision and I don't have to go through the trouble of trying to figure out what the "right thing to do" is and whatnot.

Make the decision for me. I'll do the work to achieve that decision.

Today they found what seems to be the bodies of Chrisalee Aparece and Huy Ngo. It just shows the true extent of human mortality and how just fucked up some people in this world can be. It just makes me so upset to see how someone so innocent, so young, have their life taken away from them. People do not deserve that. People who do things like this to other people do not deserve the freedoms given to them by God. I know it sounds angry and whatnot but I can only imagine what it must be like to lose a sister, a daughter, a cousin, a best friend, a friend. I've gone through the loss of my own grandfather and my pledge brother and that was already hard. How do you go through life with all this shit thrown at you?

I know that if I lost my sister, my younger sister, I would be completely devastated. I wouldn't know what to do. All my life I've spent protecting my little sister from all the assholes in the world. From the first boyfriend to the first time in high school, I've always tried to look out for her. But what will I do when she wants to go out at 1:00 AM and I'm not there to protect her? It's so scary, the thought of losing someone you love. But that is life. You deal with it right?

I guess so. If that's the way you want to look at it. If I grieve, I grieve for a very very long time.

There's really nothing more I can do besides pray. And pray. And pray some more.
Pray for understanding.
Pray for hope.
Pray for the ability to forgive.
Pray for the ability to move on.

Pray for the souls of Chrisalee Aparece and Huy Ngo.

As crazy as life will eventually be for me, I have to admit, life is beautiful. I have all these opportunities to do so much more with my life than what I have been doing and that really gives me some sort of motivation. I'm buckling down when I should've been doing that all along. I'm seeing less and less of Henry, which helps because it makes me focus on school rather than being and hanging out with Henry. It's like, I go Sunday through Thursday without seeing Henry, studying and focusing on school and then on Friday and Saturday I get to spend my time wtih him and that really makes up for everything. It's like the reward for studying hard all week long! Anyways, here's my schedule for the rest of Summer 2006 and Fall 2006.

Summer 2006

I think that it is utterly amazing how I can sit here for hours on end in front of my laptop just planning my future out like it's a little spreadsheet and I just fill in the blanks. This is definitely obsessive-compulsive. It's got to be: making lists of things I have to do, of things I want to accomplish, of my "academic plan", it's completely nuts.

In essence, it's a good idea. But will I actually act on it? Who knows?

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.