Graduation 2

Here is a pic I mentioned putting up.
I could've done my hair better.

Over the past couple of years I have increasingly regretted not making more of my "college experience." This mostly involves the part where you meet lots of people and have a plentiful social experience. I'm hoping I can make up for it a little in med school.

Newport aquarium

Time to post more IJ videos. Today we went to Newport to see the aquarium. Although it was crowded and a lot of things took a lot longer than I'm used to them taking after being accustomed to Dad's way of doing things- it was a nice relaxing trip. I think in part because Dad wasn't there to freak out about how slow and crowded everything was. Hah.

I was inspired by some of the freshwater displays to revitalize my fish tank. Thinking about trading in my Office fish for a collection of Rio Negro fish, which I know I can find in the pet store. I know Mom had a lot of these fish, was she going for that theme on purpose?


Who knew angel fish could get so HUGE? I don't recall Mom's ever getting bigger than an inch or two. You can use the tetras as a reference of the scale.


I think I could just sit in those water tunnels all day, watching the fish go by. IJ could have, too. The people and noise bothered him from time to time, but otherwise, I think he had a nice trip.

He's now been to four states, in just four months! KY, TN, IN, OH. Going to be a well-traveled kid by the time he can talk. In a couple of weeks, he will be driving through OH again, then PA, then NJ. Then he will take his first plane trip...with Dad of all people, just the two of them! Jeff hasn't even been on a plane before- it's pretty sad his four-month old son will beat him to it.

Summer has officially started, and other than for some budget stresses, I have the next 4 weeks to be practically stress free. And plenty of blogs should be to come too- we're probably moving in around a month to a fantastic new house- which is going to be super fun, I'll have Atlantic City to blog about, graduation + photos, Julia's wedding, my new lifeguard management job will be starting, and I can post new videos of IJ who will be starting solids in the next few weeks and will probably get down rolling over soon.

Also, btw, IJ is officially ticklish. Don't tell Darren! I tried to get him to laugh on video but I couldn't get it, though here is a video I took anyway.

Graduating

I'm a little bummed about it. Graduating from college is the first step to getting old. Though it involves many good things, such as:

- people finally start respecting you more in terms of maturity and intelligence
- insurance companies respect you more
- people shouldn't consider you being married and a mom to be so weird
- finally get to learn about human science in med school

But of course,

- you can't get away with being immature for the heck of it
- I'll be joining the crowd of those who say, "oh, undergrad..."
- no going back.

So, graduation. We'll post a photo or two later.

I'm getting a bachelor of science in Chemistry with a concentration in Biochemistry. I'll have 128 hours, a ~3.995 (think I should be able to escape the minus this semester), and a collection of honor cords. I will not have an honors scholars medal or summa cum laude honor cords thanks to my thesis dedication falling through. I will have AED honor cords, PhiDE honor cords, Golden Key honor cords, and magna cum laude cords.

I'm going to make myself look good going out. It will be a real dramatic contrast to my HS grad photo, which is awful. I still had no idea how to do my hair at the time and wasn't into make up yet. It will really show how much I've grown up over the past 4 years, even if only on the outside.

Another quick note on growing up and taking responsibility- It's time for us to plan our 09-10 budget, a budget that will have implications on our finances for at least 20 years. Looking on the brightside though, as soon as it's over with we can officially start househunting. I couldn't think of a poll idea- I'm going to make one based off of that thought.

crazy nursing student

http://pageonekentucky.com/2009/03/12/explosive-problem-for-the-university-of-louisville-nursing-student-expelled-for-myspace-blog/

Gosh the people who blog and comment on pages like the one above are well-read.

Anyways, I suppose for the most part I just want to acknowledge the existence of the lawsuit against UofL for expelling a student for her myspace postings.

This nursing student would probably be torn apart by a good psychiatrist or psychologist. She clearly gets a rise out of preaching the controversial and extreme, it's completely juvenile. I read her most recent blog post on the pdf file attached to the article above. Talk about a sour, clueless girl. Why the hell is she in nursing school.

One comment I saw mentioned UofL was probably afraid this chick would go Va Tech on campus. That is totally understandable, considering the attitudes she expressed on her blog. I found her fb page and saw some of her pics, she's a euro-goth nerdy chick, all into snakes and rats and crap. But the thing is she has this sweet face. A face that you could totally see in nursing.

UofL totally screwed up. This chick is a b* for trying to get bank off of our public university, with all of the budget crap going on. Yeah, they probably should reinstate her. However, are universities really not allowed to kick students out based on the moral opinion of the school's mission statement? If it was a private university, would there be a problem? This isn't a discrimination issue, after all, and its not like she was arrested or fined for practicing free speech. After all, universities may tolerate free speech, such as KKK people coming onto campus to promote themselves, but that doesn't come without plenty of cops to monitor the situation. If they had the option to have a cop escort her around campus, maybe they'd feel more comfortable about reenrolling her after becoming aware of her extremist opinions.


UofL didn't have to expel Yoder, of course. By posting her crazy opinions on myspace, she was making a huge risk, the posts were public, for crying out loud. Once the school faculty read the posts, there went her potential LOR writers. And now that the media knows about her case, how hard will it be for every potential employer she may have had to realize they definitely don't want this woman as their nurse. After all, who says employers can't deny hire because of moral opinion. And even if she did get hired somewhere, how long would it be before one of her patients were like "her name sounds familiar..." There's no point in her trying to finish her degree now. She seems to like blogging, and having a publicized name definitely could help her if she wanted to go into writing. She doesn't need UofL to do that, I hope her case gets dropped.

Twitter

Because the media and SNL have highlighted Twitter like it's the best new thing that everyone is doing, I made an account. I wasn't sure what it was. Now I see it is just a social page dedicated to status updates. I think the idea of constantly updating my status could be kind of fun....but I'm pretty sure I don't know anyone on there. I checked for Jenn, Darren, and Chris but I couldn't think beyond that who I might know on there. I looked for people I thought would be old enough or internet-savvy enough to use it (;D). For now, I'm following:

"iJustine" Some chick with youtube videos that popped up in relation to IJ's baby videos
Shaq
Bruce Moore, my realtor
The Onion
and Seth Rogen.

I got server overload pages a couple times. Twitter may fall apart as fast as its come about.

IJ videos

So we have taken a handful of videos with IJ. Not a lot but maybe half a dozen since the hospital videos. The videos from the camcorder are in a format that I haven't figured out how to upload them to FB or youtube. I can only open the videos in a special program that came with it, and every video has like 3 files.... it's strange.

However, I took a couple videos with my simple camera over the past few weeks. I'll probably use it more until Jeff researches a way to convert the camcorder videos.

IJ cooing and getting excited with his dangly toys.

IJ palming his feet, getting excited about his balloon.

Spring BREAK!

Just to make a blog- some updates!



1. First and foremost! IJ baby:
I'm getting behind on taking photos! I hadn't taken any over the past few weeks but I took a few today. There are also videos, but I've been slow to getting them organized, in part because I've had some issues with copying them onto the computer. It's on my to-do list. Once I get them on here though, I'll post the good ones on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/user/jalviek We went to the doctor for IJ's 2 month checkup last Wednesday and he weighs 15 lb 1 oz and that puts him beyond the 95th percentile! He is a little chub chub. He is 24 and a quarter inches long which is 75 - 90 percentile. He is precious, and has so much personality. He loves to make faces, smile, and stick out his tongue. He soaks up everything wherever he is and is not shy at all or uncomfortable with strangers. He was an angel at his christening, which was no surprise because he had plenty of new things and people to look at. He is on a great schedule, going to bed between 9 and 10, waking up to eat around 4, then waking up for good between 8 and 9. His hunger and napping patterns are predictable, and he'll play with toys or do tummy time around 1-2 hours a day.



2. Spring Break plans
The only place we plan to go is to Madisonville to ride dirt bikes this Sunday and Monday. IJ will be coming with us, which will be interesting. I'm a little hesitant about it, but we don't have any other options if we want to go. They'll be a lot of things to bring, including a mosquito net we have for his carrier...better buy baby sunscreen too...
Otherwise, I've made myself a huge to-do list of all of the little things and projects that I think about doing every now and then. These include fixing up the outside of our house, largely for the purpose of making it more attractive to potential buyers this summer. I'm trying to get dad's confidence up for selling it. The biggest part of the cleaning up will be washing down the side paneling, which will make a huge difference. Indoors I'd like to do the "nit-picky" cleaning I usually don't worry about like window cleaning and dusting. Then I'd like to do some junk sorting and organizing. I guess you could say I'm in the mood for Spring cleaning and I hope the weather is up to my ambitions :). Schoolwise, I would like to read a few chapters of Biochem.



3. School and Med school
I officially pleaded senioritis as of a few weeks ago. However, I've also been feeling sick of being #5 in my Chem classes. With this feeling, I managed to do some of the best test studying I've done in a while for a test I had in Bio-Organic last week. It was lucky I was able to do it because IJ's temperment and napping allowed it. So I tied three people for second instead :-/. It's a start I suppose. I realize a part of my problem with studying this semester is an inability to sit down for blocks longer than an hour and a half, during a time of the day I can focus on something like reading Biochem.

I've been waitlisted at Columbia and Vandy med schools.
I'm pretty honored that Columbia even did that. The letter even makes it sound like I'm way up on the list too, which is crazy. They could definitely say that to everyone, though. I'm not surprised because I thought my interview went bad (it didn't, although it was strange), I'm surprised because they just didn't seem like they would want somebody unless they were going to be famous someday. I accepted my waitlist position. When I interviewed, the med student that gave the school tour told us that everyone who got in started out on the waitlist. He said he talked the school into accepting him by telling them how serious he was about going there, and recommended to all of us interviewees to do the same in that situation. I'm thinking I got waitlisted at Vandy at least in part because of my late application completion and interview.

I've been saying for a while that I think I should stick to the best financial situation, mostly in the hopes of getting a full ride somewhere. Vandy said they would tell me what my financial package would be once a FAFSA gets filed (which I plan to do during the break). I looked up financial aid at Columbia and feel very different about their 62K/year tuition+living cost, after reading about their deal with loans and scholarships. It turns out that all students have to take a set amount of loans (27K this year), then the rest of the cost is made up by what the student+parents should be able to pay (based on FAFSA), and scholarships/grants. This is totally reasonable. At UofL I expect to have to take out around 20-25K a year.

So WashU is the only school I still haven't heard from. I really enjoyed my stay there, but am not surprised I haven't heard back after the way the interview went (I was stiff and nervous for that one). They said they review applicants in no particular order, so I may still be wrong. I know from Student Doc that people have been getting in already. I wish the schools that I'm obviously not getting into would just deny me already. Northwestern and Penn's status pages act like my application is still sitting around just in case everyone they accept deny them or something.

I need to go ahead and tell UK soon that I won't be considering them. I actually feel kind of bad, they were really nice people and were very welcoming...


4. Lastly, BBall
Totally watched all six overtimes of the Syracuse-UConn game last night. Had to stay up to do homework anyway. I think Jenn and Darren are super lucky to be going to NY tomorrow, but hope they found some reasonably priced tickets. Syracuse just started overtime with WV, and I'm not up for waiting to see who wins... probably do not want to play the superhuman Syracuse tomorrow though.

I really hope we get to be somewhere in the NCAA that we can GO!!! Who needs school when UofL could get their first title of my lifetime?!