Year-end Epiphany

Maybe I've phrased the question I've been asking myself lately wrong.....Maybe instead of asking myself what I want to do with my life, the better question would be to ask what I have the courage to do with my life.......the whole dilemma between an MDiv and a PhD may really just rest on what I have the courage to pursue.

The prospect for both these options are arguably equally bleak. On the one hand, with the PhD, I'd have to find a supervisor, I'd have to think of a project that I even remotely care about, and then even after getting the degree, there's the issue of post-doc and what to do after. On the other hand, with the MDiv, there's the issue of where I'm going to procure the money for that, where to do my vicarage, whether I care enough to stay Lutheran, which church to go to after.......

But it's the MDiv option that I don't know if i have the courage to pursue. Can I bear the disappointment of all those (which includes myself) who think I'll be wasting my potential in academia? Can I bear the ridicule of all those who think I won't be able to do a good job? (It's not like we have a great example to look towards) Can I bear the scorn of all those who think I'm ignoring my duty to provide for my future family and putting my future children at a disadvantage by choosing a path that is not financially stable? Will doing an MDiv be truly worth standing up to all of this?

And yet, doing a PhD seems to be the more logical option. I mean, even if i absolutely detest it, switching to an MDiv afterwards is so much easier than switching from an MDiv to a PhD, especially one in science......and i just have this gut feeling that if I don't do my PhD now, I'll never get around to doing it.....

I suppose I can do both, but I also don't want to die in the process........three terms of excessive work, with the four and final one starting in 3 days, has made me learn the hard way to stay away from insane workloads whenever possible...............

Damage Assessment

So, after a week of actively denying anything wrong with my life, it's finally time to sit down and see what sort of hell three cumulative terms of BCIT have wrecked........

Preliminary Assessment: Beyond Repair

The first thing that I've come to realize was just how tightly I've wound myself. Went back to DT the other day, and asides from the rather amusing comment from Mr. Wang about how I have to get a PhD from Harvard or I risk losing Jennifer to *insert Mr. Wang accent* "another boy", conversations with Ms. Denchfield and Miss Eisner was rather intriguing. I was telling them how I plan to find a co-op placement before term started again but wasn't having much luck, and their common response was not to worry about it and just take a break......if only it was that easy......

The other odd thing is that for some reason, the first part of 21 Guns just wouldn't get out of my head, and yet, oddly enough it's true......I feel like I'm in ruins, and even all the Sunday school answers I have in my head, that I can tell myself over and over again, just doesn't answer anything......it feels like I've lost so much this term.....if you only peel off that thin layer on the surface - the grades, the days in school, the weekends at church - there's nothing left underneath.....hopes and ambitions, love and happiness, meaning and purpose.......it's all been devoured, and the only thing left to do is either to rebuild it, or to layer on more disguises to hide the true emptiness.........the latter seems like the easier option.....

and you would think, at a time like this, church would be the place to turn to......but something seems to have happened, a turn for the worse i would say......maybe it's just me, but fellowship these days just feels like a group project gone horribly wrong......it's like some unending nightmare, where to every person you turn to there is always some church work to talk about.....since everyone is entitled to their opinions, I too will risk eternal damnation and voice mine......maybe, just maybe, in our haste to perform, in our haste to be effective and in our haste to make something of this church, we have forgotten what it means to be a family in Christ, or rather, more accurately, we never knew it or never bothered to show it in the first place, and so now we just find ourselves struggling to keep our balance on our shaky foundation as we try to reach out.........but anyways, i'll shut up now.........church is good, doo dee doo~~~~~~


Final Assessment: Utterly Hopeless

Recommended Course of Action: Resistance is futile. Just dig a hole, brace yourself for term 4, and prepare to be thoroughly screwed over. With any luck you just might crawl out the other end with a missing limb or two, no promises though......

And the old man wanted a story.....

As we were lounging around the hall, banging our heads on every possible locker praying that we would be released from Rob's egg-crushing grip, Keith walks out of the office, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

Not letting the opportunity slide, we quickly bombarded him with questions about our up-coming plants report. What exactly does he want?

"A story," says the old man. "A story from beginning to end."

So I saw a need to rethink how my spruce report should go. Obviously the traditional lab report, with introduction, methods, results, and discussion, just simply was not much of a narrative. I am now contemplating writing a novel, with the spruce embryo as the protagonist. The story will detail the different struggles the spruce seed matures, from the abandonment of childhood innocence, to the trauma of teenage angst, to the development of adult sophistication. What a drama it will be!

~

It was 8:30am on a Thursday morning. Connie rubbed her eyes as she tried to recall the past few days of her existance. It was all a blur. She faintly recalled coming to consciousness surrounded by other embryo seeds, only to be ruthlessly submerged into some foul liquid reeking of chlorine.

She looked around. Her fellow spruce seeds were still laying unconscious in the confines of a microfuge tube. What shall happen to me, she wonders. Afterall, Connie has never been a spruce seed before, and have no idea what to expect.

Suddenly, a bright light shone on her and she felt herself lifted gently into the light. All of sudden she was surrounded by figures too large to fully perceive, yet the outside world was such a blur!

~

OK......i should stop.......A proper lab report awaits to be written........If for some reason an extra six hours budded off each day of this week then I shall complete this narrative and attach it as an appendix for Keith.........In the meantime, back to spruce somatic embryogenesis.....embryo suspensor mass initiation and maturation.......joy........

Two weeks to go, Half a life left

Something just seems terribly wrong with this term.......for the longest time, it felt like term never really started, and then before you know it, it's slamming to an end........just Friday we were commenting how it feels like it should be the middle of October

But the fact that term is about to end has finally settled in, with a mild sense of panic hanging in the air.......not a panic about grades, but more a panic of whether 24 hours a day is actually going to be enough during the last week of classes

Nov 30 (Mon)
- Chem Lab Report

Dec 1 (Tues)
- Chem Assignment
- Ethics Final

Dec 2 (Wed)
- Biochem Lab Assignment x 2
- Pharma Final

Dec 3 (Thurs)
- maybe, just maybe.......crossing my fingers.....there won't be classes.....PLEEEEEEASE.....

Dec 4 (Fri)
- Process Formal Lab Report
- Plants Formal Group Lab Report x 4
- Plants Final

Dec 7 (Mon)
- Biochem Final

Dec 8 (Tues)
- Chem Final

Dec 9 (Wed)
- Process Final

Dec 10 (Thurs)
- Genetics Final

But on brighter news, Starfield concert this Saturday!!! (I'm excited coz I missed their last one =P)......AND!! I bought myself a 64GB iTouch!!!! =P.......yes, it's my Christmas and birthday present for myself..........although it was quite expensive......=__="...........very expensive actually......i'm still rather appalled by the amount of money i threw into that thing.........

Biotechnology is Great!

Our ethics prof is going to be away on the 27th, so she asked us to keep track of Halloween stories to tell her. My story idea was simple. The classroom would be deathly empty on the 3rd, because we all died on the night of the 29th due to a Rob overload.

On a brighter note, Keith spent the morning talking about how we were having trouble advertising and recruiting people into the program. Apparently our reputation as a program is that it's near impossible to get in and that there is a ridiculous crap-load of work.......well, i wonder why?..............Keith did mention that when we do happen to blog about the program we should refrain from complaining and shine a better light on it, so I shall do my part

*looks down at the list for the next two weeks*

This will be a breeze!~~~~insane amount of work? Unheard of and a totally foreign concept!

*downs a bottle of ethidium bromide*

~

Next two week at a glance:

Monday Oct 26
- Chem Lab
- Chem Lab Report x2

Tuesday Oct 27
- Biochem Midterm
- Ethics Quiz

Wednesday Oct 28
- Biochem Lab w/ Genetics Lab Part 1
- Biochem Formal Lab Report
- English Bible Study

Thursday Oct 29
- Plants Lab w/ Genetics Lab Part 2
- Genetics Lab Part 3

Friday Oct 30
- Pharma Midterm
- Process Lab
- Process Formal Lab Report w/ Process Assignment #3
- TCF Bible Study

Saturday Oct 31
- S-club pumpkin carving w/ Halloween Party and Trick-or-treat

Sunday Nov 1
- Teaching Sunday School
- Evening Service Meeting

Monday Nov 2
- Chem Lab
- Chem Lab Report
- Dentist Appointment

Tuesday Nov 3
- Plants Midterm
- Ethics Group Assignment #2

Wednesday Nov 4
- Biochem Lab
- Award Ceremoney?

Thursday Nov 5
- Plants Lab
- Genetics Lab

Friday Nov 6
- Process Midterm
- Process Lab

I have an eerie feeling I forgot something on that list. I did stop using my agenda, after all........

Asian Parents.....joy....

Well, what do Asian parents care about the most? Money, yes.....school, yes......now mix the two together and it's no surprise that the latest magazine from the Chinese papers is featuring some top four (Chinese, surprise surprise) students entering university this year......among the interviews and information, there lists not only their grades but also the scholarships they managed to get their hands on.

It's pure joy to have Asian parents......you might have thought that I, of all people, would have been immune to all of this.......but sadly that's not the case........

Like honestly, is it not enough that I'm not using a penny of your money for my university tuition? Does it really matter that those kids, with their faces plastered all over the magazine, got $15,000 in scholarship for their first year and I came a horrifically shameful $7,000 short?.....what's even worse is that first year was ages ago.......even if i wanted and even if i tried i can't go back.....

I just can't help but feel a little sorry for those kids.......not only are they now pointed to by all the Asian parents in town, they are now hated by every single Asian kid in town (with the exception of Jenn, as she would like pointed out).........but imagine, to have your worth as a person and as an individual evaluated based on your academic success and the sum of scholarship money you amassed.....and to have your value assessed based on how much advice you can give for parents who want their kids to walk down the same path of academic greatness (although their definition is rather short-sighted and narrow-minded.....whereas i'm thinking academic greatness is making some sort of immense breakthrough in research, the Asian equivalent is entering Harvard with a 102% average)......

I guess i just dread seeing those kind of articles here.......there is just something fundamentally wrong......I mean, the Hong Kong government actually run ads on television for parents (and kids to a lesser extent) with the slogan that learning is not about grades (which of course no one gives a crap about).......pathological? very much so......

FML, or PTL (Praise the Lord), according to Jenn

Amidst flailing arms and protesting pokes from Jenn, I'll brave the challenges and type this up.......

After plants class with the program head this morning, the brief after-class discussion led him to tell us of a new headache he has. Apparently, it came to his attention that our program has more credit hours than allowed by the government for an undergraduate program (even after taking honours into account). We were told that he has to now somehow cut some courses from the program to make it all work. We were very eager to give suggestions, such as scrapping ethics, or the critical writing course for next term. When someone mentioned lab safety (and amidst our laughter), Keith told us that's not even a course that is recognized by UBC, so cutting it won't do anything.............that's when the thought struck me......

So, I'm in a program that not only makes us take more credits than allowed by the government, some of the courses we do take don't even count towards that. FML.