Suities, classes, parties...the usual

People always ask, "How is college? Do you like your roommates? What classes are you taking?"

One question at a time, please!

In terms of roommates, I'm extremely lucky to be sharing a suite with these six amazing girls:

L - R: Jane, Regina, Esther, Hilina, Sara, Atisha, me
On our way to a suite dinner at Miya's last semester

Besides being plain awesome, I think my suite pretty much runs the diversity gamut. I'm a Chinese-American girl from NJ and Jane is a Korean-American from NJ too (we actually met at Governor's School in 2004), but then Regina's Hispanic/African-American from CT, Sara's part Native American from SD, Esther's Korean-American from CA, then Atisha's from India and Hilina's from Ethiopia. Regardless of our different backgrounds, we've all grown to be good friends.

How much we had gotten to know each other became very clear this weekend, starting Friday night. I was last-minute cramming for MCATs, then decided to go take a shower as a relaxing break. When I got back, there was this adorable sign on my bedroom door:

Awww...

Turns out it was originally Hilina's idea, so that made me even more glad that we were going out for dinner to celebrate her birthday Saturday night. I got back from MCATs around 5 PM and we headed over to Lalibela, where I had my first taste of Ethiopian food. (Btw, for anyone who didn't know already, New Haven has an incredible range of restaurants showcasing cuisine from around the world.) I had eaten Eritrean food at Cafe Adulis before, but I liked Lalibela even more - the injera wasn't quite as sour and the other dishes seemed more savory than at Adulis. At the end, we all went around the table sharing good/funny memories of Hilina and sang "Happy Birthday," much to her embarrassment. My favorite comment came from Nic: "I think Hilina has the biggest heart-to-height ratio of anyone I know..."

Half the table at Lalibela

After dinner I hopped over to Berkeley for a Reach Out Jamaica reunion - one of our trip leaders, Addy, is heading to China for the Yale-Peking program in a couple weeks, so we all wanted to take the chance to say bye to her as well as simply chat and catch up with each other. I still get a kick out of people's reactions when I say I spent my 20th birthday in Jamaica doing community service, but Reach Out was really such a meaningful experience that opened my eyes to living conditions and sheer survival challenges that I never could have imagined just staying in the US. I won't be going on a spring break trip again this year, but I'm thinking about applying for one of the longer summer trips and looking into international programs for after graduation too.

Jess even baked a cake!

Ok, now the question about classes...since shopping period is over, I can actually tell you what courses I'm taking this semester!

1) Spanish for Medical Professions (L5): I wanted to get back to practicing my Spanish before it got too rusty, but I figured it would also be really useful for my volunteer work at Yale-New Haven. After all, I've already been an impromptu translator a couple times for parents who don't understand English, so for them it was comforting to hear that their daughter is getting pain medicine and that she can pick a movie to watch while she's recovering from the surgery. It's like a super-basic anatomy class...in Spanish, so for me it's also been interesting corroborating what I learn here with what I already know from biology and psychology classes. Profesora Carreras is great, and we also watch videos so we get to hear all sorts of accents from different countries.

2) Behavioral Neuroscience: This is a required course for the Behavioral Neuroscience track, but it's so interesting that I would have wanted to take it anyway. So far we've just done basic neuroanatomy and psychopharmacology, but I think it'll help me a lot knowing more of the "big picture" before I take Neurobiology next fall.

3) Research Methods in Behavioral Neuroscience: Another required course, but this one is super-interesting too. Over the course of the semester, we get to dissect sheep brains, inject rats with controlled substances to see the effect variance by dosage, and then perform hippocampus lesion surgery and observe the effects on the rats' memories in a water-maze task. It kind of sucks that this doesn't count as a bio lab (seriously, how much more animal work could you have?) but it's definitely one of the more interesting labs available at Yale.

Sheep brain midsagittal section o_O

4) Magic Bullets and Wonder Pills: No kidding, that's the actual title. It's a history of the pharmaceutical industry, which I personally find interesting from a medical and public health perspective as well, considering everything in the news about drugs being found ineffective, recalled for safety reasons, or even showing that they harm patients more than they help. Professor Strasser is an awesome lecturer as always, and Sara/Regina are also taking the class so we'll be able to study together and read each other's papers.

5) Biology of Reproduction: Repro Bio is different from the "Biology of Gender and Sexuality" class that is more commonly known by a rhyming nickname (P_rn in the Morn) , focusing more on general principles and not just humans. It's a little bit of everything: genetics, gynecology, embryology, child development, etc. The setup is rather unusual, with "guest lecturers" switching every 2-3 classes but that's because they're all talking about their particular area of research, so it's both good and bad depending on your learning style.

6) Bioethics, Religion, and the Limits of Freedom: This very well might be my favorite class - I took Professor Smith's lecture course last semester, and now this is his spring seminar focusing on the topics we didn't get to talk about as much in lecture. The current topic is organ transplants, but later we'll also be talking about care for the dying and the legal/medical issues involved. It's also nice that the class has a range of backgrounds, from political science majors to graduate students from the divinity school, so it'll be interesting for everyone.

Time to go write my bioethics paper and study for my neuroscience test...just another normal Sunday =P

Back in the swing of things

Ok, so the post title is a rather corny reference to New Residence Hall (aka Swing Space or Sillispace). Anyway, now that the craziness of shopping period is over, I finally get a chance to sit down and write about all the cool stuff that's been going on even though we've only been back for two weeks!

First stop: Classes!
The above photo is PSYC 171b: Sex, Evolution and Human Nature with Prof. Santos...she's an awesome prof and the class is offered only once every three years, so you can imagine why so many people want to take it. We were moved twice, from Davies Auditorium (about 250 seats) to SSS 114 (where the photo was taken) and now we're in the Law School auditorium, where we finally seem to fit. It's not just the topic matter either - she specifically said the first day that the class was not all about sex, all about evolution, or all about human nature. Instead, it's more about how human nature is a product of evolution, more specifically how certain behaviors are the production of sexual reproduction strategies. It's been lots of fun so far - one of the few classes I've heard of where the professor gets applause at the end of every lecture, not just at the end of the semester.

Other classes I'm taking: Cell Biology, Physics 181 (electricity and magnetism), Directed Research with Prof. Santos, and this cool college seminar called Medicine, Molecules, and the Millennium with Dr. Irvin Modlin from the Yale Medical School. We've only had one meeting so far but it already looks like it'll be an awesome class, so keep an eye out for more updates in the future =)

The weather has also been kind of funky - over winter break it was around 70 degrees every day, but now it's just bitterly cold outside. We've gotten bits of snow here and there (as seen below) but so far it hasn't stuck around for more than 24 hours. This is both a good and a bad thing - today I almost slipped several times on icy patches but at least I'm not hiking around campus through six inches.

First weekend back was a lot of fun...Friday night I was a participant in the first ever Asian Idol competition, something I will probably never live down ^^; It was a lot of fun though, and a nice way to showcase that you don't have to be Asian to appreciate the various cultures. I don't have any photos, unfortunately (since I was on stage!), but apparently there's a video somewhere that I will have to see and perhaps post later...

Saturday night was just as cool - I went to my friend Axel's improv comedy show in the Davenport Theater. Axel is a member of the Purple Crayon (along with fellow PoS-er Ned) so for they came up with the idea of an "iPod shuffle" show where each scene would be inspired by songs from a random audience member's iPod. In the second half, they mixed this up even more by choosing 10 iPods and taking one song from each. The result: absolute hilarity! A few clips are below - you can see more on my Youtube account.




In the week to come: Grand re-opening of the Sillispace Buttery, a few panels about women in medicine and life after Yale, perhaps a few IMs, and of course the second full week of classes. Time to go read for MM&M!