About Me

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I'm a very tall overly obsessive final year medical student. I happen to really like traveling, watching TV shows on my laptop, playing Tetris, art + music, and baking. Religiously. In this blog I'll be talking about my daily events and whatever randomly comes up..
Showing posts with label USC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USC. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Goodbye 2014

Yes, I've been away.
Yes, I've neglected this blog.

It's been long. Pretty long. It's been over a year since I last posted something here, and although I keep on saying I'll update this more, I fail in doing so. Maybe I'm a liar, maybe I'm a failure, maybe I'm both.

I can make many excuses for my absence:
1) I had a crap phone so I couldn't blog from it. [recently upgraded]

2) 5th year of med school. Senior cycle I. HAH. Death. 
3) 6th year of med school. Senior cycle II. HAHA. MORE DEATH. 
4) My crappy internet connection at my apartment, courtesy of **********m.
5) Laziness.
6) Procrastination gremlins. 

7) My mental status. 
8) Mental status.
9) Mental.
10) Status. 


With little left on the clock till 2014 ends, I thought I couldn't let a year mark pass without having at least one post on my blog for that year. That's a little too much of a fail, even for me. At least I still have a very minimal level of standards I'm trying to adhere to..

Anyhow, updates:
-I'm supposed to be graduating medical school June 2015. I'm donezo hopefully in six months. However, I haven't been studying as much as I'd like to in the past four months, so crunch time should ensue by the fourth of January by the latest.

-I quit basketball this year :( To focus on studying. Little did I know.............
-I'm going to Chennai, India for a community engagement medical elective sort of thing in about two weeks, hopefully I can post about that if time and internet connection allows. 
-My elective in California has been cancelled unfortunately, but I'm hoping that's for the better, and there's a reason I can't fully comprehend at the moment but it'll make sense soon. 
- During my hypomanic phase [I called it a hypomanic phase because it just felt like one. I was talking and acting in a hypomanic manner, and I also did NOT need to sleep at all. I went through 96 hours straight with less than 8 hours of sleep. I had to resort to sleeping aids eventually. It was pretty scary!] I don't know how or why it happened, but I managed to do many many things! I became part of my class's Senior Committee, joined 17 clubs in uni, became secretary for a club, joined on organizing a conference, became a writer for the school magazine, AND joined the university community engagement program. Also, I got a guitar and tried to learn a few things pending actual lessons.. In retrospect, my hypomanic phase was actually really nice. I'm now in a trough though, I don't know if it's because it's new year time or everything else but hopefully this can pass. However, that's another days post.

Moving on, as 14 minutes remain on the clock till the 1st of January, I think I'll end this post here. This is pressuring me. Reminds me of that time I submitted a paper 40 seconds before the portal closed. I felt like such a baws.

And with the accurate words of AWOLNATION playing this instant: "blame it on my ADD", I bid you farewell, and wish you a happy new year. Speak to you next year!

Monday, August 2, 2010

August.. Back to the Sandbox

August has arrived, and I just got back from New York a day ago, actually (:

I have lots of mixed feelings about being back in the "sandbox" as my friend would always call it :p After California, I insisted on my parents that we pass by New York again before we go back to Saudi. I won. Lol.. So instead of going back to Saudi on the 27th, we went to New York again and stayed there till the 31st. So, my issue is that wherever I go, EACH YEAR, is how
attached I get to the place I travel to. Very attached. Like, I wanna live & study here and spend my whole life here and have kids here and have neighbors and meet people here attached. New York and California were two amazingly different places, yet I enjoyed each one so so much. People would ask me which one is nicer? Which did you have more fun in? My answer: your question is non applicable, sorry :p
so they'd get all pissed and give up in trying to make small talk with me. Unfortunately, I can't make up my mind and I can't give a more reasonable answer. I JUST LIKE BOTH. They're really different. So I can't compare. It's like asking me if I like steaks or oranges better :/ Anyways, yeah, after a pleasant dinner in Benihana of Tokyo on La Cienega Blvd, Beverly Hills, we went for a drive through the city.. Nighttime in Los Angeles was truly something else. The cool chilly weather, the ambience of the streets, the whole setting of the city.. It isn't something you could forget! Especially that on that night, we drove through the UCLA campus, student apartments, and the fraternity and sorority houses with the huge Greek letters.. I gazed admirably at everything around me and tried helplessly to keep each bit in my photographic memory.. I wanted to study there! I really did with all my heart. Knowing that that's not going to happen anytime soon (hopefully for my residency though!!!), melancholy set in, and I started feeling bittersweet about the whole thing :( We got back to the hotel after a much enjoyable stroll around town, and somehow, my dad detected my unnerve-ness and asked what was wrong? I didn't say anything much.. Just a sigh and a hmph,, but what amazed me is what he said next. He put his arm around my shoulder and said while smiling: "Don't fall in love with California, Reem.. I'm telling you. Don't fall in love with L.A. It's a lost battle!" to which I replied.. HMPH! *DEEP UPSET SIGH* I was dumbstruck with what he said that I remained speechless :| To be frank though, that coming from a person who has studied in USC and Cal State and has practically lived in California for the whole duration of his late teens up to his mid-twenties, I think that's pretty unfair *talktohand* He got to fall in love, why can't I? :''''(
Aaah. So, yeah, New York on the way back was uber fun too.. 5th Avenue was a shoppers haven, and Macy's on 34th Street downright CONFUSING! LOL! It was HUGE! I hope I get to visit each year :D A med student needs a break every nine months now, doesn't she?

Moving on to Saudi news, Saudi has been hot, humid, and toasty :D Coming from weather that ranged from 22 to 32 (max) degrees celsius in the afternoon, I am now confronted with a forecast that has 45 degrees as a daily average :D YAY! So that's something I need to get used to.. Ramadan starts in approximately 9 days or so, and I'm looking forward to it! More Saudi news.. Umm.. I got to meet my new cousin Lulu! and I am now reunited with baby Saif, the cutest cousin anyone could ever have. Also, my close friend is leaving to Michigan to study human resources in 12 days. Only 12 days left and my friend leaves forever for the next 5 years (minus Christmas breaks, maybe.) and I can't get myself to come to peace with her leaving. I'm trying to be all happy about it and stuff but I'm just not feeling it :/ Mind you, this is the friend who I had planned my entire future with and the one who was supposed to follow our shared dream of medicine with me at the same university. I guess life likes to take abrupt turns and ruin all your prior plans fo evaaa :D I wish her future luck and all the best, even though things didn't turn out quite the way I wanted them to be.