Do ALL The Things (Except the Things I'm Supposed To Do)

If my work ethic went to church, he would be into incense and rosaries and little jars of holy water. He would wear uncomfortable shiny shoes. He would be ALL up in the confessional.

just try and stop me from using this meme excessively 

What I mean to say, in this horrible extended metaphor, is that my work ethic is deeply Catholic and guilt-driven. If I don't get done what I need to get done, I swiftly convince myself that I am a horrible person. Not even a person. A worm. An unproductive worm that will soon be eaten by a bird. Probably the early bird. That asshole.

Imagine my surprise, however, to find how incredibly competent I've become at convincing myself that I absolutely must do x, y, and z instead of studying for the MCAT. This spell of deception is broken only when I am forced to, say, open my planner to confirm an appointment. Quickly, I fall into a panic. IT'S MARCH 28TH?! HOW CAN IT POSSIBLY BE ALMOST APRIL???? etc. But a few hours later I have forgotten the date, and can get back to reorganizing my bookshelf based on author birth order. Witness, then, the following:

When I Fail The MCAT And Don't Get Into Medical School, At Least I Will Have Become A Pro At:

1. Baking flourless chocolate cake. 

2. Getting dirt out from under my nails without using the little hook on a pair of nail clippers, which may or may not have a real name.

3. Writing villanelles. 

4. Getting Entangled.  (WARNING WARNING WARNING if you have anything remotely important to do within the next 24 hours, do not click that link)

5. Tracking the evershifting, eversubtle relationships between The Real Housewives of Orange County, their significant others, their divorced husbands, their hideous dogs, and their silicone body parts.

6. Sympathizing with fictional pedophiles (thanks, Lolita!)

7. Erging. Especially if there are hot boys who are also erging.

8. Finding memes that investigate the topics of procrastination, chemistry, and farts. 

Gene Wilder, you orange devil, you

So come on, friends. I'm sure you, too, have nothing important to do. Join me. The chocolate river water is fine.

I Am An Electron: Anthropomorphizing Subatomic Particles

I am only 15 pages into the Kaplan MCAT Chemistry review book, and already I am experiencing pre-med PTSD. By far the most foul course I took at Hopkins, Intro to Chemistry was the bane of my  freshman existence. To make the experience even less aesthetically pleasing, the professor only wore two outfits, both of which involved vests. Much time was spent debating whether he owned only two outfits, or rather multiple versions of the same outfit a la in a cartoon closet.

you know the type

Every day the professor would arrive exactly at 9AM and spend 30 minutes of class mumbling into the chalkboard before stepping away to reveal something that looked like this:

math, the international language

. . .which would inevitably be a eighteen step derivation that used a very high level of calculus and was only peripherally related to the topic at hand. Also the professor had chalk on the crotch of his pants. Always.

The information I gleaned from the class was minimal, though reading about quantum numbers this evening was enough to trigger widespread panic through my body. Soon enough, however, the panic turned to boredom so complete and absolute I began to wonder if my Kaplan book had been secretly doused in chloroform (which, if you were wondering, has a molar mass of 119.38 g mol). While I ended up adoring organic chemistry, physics, and biology in different ways, I never quite found a love for general chemistry.

except for this. THIS I can get behind

Perhaps this is why I was so delighted to find numerous poetic devices used in just the first chapter of the Kaplan Chemistry book. "You dum-dums," the book says. "Let me make this easy for you. Pretend the molecule is an angry parent/dragon/piece of toast. Now imagine the molecule punishing its children/abducting a damsel/being spread with jam. Now doesn't azimuthal quantum numbers make SO MUCH MORE SENSE?!" And because I am conditioned to believe that metaphor is the most superior way to understand anything (thanks, poetry), I suddenly feel a flash of light behind my head and I become convinced that I truly. . .

 just pretend the broom is a Kaplan book

Take, for example, the book's treatment of electrons. Besides the fact that it's small and negatively charged, do I really know what an electron is? Of course not. But then I read something like this:

If you think of the nucleus as a game of checkers, the electrons would be children who express varying degrees of interest in playing or watching the game. . .The children sitting closer to the game are more interested in it than the children who are sitting on the periphery.

Suddenly, I understand electrons. I really feel for them. I am an electron! And I am watching the cool kids play checkers and I am sitting as close as possible because I have already called playing winner and I am so pumped to get a turn because my father refuses to play checkers with me at home because it "involves no skill."

My understanding of electrons was deepened further when they were compared to poets. Actually, I extrapolated. The book didn't say that. It really said,  

Electrons are somewhat curmudgeonly and misanthropic in that they don't like the company of other electrons.

But I read between the lines. And I saw myself. And that's when I knew: I am an electron. I have insider knowledge. And so despite my poorly fleshed-out education, there's no reason whatsoever I won't do well on the Chemistry section of the MCAT exam. After all, I'm among friends.

Pedigree Charts, Or Why Regina George Is An Empty Circle

Before I began studying for the MCAT biology section this month, the only kind of pedigree I knew about was the sort that my dogs (below) don't have.

we can't all be perfect

My opinion on that sort of pedigree was as follows: if you'd rather own a purebred dog whose original ancestors were most likely a troll and a floor mop, you can take your pedigree and shove it.

sorry, baby chewbacca: the truth hurts

Having been a metaphorically rabid canine lover my entire life, I thought I knew everything there was to know about pedigree. I could identify rare dog breeds on site. I could quote entire scenes from Best in Show. And every year I dutifully watched the major dog shows and prayed my unanswered prayer: oh dear God who art in heaven, please rain mercy upon us and for the love of all that is good and holy, let a not-hideous dog win.

I was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had pedigree down pat. Cue the MCAT.

I say whaaaaa

Pedigree charts, I am learning, are the bread and butter of the MCAT kitchen. In fact, it's hard to tell which the MCAT loves more: pedigree charts or hemoglobin. I'm not exactly sure what a pedigree chart ever did to deserve this fame. It was just moseying along, doing its thing, telling people that they had a 50% likelihood of developing early-onset Alzheimer's, when suddenly its face appeared on every major version of the most important standardized test in the nation. And it liked it.  It wanted more. And within a matter of months, the pedigree chart became the Regina George of MCAT High.

regina, you are an empty circle on the pedigree chart of my heart

But! You say. Celeste, is it really that complicated? A pedigree chart should be the least of your problems. Aren't you making a mountain out of a molehill? Aren't you putting words in my mouth? And I would say yes no yes. What seems like a simple concept: represent a bunch of generations with some lines and squares and circles, then answer a question like the following, nicked from my Kaplan review book. . .

52. A form of MODY called atypical diabetic mellitus (ADM), which has been identified only in African-American and some Asian populations, is characterized by initial need for insulin that eventually gives way to type II diabetic symptoms. If individual III-17 was to marry a heterozygote for ADM, what is the likelihood that their child would inherit a permanently insulin-dependent form of diabetes?

A. 0%

B. 25%

C. 50%

D. 100%

E. Paula Deen

. . .isn't so simple after all. This is mostly because I am an idiot, refusing to remember/relearn pedigree chart notation, than because pedigree charts are actually difficult. So, reluctantly, let's break it all down:

1. If you are in possession of a penis, you are a square. If you have a vagina, you are a circle. If you identify as genderless, please stop making trouble.

Why women were chosen to be represented by a soft, round, friendly shape, while men were paired with a sharp, angular one is a dissertation just waiting to happen. Regardless, it is helpful to remember this distinction, as the MCAT seems obsessed with tricking you into thinking a disease is all cute and autosomal, when actually it's . . .wait for it. . .sex-linked. Or even worse: passed through the mother's mitochondrial DNA. MCAT, you really hit me where it hurts.

2. If a man and a woman love each other very much and have made an everlasting commitment to stay together in sickness and in health (and there will definitely be some sickness), they will make little square and circle babies who will be connected to them by a line. 

I imagine this to be sort of like those mothers who drag their toddlers around the mall on leashes. Except this time you're in a mall the size of the universe and you're tied to your children forever and ever. Which is to say, if you are on a pedigree chart and you have children, there is no empty-nesting or secret adoptions. No. You have 5 kids, two of which are carriers for sickle cell anemia and everyone knows you have 5 kids, two of which are carriers for sickle cell anemia. Put Jerry Springer out of business, why don't you.

3. If you are six feet under, there will be a little slash through your circle or square body. 

Sorry, John Donne: the poetry stops here. Expect neither flowers nor hymns, friends--when you kick the bucket on a pedigree chart you are simply sliced through with a little line of ink.

4. If you are white, you are healthy. If you are half-white, you are probably carrying a DNA time bomb. If you are black, you're screwed. 

Again, a dissertation waiting to happen. (Squares of Injustice, Circles of Hate: An Analysis of Race and Representation in Medical Pedigree Charts Of the 20th Century.) You'd think this black/not black system would make everything crystal-clear, but half the time the MCAT doesn't even tell you what disease the family has. You know some people are in trouble, but you don't immediately know how. Which is like being a real doctor, I suppose. (MCAT: y u so smart??)

5. We don't talk about incest and divorce. 

Put aside your emotional devastation about the above subjects, and imagine for a second how messy a pedigree chart would be of the Real Housewives of Orange County ("I'm sorry, ladies, for some reason you're all coming up as orange circles?") We just can't have that kind of riff-raff messing up our science. Too many lines. Too many generations. Let's all just stay together for the pre-med kids.

*

And that's that. Even though we are now fully informed on the ins and outs of pedigree charts, I think all of us can agree--purebred and mutt alike--that still. . .

When I began to study for the Medical College Admissions Test earlier this month, I was shocked and saddened to find a lack--shall we say a complete dearth--of blogs on the MCAT that were not (circle one of the following):

I. Hysterical

II. Cut-and-dry

III. Defunct

IV. Fabulous

A. I

B. IV

C. II and IV only

D. I, II, and III

Explanation:

D. I, II, and III

I. Hysterical. And not in the comedic way, but in the unmanageable emotional excess, paging-Dr.-Freud (who, by the way, never took the MCAT. what a FRAUD) sort of way. All this tabulation and comparison and listing of acronyms and fretting about bell curves and begging for some answers please please please will I get into medical school with a 3.5 GPA from Carnegie Mellon with the following extracurriculars: ultimate frisbee, laboratory work with schizophrenic mice models, and jazz band. No. This is not that type of blog.

II. Cut-and-dry. Here are the number of MCAT sections. Here is the amount of time for each section. Here is how I studied. Here is my score. These boring blogs almost make you yearn for the pre-med forums, where students wonder if tattooing facts onto their inner thighs will result in osmosis of knowledge. No. This is not that type of blog.

III. Defunct. Your last post was in 1995? Did they even know what a neuron was back then? Did they even have blogs? While I only plan to take the MCAT once and to therefore only have this blog for a very finite amount of time (less than two months, to be precise), I hope that my experience will not be immediately irrelevant. No, friends. This is not that type of blog.

What sort of blog, then, will this be?

IV. Fabulous. The sort of blog that knows that the best defense is a sense of humor, particularly when one is asked to take a test on material that can best be described as I Used To Know This, Once. The sort of blog that wishes there were more MCAT memes (I mean seriously. MCAT: Know All The Things, for starters.). The sort of blog that tries, like poetry, to make the unbearable bearable. But with more fart jokes. And science. Lots of science.