Yup, still here.

Whoa... hi, there.

I'm still here. Still moving along the path of MCAT mastery.

I was chugging along when I was sidelined with two sudden and very painful infections. Burnout was already hitting me hard, so it was time to take a break. Besides, I knew I needed one when I was sitting in the waiting room at Urgent Care and all I could think about was the cell cycle. Or maybe how it might be viral, so I pictured little viruses, like Tholians, attacking my cells. Then, they prescribed an antibiotic that disrupted the bugs' DNA gyrase and all I could picture was unwinding double-stranded DNA.

As insane as all of it sounded, the true crazy came when I was driving home and traveling downhill on the freeway. I literally thought, Oh, I'll just ignore the coefficient of friction between the car's tires and the road and let mg sin Θ take over, and took my foot off the accelerator.

Yikes. The deep end, friends, is a hard place to return from.

I have had the opportunity to take a few study breaks and I'll report on them soon. For now, I leave you with a little bit of comfort food, a hot bowl of rice noodle soup with sauteed ground pork, scallions, and a fried egg. Courtesy of Sunday Bistro, one of my dad's favorite restaurants. Check out Wandering Chopsticks' post on it.

I've been taking a lot of standardized tests in the last few years, trying to figure out the rest of my life. My dad and D. have been the tireless leaders of my cheering squad. I've been really lucky to have a lot of people in my life offer advice, support, and encouragement as I masochistically throw myself into another round of evil standardized testing. Thanks to all of you, because I really couldn't do it otherwise.