In iTunes I have a playlist for songs with zero play counts. Right now this playlist has 1387 songs in it. It is a smart playlist so once I listen to a song it is removed from the list. For the past few days I have been trying to only listen to this playlist. I think it is going to take a long time before I have listened to all these songs.
So I realize I have not posted in a long time and that is because the last few month have been full of lots of personal changes and in general I think personal blog posts are boring. I am also of the belief that it is better to be evil than boring when it comes down to it. Just call someone in my family boring and you will notice that all of the sudden you are having a string of insults fired at you. Anyway I am going to do a boring post now so you do not have to read if you don't want.
So the reason for all the changes is because I have decided to get my MPH in Epidemiology and Bio statistics at Berkeley. Because of this the fallowing had to happen:
Bryan had to find a job in SF
Bryan had to quit his job in SC
We had to move out of Ledyard
Mike and Em had to find a new place to live
Bryan and I had to move in with my parents for a month and a half
Bryan and I had to find a place to live in the Bay Area and move there
I had to quit my job
I had to find a way to pay for school
I had to find a job
There were more changes but I can't think of them right now.
Today was my first day at Berkeley. It is actually welcome week classes do not officially start until next Monday. Bryan and I now live off of Grand Ave in Oakland. I have decided to sell my car and ride my bike to school. My daily ride takes me up a pretty gnarly hill but it is still really fun. It takes about 40 minutes to get to school and 30 minutes to get home. I am hoping I will get faster and cut down on the time. I also had to buy a new bike. I wanted something light that would not get stolen so I got an old fuji touring bike. After telling one girl about my ride to school she said "wow you are hard core" I was kind of taken aback by that, I wanted to say "that is the nicest thing a stranger has ever said to me" but I did not want to freak her out.
I spent this morning listening to all the great work the school does and different resources they have for students. I felt like they took 2 hours to do something that could have been done in a few minutes. The only interesting part was when one professor gave a presentation on her work on Dengue. After that we met with our program and everyone started to size each other up. People wanted to know what sort of undergrad work others had done. I decided not to engage in this and remained quiet, I hate forced socialization. At lunch the sizing up continued so I went to get my school ID with a girl I had met. While waiting in line for the ID (45 minutes) there was a guy preaching about how Jesus saves and the penis is not meant for the anus, some students got upset and started to engage with him (my guess is they were new to Berkeley) the cops came and said there was nothing they could do because of the free speech rules of the campus.
I then had to meet with my advisor this meeting was to give her an idea of what I am interested in and for her to direct me to places on campus that can help. She met with me and one other student. True to form I stumped her. I told her I wanted to work on Psychology and epidemiology, she was like I have no idea and went on to talk to the other student about infectious deceases. I then had to explain to her what I wanted to do. I want to look at grief as a risk factor. For a long time I have been interested in infectious deceases but I figure after working in grief so long and also the fact that not much has been done in that area maybe I could do some good research. Anyway finally she got the idea and I was good to go.
See how boring that was.
