Talking too much about the end of the semester will only serve to stress me out even further, so I'll keep this as short as I can, without highlighting academia as much as my current thoughts about life. Maybe I'll do bullet points because I have had enough of trying to organize essays so my thoughts flow "logically" as my biology teacher calls it.
- I am very pleased that I will finally be done with Organic Chemistry, and if I manage not to mess up the final exam, I will pass the class which is really all I can really hope for at this point. Hopefully, if I end up taking the MCATs I will get a score good enough that my GPA can be overlooked. I envy people with different life plans or easier majors, but at this point in my degree there really is no going back. However, I do see that I may very well have options open for pursuing other degrees and a different, non-doctoral future if I opt out of medical school.
- I have mixed emotions about the end of Endocrinology. This is the class that I have learned the most in; I wish I had more time to devote to it instead of focusing on Organic Chemistry all the time. The tests in this class are very difficult, but I have definitely improved my research techniques and writing abilities and I find myself thinking more critically of biology or neuroscience material that I consume.
- Instead of summarizing Race & Ethnicity - my views on those topics have been made pretty clear through other avenues - I will write my recommendations of books read in my class.
- The New Jim Crow
- The Possessive Investment in Whiteness
- Slums of Aspen
- My essay on Malcolm X's personality will be posted after the end of this semester, so stay tuned for my work in that particular subject.
- My summer plans involve returning to St. Lucia and figuring out how to make the most of three months unemployed. This will likely involve a lot of studying for the MCAT and helping my sister to prepare herself for college in the fall. Hopefully I can use this time to regenerate as well. As usual, after a year of this tiresome and never-ending grind, I feel a great sense of exhaustion which puts me in a vulnerable position for a depression relapse. Lately I have been hyper-vigilant of this possibility and have taken time out for self-care each day, rewarded myself for hard work and provided outlets for stress release (which may or may not be Sims 3, Streetfighter IV and Powerpuff Girls episodes on Netflix.
- Of course, with the summer comes my dreaded 6 month separation from my boyfriend. I've experienced a lot of sadness, openly and not-as-openly with regards to our summer and impending semester apart, but I'm coming to terms with it and trying to maintain a positive attitude about the future and how I will cope with this relationship. More important than my anxiety and fears of loneliness are how I plan to maintain levels of closeness while we are away. This is a position I never really pictured myself in, and I hope that I find ways to cope without too much emotional disturbance.
- Next Fall will be difficult. I am taking another stab at Calculus II and Mechanics (Physics) and I feel like these courses will certainly drag my GPA down. I have no interest in Physics, and even less in Calculus II.
- Professors at Middlebury have this knack of making their material accessible only to those who wish to dedicate their lives to it. Most of them are excessively pedantic, and cater to specific learning types without any will to assist those who fall outside of that curve. My Endocrinology professor is one aberration from this: for those who are not good test takers, there are plenty of opportunities for them to improve their grades from oral presentations and essays. The professors outside of most science departments seem to be a little bit better, but for the most part, being a science major at Middlebury is pure torture, and the ones who succeed are the ones who can dedicate all their time to studying material and naturally grasp it. Hard work is not rewarded as much as it should be. The only way to succeed if you have academic trouble here is to devote countless hours outside of class to seeing professors and tutors for things your professor should have had the skills to explain clearly and memorably to you in the classroom in the first place. For people who are engaged in extracurricular activities and demanding on campus jobs, finding this extra time, doing all your homework, engaging in meaningful social interactions and getting enough sleep to prevent mental illness is nearly impossible. I find it difficult not to resent my decision to major in science here, as it will either cause pain to my GPA or my mental health.
- One bright-side to next fall is taking Animal Behavior with my current Endocrinology professor; this is one aspect of my degree that I have really been looking forward to, and I hope that I can wholly enjoy.
- Another bright side to the fall will be my impending experience living in a social house. During my first two years at Middlebury, I was incredibly lucky to have the roommate that I did. In the fall, I'll be moving in with one of my brothers (she's a girl, we are all just brothers) and living in Midd's KDR house on the third floor. Hopefully living in the house will mean more attendance at house meetings and easier involvement in house activities. I'm worried about sleep though, so I will be sure to invest in a quality eye mask (for light) as well as good earplugs that will dampen the effects of "speaker wars" on the first floor. I am also concerned about bathroom cleanliness, and kitchen cleanliness, but since the house's female population is increasing, hopefully this will become less of a problem. Our female house members are occasionally cleaner.
This is all I have for you guys for now. Sorry that it's a bit mundane, but right now I could either sob about how much I will miss Andrew in the summer and fall, or I could rant about how much I hate the academic program at Middlebury, and how damaging it is to mental health of those who are already vulnerable. Stress levels are high, but so is my positivity. With that, adieu. I shall return to researching the neural-diathesis stress model in schizophrenia - a fascinating yet challenging topic for my final paper.
