10.23/2010

I finished the series, The Wire, yesterday. As HBO series go, it's one of my favorite. This is my second HBO series that I have completed. The first being Six Feet Under. I enjoyed Six Feet Under, because of its dialogs about life, death, sexuality, identity, and responsibility. The Wire, however, is different. It doesn't speak so much about individual people as it does about society and the relationships among different sections of society (the projects, the harbor, the politicians, the school systems, and the news media). What I liked about The Wire is that is shows that the problems of society are not isolated events. They are collaborations on behalf of multiple parties being in cahoots. The irony is that people see the face of drugs being black, yet the people who are trafficking the drugs into the country are not African American. The problem reaches far beyond the streets of the projects, beyond African Americans. But, Blacks are often times the scapegoats because they are the most readily visible actors.

I enjoyed The Wire because, although it is based on Baltimore, Maryland, its dialog is representative about American politics (and race) as a whole. It demonstrates that people, often times, cannot act to promote the most good, that sometimes they are merely puppets for a higher authority figure. Politics and chain of command dictate people's actions.

The Wire definitely deserves to be one of the best shows ever produced.

Right now I'm sitting at a total of four medical school interviews. I had an interview on October 1st, I have three more on November 8th, November 22nd, and November 23rd.

I'm quite pleased at the moment.

9.6/2010

Saw Cliff last weekend while I was in South Carolina.

It was fun.

My birthday was also one of the best ever!

Good times!!!

8.19/2010

Why is it that when an African American person does something crazy that their picture appears more readily in the news than someone who is white. I've known this truism for a while now, but, recently, it has become more apparent. Take this as an example. There's a woman in South Carolina who strangled and drowned her children. Her picture was up on CNN essentially on day one. However, today I read an article on a caucasian, American man who established a school in Haiti, but was having sex with Haitian boys. CNN mentioned his name, but did not put in a picture, despite there being pictures all over the internet when I googled the name. I don't understand this. Why, seemingly intentionally, does the media tend to avoid using pictures of whites when something crazy happens, but readily use them when it concerns blacks (and possibly other people of color)?

Subliminal racism?

One of my friends, I think, ran into an aggressive interviewer. He wanted to go to a Doctor of Osteopathy (DO) school and his Dean was able to get him an interview with the Dean of Admissions of the DO school. Well, when applying to medical schools there are multiple types of interviews. There's a single interview, a group interview, a passive interview, and an aggressive interview. The single interview is the traditional interview with one interviewee and one interviewer. The group interview can be one interviewee versus a panel of interviewers, multiple interviewees and a single interviewer, or a panel of interviewers and a group of interviewees. The passive interview is an interview where the interviewer basically has a conversation with the person, passively identifying strengths and weaknesses and uses very open, or non-jugemental pointed questions. The aggressive interview, on the other hand, is more like an interrogation. The interviewer (or interviewers) will ask pointed questions about the applicant's grade point average, MCAT score, qualifications to be a physician, and essentially play the role of devil's advocate. The whole point of this type of interviewing, I think, is to see how the applicant deals with stress and stressful situations. Sad fact is... my friend failed.

Interviewing is a skill.

8.15/2010

I think I'm officially done with Final Fantasy XIII. I beat the game last night, and the ending was decent, but attempting to get all of the trophies is an exercise in patience... and I'm not fit. I'm no foreigner to grinding. I've done it many times before in Disgaea, Valkyria Chronicles, Final Fantasy Tactics, and a variety of other games. But, Final Fantasy XIII makes you grind CP, which is used to "level" characters up, and grind gil, the currency of Final Fantasy games. The problem with this game is that you don't get gil from simply fighting battles, well at least not directly. You get it from selling items that you obtain from battle. What makes this ridiculous is that the items aren't guaranteed. You have a percentage chance of obtaining certain normal items and a drastically smaller probability of obtaining rare items. (On top of this, the percentage of getting these items are based on your battle score [out of five stars]. Score five out of five stars and you have the highest percentage.) You can equip particular accessories to increase the probability of acquiring the items, but they don't increase it to being nearly guaranteed outcomes from every battle. The cherry on top of this awful cake is that only the rare items really sell for money.

Sigh... screw the trophies. I'm done.

I think I'm addicted to watching True Blood.

Haven't been this into a show since Lost.

I'm debating whether I should get a Black Wii since my last Wii got stolen from a friend's place. The reason I would like a Wii is that I would like to mod it and be able to play old SNES games (like Earthbound) as well as play some choice games on the Wii when they come out. The problem is, and always has been, that I really don't use the Wii that much. Most of the time it collects dust until one of those rare Nintendo games (Mario Kart, Smash Bros., Legend of Zelda, Mario, or Metroid) comes out. Right now I have about one-hundred and seventy-five dollars in Gamestop, trade-in cash, so I would only need to pay fifty dollars in real money to get the Wii. Yet, every time I'm about to go purchase it, something within me tells me its not worth the fifty real dollars.

It's a bit sad that I can't decisively buy a Wii for fifty dollars.

8.14/2010

Recently, I've been wondering what people from high school are doing. How's Beth doing? How's Clayton? How's Kevin? How's Andrew?

I guess, with all of this free time, I'm getting nostalgic.

Almost everything is complete for my medical school applications. I have two applications and one committee recommendation left and the school year hasn't even started yet. The two I have left are Howard and Loyola. Howard comes out tomorrow and I have no clue when Loyola will appear. SIU's committee letter is in the works and should be done relatively soon so I can quality check it. Hopefully, it should be done sometime next week so I can send it in to AMCAS.

Everything is falling into place.

8.11/2010

So, Lawrence Fishburne's nineteen year old daughter, Montana Fishburne, is going into pornography. Why? She wants to become famous. But isn't she already famous by virtue of being Lawrence Fishburne's daughter? Yes, but she wants her own fame. So she's going into pornography? Why? She figures it worked for Kim Kardashian, so it should work for her. I have one huge problem with that... I don't think Kim Kardashian publicly detailed that the sex tape was meant to make her famous. I feel like this is an issue because, Kim Kardashian, although she released a sex tape, could remain innocent in the fact that she didn't "intend" for it to become public. Montana, on the other hand, blatantly tells CNN in the video link above that she intends to use the sex tape to become famous and, at least to me, looks bad because of it. Additionally, Kim didn't detail that she released it intentionally. Montana Fishburne is being selfish. She's using her father's name, a name which he worked diligently to establish in Hollywood and elsewhere, with the intent that it will create a media storm around her video and draw more fame and revenue. Sigh...

It's so selfish, it's disgusting.

8.3/2010

The admissions process to any school always seems like a crap shoot. There are so many factors that go into evaluating a student's potential: GPA, test scores, writing capability, and non-cognitive aspects such as extracurricular activities, hobbies, summer camps and others. How is it that an admissions committee can pick and choose potential candidates? I'm not sure.

This process feels so random.

8.1/2010

I recently got into my first medical school: Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. I was able to get the top level of recommendation in order to bypass the interviewing process and secure my spot in their medical school.

Hopefully more schools will soon follow.

On Friday, I went out with Leslie, Kareem, Desire to have a guys night out, but mostly to see Inception for the third time. Anyway, we were supposed to eat and go to the movie at 6:40pm, but we ended up talking and having a large discussion on women, dating, and life. Kareem had recently seen this famous documentary on black women being single. The phenomenon puzzled him. How could gorgeous, successful black women in their twenties and thirties remain single? This situation was an enigma especially because he sees himself as an eligible bachelor.

The issue, I believe, is not that gorgeous, successful black women cannot find a man. They can. I think that the real issue is that they have unrealistic criteria when looking for a man. Have you seen those Old Spice commercials? That's the guy these women are looking for: They want someone who has the body of the professional athlete, the mind of an academician, who's witty, confident, rugged, and rich. Although some of these qualities can be found in most good men, it is nearly impossible to find them all. The solution to this problem of "not being able to find a man" could be solved by these women coming back to reality.

What do I mean coming back to reality? Black women, starting in high school and perpetuating into their mid-to-late twenties, look for qualities that are not conducive to healthy relationships. They want an athlete, a thug, a fratboy, a popular pretty boy, or a rich playboy. Why? Just as some men want "trophy wives," these women are looking for trophy boyfriends. They want someone that other women would be jealous of. The problem is that these types of men... the jocks, fratboys, pretty boys, and playboys... are more inclined to be the one's that cheat and manipulate. They want a status symbol, not a man. For many black women, it isn't until their mid-twenties that they begin to look for stability.

I'm sorry, ladies, but good black men have been here the entire time. The fact is that they have been repeatedly ignored since the beginning. In high school and college, these men were most likely the nerds. Perhaps by graduate school, these men had already found relationships and were getting engaged and married. By the time they are done with graduate or professional school, it's too late for these black women to hop on the bandwagon.

Most black men aren't saints either. A lot are looking for video girls and trophy wives. They want women to look like professional models, move like exotic dancers, yet, simultaneously, be able to hold an intelligent conversation, mentor orphans on the weekends, and still be virgins. These women couldn't possibly exist. It takes even some seemingly good men a while to realize that the superficial qualities of beauty don't last and that conversation and personal connection go a long way.

The moral of the story is coming back to reality. Some people need to evaluate their dating standards so that actual people can meet them. Other people need to re-evaluate their criteria, in reference to themselves, for dating. Studies have shown that fat men will want to date skinnier and much healthier women than themselves. Many women are the same way. They may be out of shape, or overweight, but many still want a man with an athletic build who doesn't seem to care about their weight or figure. People need to be cognizant of the practicality of their beliefs about dating and base their criteria on that kind of realistic analysis.

Reality is often hard to face.

7.1/2010

So far, I have completed my MCAT and the AMCAS application. Right now I'm beginning to fill out secondary applications as they come to my email.

I definitely feel like I'm making progress on getting to medical school. My MCAT score was not as good as my best score on the mocks I'd taken, but it was still good and respectable nonetheless. I'm still a bit upset that it doesn't entirely reflect what I'm capable of, but its should be good enough to get into where I want to go. Despite being upset about not scoring as high as I wanted to, I'm glad that I don't have to take that dreaded exam over again. Some people didn't make it out so lucky. Their scores were much lower than they anticipated and have to go back in a second time. The problem I foresee is that they may have forgotten information in the time between the last MCAT and the next one they take. Thus, they could come back weaker and possibly score lower than before.

I guess that's the problem with the MCAT... schools look at your most recent scores, not your highest scores. Thus, if I went back to take it again, I could potentially score lower, and have to take it again to cover up the most recent scores. Taking this into consideration, the MCAT is a gamble. Part of me actually worries about the people who have to retake the MCAT.

Anyway... Right now I'm completing secondary applications. Something makes me think that secondary applications, for some schools, are not used as just a filtering device. I think that some use it simply, and deviously, to make money. I think they send out applications to everyone that applies, regardless of scores or grades, so that they can increase their own funds. How? Well, secondary applications are not cheap. GW's Medical School secondary application costs one-hundred and twenty-five dollars alone. One can easily see how this could add up, given that thousands of people apply.

Oh well... anyway, I'm going to get up, grab something to eat and get to work on the secondary applications again.

Sigh... almost there.

5.24/2010

LOST's finale was mild at best in my opinion. If I had to assign it a grade, I'd give it a C. It's still passing, but it left far too many questions unanswered:

1) What the black smoke was, why he was localized to the ground, and why he couldn't literally fly (through the air) alway or across the island.
2) Why pylons kept the smoke at bay
3) What happened to Man In Black [he said it was too late... perhaps he was referring to Jack being wounded and not himself being able to get off the island via a constant]
4) The mystery concerning Walt and his "specialness"
5) The significance of the numbers outside of being tied to the candidates. (Why those specific numbers)
6) Why Jacob and MiB's fake mom had killed their real mother. Could she not bear children? Was she simply crazy due to isolation?
7) The egyptian references, the four toed statue, the Temple with the Japanese man (who "killed" Sayid).
8) etc. There are many more unanswered questions.

Furthermore, I felt like they killed off certain characters (Widmore, his female aide, etc.) so that they wouldn't need to explain many of the mysteries. For having watched for six years of my life, I felt kind of let down by them not even acknowledging, or in some cases blatantly ignoring, some of the lingering questions. I did like how the series ended similar to how it began though. That kind of circular closure is always a treat. Also I feel like Jack's role in the finale was appropriate. Starting around the third season, his character seemed to need to be redeemed. His leadership, heroic acts, and death in the end gave his character the redemption he sought.

All in all, however, the ending was weak. It was a disappointment on multiple levels. Strangely enough, I feel that some of the fan-created answers to the mysteries of the island could have worked better than the vision that the show's writers had. I wish they had taken them into consideration. However, I guess it's too late for that.

Not satisfied. Not really.