5.21/2010

Done with the MCAT.

Tired.

5.20/2010

It's one day before the MCAT and my PS3 broke. I'm starting to wonder if that's a bad omen for the MCAT, or just an indication that I play it way too much.

I thought that it could be a bad omen, because of the fact that it broke right before my MCAT date. It was working fine yesterday as I was enjoying Super Street Fighter 4. However, as I started up my PS3 today, I saw there was no button to start playing the game. Confident that the disk was most likely in the PS3, I pressed the eject button. The disk popped out. "Yep, its broken," I thought. I tried a few more games and blu-rays on it before I finally gave up hope. My PS3 is screwed, and I might as well save up for a thinner PS3 with a larger hard drive.

Now that I think about it... maybe it's a good omen. Maybe it's fortuitous that it stopped working when it did. Maybe this will help me focus in my last twenty-four hours before the MCAT. Maybe, as a result, today will be extraordinarily productive. Well, at least, I hope so. Today, I, along with some people from my program who drove down to St. Louis, am going to the library to go over concepts to make sure everything is solid for the test tomorrow.

I can see the benefits of not having a PS3 at the moment, but I'm still slightly pissed.

4.28/2010

I'm about to finish my first year here at MEDPREP, and I'm feeling good. Recently, I was thinking about how time gives perspective to things. Here's an appropriate example: In the beginning, when I got here, I saw MEDPREP as purgatory, as repenting for my academic sins. Initially, I saw nearly every day as hell, but a necessary evil that I needed to overcome in order to attain something better for myself and future family. This perspective has changed, however. I now understand that I wasn't a bit ready for medical school. Sure, if I had gotten in, I may have adapted eventually, but it would have been a desperate struggle.

Now, I feel different. I know it's cliche to refer to it this way, but I feel as though I've leveled up academically. I'm shedding my sophomoric, pubescent academic persona and truly understanding how to take tons of information, condense it, connect it, and understand the larger picture. I guess I needed Duke to wake me up. I needed Duke to kick my ass in the sciences to understand how to begin to study effectively. I also needed MEDPREP to teach me that classes are not a free-for-all, they're a team-sport. If you work in a study group, you lighten the mental load and the amount of stress.

About the MCAT. I think I'm beginning to understand it now. Much like epiphanies in Melee and Halo, I'm beginning to feel like I'm approaching my potential. My biological knowledge seems solid, physics definitely seems solid (something I couldn't have said more than a year ago), and my chemistry and organic chemistry knowledge seems sufficient. If I can raise my chemical knowledge, especially in acids and bases, solutions, and electrochemistry, I feel as though I could murder the MCAT.

23 days left until the MCAT.

I foolishly purchased Super Street Fighter 4. It was clearly an impulse purchase. Clearly. I wasn't great at Street Fighter 4, I recognized that fact early on, and I doubt I'm going to get any better at the upgraded version. I guess the fact that it was forty dollars and that I could sell the PS3 and XBOX 360 versions of SF4 to get it went to my head. Sigh... what happened to my common sense?

I have to clarify. Super Street Fighter 4 isn't a bad game by any means. I can see it's fun, but I just can't get into it. I've been pretty much the same way with nearly every Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom, Darkstalkers, installment. My brain just doesn't understand the system, because its not intuitive to me. Smash Bros., PowerStone, Soul Calibur, and Halo, however, were nothing but intuitive.

Sigh... -_-

My Wii got stolen, but not from my house. I lent it to a friend to help her with her vocabulary and she left it at her boyfriend's house, where it was subsequently stolen. She came to me upset over the weekend, finally telling me that it had been stolen. I didn't care. "I know this sounds horrible," I said, "but I wouldn't have lent it to you if it were important. My Wii was collecting dust anyway." Sure, it was her fault for it being stolen, because I didn't leave the Wii in her boyfriend's care, I left it in hers, but why cry over spilt milk? Playing the blame game wasn't going to bring it back. Plus, I didn't think I'd even miss it.

Meh...

4.5/2010

Duke just won the national title. Awesome.

It would have been better if they'd won while I was still there though.

1.23/2010

Well, it looks like it's a lot harder to gain weight than I previously thought. I thought that gaining weight would be easier... that all I'd have to do was eat more frequently, or eat more in general. I was partially right. Over the first three days of attempting to put on pounds, I actually accomplished just that. I added roughly three pounds. However, in the course of one day, yesterday, I lost 2.6 pounds. So, I'm basically back at the starting point. So, I guess I'm going to have to re-think this whole thing. Maybe I might need to work out more and eat more. I guess...

Sigh. I thought this would be a mindless task.

1.8/2010

I know that, if everything goes well, I will marry Tramaine.

She's amazing.

12.27/2009

I know I've said this a dozen of times, but I'm seeing my interest in video games dwindle. Back when I was a kid... Heck, back when I was at Duke, I felt more interested in video games. I was addicted. At Duke, I regularly bought new games when they came out, and regularly played games after classes. Now, I'm playing games, but they're not nearly as enthralling as they used to be. Over Christmas break I've been catching up on games and been bored with nearly every game. Nearly every game I play now feels like rote mechanical work. I'm playing for trophies, achievements, and to pass the time, but not really because I enjoy playing. It's sad, really.

Killzone 2 feels incomplete and third-rate. Fight Night Round 4, although I haven't played much, seems to be lacking something that would make it more visceral like the previous installment. Disgaea 3 is full of mindless grinding. Star Ocean 4 is much of the same, combined with lifeless characters, and a piss-poor plot. Tekken 6 feels like rock-em sock-em robots: It's the antithesis of Soul Calibur's fluid fighting system. Blue Dragon is pretty, but too linear. Lastly, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 seems too similar to the first. I'm not getting the same adrenaline-pumping feeling that I had playing the others.

Maybe I'm realizing that I'm gradually outgrowing these games? Perhaps I've played nearly every type of game under the sun and thus I'm bored because everything is a cliche? Not sure, but either way my interest is waning.

So bored...

8.1/2009

I'm done giving advice to Manzy. He asks, but never listens. He's like a child. For now on, I will let time be his master. I'm going to let it wreak havoc on him until he learns. I feel as though he needs to make these mistakes to truly understand the weight of the advice we were trying to impart to him.

Instead of trying to help him avoid hard knocks, I think I'll watch.

I'm tired of black women whining about the "absence" of good, single black men. I was in a study group a few days ago and someone brought this argument up. Believing otherwise, I began to raise my hand. "You can't say shit, Jon, you're in a relationship," one said. Still my hand rose. "There are good black men out there," I said, "You just don't see them." I then explained that I've had two relationships in my life. Two. It's not that I'm horribly unattractive or quazimodo-esque. Neither is it that I am morally corrupt or in jail. Black women, generally speaking, want a black man who already is somebody. They want someone who is popular, someone who is rich, someone who is famous, or someone who is highly athletic. The problem is that these men are, often times, the same men that have a propensity to cheat. Black women then come back crying about how they can't find a good man, when the reality of the situation is that, if they adjusted their focus, they would see good black men standing among them.

I'm tired of this crap.

6.28/2009

I think I'm starting to realize that people have innate weaknesses to different things. Example... Some people have a propensity to cheat in their relationships. I, on the other hand, have no desire to cheat. When I see other women, no matter if I find them attractive or not, I see friendship, not sex. Even the attraction isn't high enough to make me want to pursue them. If I happen to have something to talk about I'll approach them, but never really to small talk or "cake." Similarly, some people I know have had problems with gambling, but the issue doesn't exist with me (at least where real, non-virtual, money is concerned). My issues lie elsewhere. I have problems of motivation. Other people don't have problems concerning motivation. They're easily and readily inspired to do things. I, however, am not. A lot of times I have to pull, force, or entice myself into action. My point is that everyone needs to both recognize and try to surmount our own shortcomings.

We must overcome our weaknesses.

Although I have influenced Tramaine into exercise and eating healthy by my own behavior, she has influenced me in other ways. Through her, I realized that I didn't really have problem with going to church. I had a problem with the church I was going to. I possibly needed a younger, more lively church. So, I decided to find a church that I can regularly attend here in Carbondale.

Looks like my life may be coming full circle.

6.25/2009

I arrived in Carbondale, Illionois, on Tuesday. I'm living in a fairly empty town home apartment and have really nothing to do. I've gotten some materials for classes when they start up, I've set up my television and the game systems, I've organized my clothes, and even cooked food for the next few days. I've almost played myself bored of most of the games that I have, and the apartment wireless connection isn't good enough to get on Xbox Live (even though I can get on the Playstation Network just fine.).

Looks like I have no choice but to study.