Spring Quarter 2009

Biology 113: B+
Chemistry 122: Still Being Determined

This quarter definitely had its ups and downs. It marks the first time that I got to spend volunteering in a hospital setting, the first time I've ever taken multiple science classes at the same time, and the first time I've ever been through a city tax audit (we'll get to that one in a few paragraphs).

My reaction to my grades so far has been pure heart break. I went into my bio exam with a borderline solid A and got destroyed by the second half of the test because I studied the wrong material. This must be what the Cleveland Cavaliers felt like after having a near dominant regular season and then blowing it in the playoffs. In the three exams that were administered for my bio class, I was all over the place scoring an 82 on the first exam, then scoring a perfect 100 on the second exam, and then chunking the last exam with a 77. I missed getting an A- by 1 percent which equates to like 5 multiple choice questions on a midterm. I'm still waiting on my grade in chem but it's completely unpredictable how the department issues their letter grades. I'm a near standard deviation above the average but I'm really fearing another B+ since that's what happened the last quarter. I'll never understand the fairness of a bell curve.

My volunteering experience at OSUMC this quarter was humbling. Every Friday morning I got to work at the medical center from 5am to 8am escorting patients being admitted for surgery. The most difficult thing that I had to learn while doing this job was figure out how to properly interact with patients who were clearly not in the greatest mood. Who can blame them? If I had to spend a weekend in the hospital getting surgery I'd probably be in a terrible mood also.

I have one week to reload and refresh my batteries before summer classes start. Kind of rediculous to think that in another 10 weeks, I'll be finished with 2 of the premed science series. Everyone I've spoken to told me that time flies during a post bacc. They weren't kidding.

So what about the whole tax thing you say? Well, apparently when I worked for IBM my income tax withholdings were given to the wrong city. Despite the fact that my address states Dublin, OH; I'm technically still in Columbus city limits. To make a long story short, I had to pay Columbus 2% of all the money I made while working at IBM. For a poor college student thats a small fortune large enough to feed impoverished countries for a decade. The most annoying thing about this process is that I had to provide them with 6 years worth of tax and W2 information. For anyone who is reading this, do yourself a favor and keep an organized folder with all of that crap in it. You never know when some stupid algorithm is going to select you for stuff like this. With my luck, I'll probably be selected for jury duty next quarter. There is also an equally stressful and time consuming process for getting my income tax money back from Dublin. Having to talk to support teams in India in order to get old HR and payroll information from IBM is pretty frustrating when your current priorities are set on learning metabolic pathways and rules about intermolecular forces.