Spring back

Unfortunately today was the first day back from spring break, to which I say LAAAME. My wonderful, thoughtful, totally not vindictive phys anth prof decided to make our second midterm today at 9am, plus an extra credit paper was due. Before the break he cheerfully told us that we shouldn't worry about the test because the class average on the last one was 77%, and that's great because usually his class averages are more like 67%, so we're doing great! Smile! Yay! There was a big heavy silence before I piped up with "That's a terrible grade, no one wants those kinds of grades!" and everyone else chimed in with "Yeah dude wtf, wtf dude." He seemed confused and repeated that he's not going to grade us on a curve anyway, so whatever. Also, three exams like this one make our entire semester grade. Silly physical anthropologists, you're all so odd.

YES MILANA, I'M TALKING ABOUT YOU AND YOUR APES.

I had library books due yesterday but the library was closed for the break so I had to wait until today to recheck them. They're still charging me a late fee for all of them. It's only 75 cents total so I won't complain, but sheeeesh. Way to be a pain in the ass, library ladies. This is even more annoying than the time I returned books on time but they didn't get around to checking them back in for a few days so they tried to charge me late fees for that time.

Good news, though. I was talking to a girl in my Biomedicine and Culture class (one of the two other pre-med profession people in the class) about how difficult it's going to be for me to get the kind of experience necessary to apply to public health school. Turns out she manages the pre-health profession advising office on campus, and she got me an appointment with the director and gave me a lot of good advice on where to go to get the experience I need. I had tried several times to get that info from the pre-health office before and they'd told me to just go to the public health school's admissions and ask them, which is a horrible idea. I'd also asked the community service office and the career development office, both of which had told me to leave, go home, get on my computer, and search their database for openings.

So this is mixed good news. On one hand, I'm finally getting the information I should have gotten (and tried to get) seven months ago when I started at UH. That's good news. On the other hand, it turns out that I REALLY need to have been working to get the requisite experience for an MPH program starting... Oh, SEVEN MONTHS AGO. Turns out they want you to get work experience while you're an undergrad, not after you graduate. That's the bad news-- whatever lazy chicks had been brushing me off at the pre-health office before quite literally screwed me out of getting to apply to an MPH program on time because they didn't give me the opportunity to get that veeery valuable little tidbit of information. Meh.

That means I'll be trying to get taken on as a full time volunteer with at least one medical center and/or clinic nearby here. After I get back from Guam I'll use the advice I got today to try and get a paid or intern position at a private practice. Apparently the trick is to just keep asking until someone agrees to take you on, which I'm going to hate doing but whatever. I'll have to jump through some stupid hoops if I want to SAVE THE WORLD and whatnots.