Med School so far

Wow, I didn't realize the last time I posted was two weeks before school started. It's been a month since anyone even used this but I'd thought I'd let you guys know what's up, mainly cause Fredrickson's addition to the journal this week reminded me. I haven't studied at all today and thought I'd cap it off with posting, to feel a little productive.

This week we had our third test, indicating my first semester of medical school is 3/4 over and going pretty decently. Sadly, I don't just have to get 50% to pass like Nathaniel but I have enough of a buffer between a failing grade that I hopefully don't have to worry about screwing it up this semester. I'm only concerned about the finals which are all cumulative. Being able to recite everything I've learned this semester in three classes just seems insurmountable. Luckily 2 of the 3 are nationally standardized so I can buy review books but Biochemistry has been ridiculously hard this semester and could get me. Still, I'm passing everything by at least 10 percent, which I'm very happy to report.

As for the rest of life, there isn't much to say. I study a lot (to be expected, I guess) which doesn't leave too much time to socialize. Our class has melded pretty well so we find time to socialize together, especially after the tests. They're definitely not the same as Taylor, but some of the guys are pretty cool. For all the stress that runs rampant, there have been no major blow-ups, at least not yet. As the semester ends, that could change. Most weekends I've found some excuse to leave, which has hurt my studying but helped my mental health. I usually just go back to Indy for a few hours to see friends, but I'm definitely trying to find some time to make it up to Purdue before the semester ends. I might even have the chance to get to Taylor cause our semester ends a week before they do. (But it would mean being there to distract people during finals week.) Just thinking back, Homecoming was definitely the best time of the entire semester. I'm hoping we can all do it again next year, if not before then.

Only five more weeks. I just have to keep reminding myself, only five more weeks.

So the semester's almost halfway over, I've got midterms coming up. This week was our fall break, and I spent most of it in the apartment studying. The rest of it I spent finally buying a car, a '99 chevy prizm. It was relatively cheap and seemed to be in pretty good shape, which is what I was looking for. The interior's kind of beat up, but the engine's clean and runs well. I'm a believer in the chevy prizm/toyota corolla duality thing, so I expect it to go for quite some time. You can look around and find a number of parts that say toyota on them. I feel like now that I have a car I respect I'll actually take care of it, unlike some other cars I've owned in the past.

I think I only have to get 50% on my midterms to still be in good shape as far as passing, so I'm not stressing too much about that. I left my motivation to get good grades at Taylor, every last bit of it, and it's everything I hoped it could be.

I found a church here that I've been going to, but lately the pastor's been striking out. I really like the worship and congregation, but he talks a bunch about parenting and family stuff, and sometimes I don't think he knows what he's talking about. He's not a very organized speaker. He talks right out of the bible, but sometimes he goes on rabbit trails that don't really go anywhere. The pastor is actually Jeremy Camp's dad, and sometimes he talks about raising Jeremy to illustrate points and stuff, it's kind of funny.

Hoseef's Summer

Wow, what have I got myself into??? I thought this job had to possibility of being sweet right out of college but so far it has been really tough. I thought college was supposed to keep you from having to do manual labor, but thats almost all I do right now. I work in the yard, drive trucks, and every once in a while get to sit in the office to do management type things. The first couple of weeks I worked almost 50+ hours and was really just killing myself trying to learn everything, the products and cutomers and all of that. Right now I am in what is called a Branch Manager training position which basically means I do everything no one else wants to do. I have to drive a Ford F-650 truck that has a 18ft. flatbed on it to take materials all over the county (about a 45 minute radius in 3 directions and sometimes up to Jacksonville or Orlando), I've also had to learn how to drive stick in a piece of crap F-350, I really should have been rear ended several times when I started going and couldn't get into the next gear for several seconds or stalled out. Also, part of the reason I took this job was the fact that it would be possible for me to have a company car as part of my "salary" but in order to get it I have to learn how to drive a semi-truck with a 40ft. flatbed trailer. Right now I am learning how to just drive the semi without the trailer and it has been rough going so far, better than the 350 but with 10 gears to shift through its a littler more complicated, especially turning and down shifting. Hopefully I'll be ready to take my drivers test in about 2 months otherwise I may be in trouble with my bosses. The worst part is the randominity of the hours, most days I don't have to be in to work until 8 but on Tuesday and Thursdays I have open the branch at either 5 or 6 a.m. more often then not at 5. Its not bad when I can get off at 2 in the afternoon but the branch manager usually tries to get me to stay later driving and such. I feel like I am sometimes a work a holic but there are guys who work 12 hours a day at my branch and I sometimes feel as though I need to keep up with them. Anyway the first couple of months are supposed to be really tough I think and I am looking forward to the time after I have my license so that I don't have to drive as much and will be trained more in the office.

I should be able to see you all in October for homecoming I got the day off even though I don't think I was really supposed to, more on that later. Anyway I didn't want this to seem like all I was doing was complaining, I mean I did get a decent job just a week out of college, but as my district manager said the first six weeks are going to be hell and then it'll go down from there. Hopefully I'll be able to post more later about work and evertyhing else that is going on and it won't seem so "depressing," but I miss all of you guys and look forward to catching up with you soon.

Hoseef

Homecoming!

Hey guys, homecoming is coming up October 19-21. I'm definitely going to make an effort to make it out. Bring frisbees, I want to get a couple games of golf in.

2 Weeks

Truthfully, I have mixed feelings about the summer ending. I have approximately two weeks before classes start on the 13th. I realized last night that I'll finally be going to school "for real." I'll actually have to concentrate on learning the material to apply in life and not just for periodic tests. Basically everything is falling into place for next semester except for housing. There were a few delays and I received an email from my roommate today that said the apartment complex would have a place available for us by mid-August. I'm hoping it's a generous estimate because we have to move in earlier than that otherwise we'll be camping for the first week of medical school.

I've successfully avoided having a job this summer which gave me the time to go with my church's youth group on a bike trip to Knoxville, TN. I drove the support vehicle for the week long trip, meaning I drove 60 miles a day at 10-15 mph. Everything went pretty well and the trip was fun. The only complication arose on the way back when the truck I was driving broke down about an hour north of Knoxville, forcing me to stay in TN until I could find people from church to drive down and haul me and the truck back to Indy. Luckily, the youth group was spending the week at a conference so I was able to camp out with them. The whole thing set me back 3 days and I had to rush around once I got back to get med school paperwork in. I'm caught up now but it was hectic.

Adding to the craziness was juggling getting the paperwork done and hanging out with Peter and Josh. Actually Peter called me within five minutes of returning from TN last Thursday because he had just gotten into town as well. Josh came down on Saturday and the three of us got to chill for about four days. We fished, bowled, shot pool, gambling at the local Catholic fair, and hit up BW's more than once. (There may have been some alcohol use involved as well :) ) Josh and I also accompanied Peter on gun buying binge because he couldn't go more than a few days without having one. Peter's still in town until the 7th so if anyone's coming through Indy soon, he'd love to see you.

I'm hoping to enjoy the next two weeks before this Med School nonsense starts. Slink, I'm looking forward to the wedding because it's conveniently the weekend after our first major test and I assume I'll need the break.

Updizzle

The summer is drawing to a close, hallelujah. My job hasn't killed me yet, but there's still a week left so I won't speak too soon. Last week a guy running the machine I run lost the end of his finger doing something stupid, but it's the same stupid thing all of us operators do to get stubborn parts into the machine. But fortunately I don't work in that area anymore, cus I passed my welding test and I'm officially a welder now. The started me out doing tig welding, which is easier than mig welding. My boss is a big black guy with corn rows and every now and then he refers to me as "my tigger", which makes me happy, especially cus he doesn't get why it's funny. Basically I babysit a giant robotic arm the size of a small house and clean up its welds when it's done. I also change its tips when they get dirty and clean the spatter off its dies. They've got me on third shift, but since that's only 8 hours (before I was working 10-12 hour shifts) I've been staying over for a couple hours in the morning and helping at my old job, which involves lifting 40-50 lb parts onto a air check table and then off again into a rack. This is by far the hardest I've ever worked in my life, and the longest hours. I have very little trouble getting to sleep at night.

Purdue plans are going smoothly. I've signed my lease with my new roommate (although danny will always be number one in my heart), and I'm putting together first semester classes. I'm going through my old control systems textbook and actually learning all the things that got replaced by a crap semester project by one V. Diddy, because that's just the kind of classes I will be taking.

The funding I got is a teaching assistantship, so I will be working for a professor apprx. 20 hours a week and they give me a complete tuition waiver and a stipend to live off of. I'll have to budget pretty carefully, but it's not too bad. Especially if I can get a sweet summer job next summer. My car doesn't need replacing quite yet, but I think it's getting there. I was hoping I'd have enough from this job to buy something better, but it doesn't look like I'll quite get there. I could buy something, but it wouldn't be much and there's such a huge risk when you start scraping the bottom of the used car barrel.

In other news, I got a cell phone! It's a motorolla KRZR, so you're welcome for the business slinky, and if I have problems I'm complaining to you and holding you accountable to know everything about my phone. I haven't really played with it yet, haven't had time. I'm on AT&T/cingular, and I have free nights and weekends and free long distance. See facebook for number.

Keeping it going

Well if no one else wants to post up things then I guess it's up to me to try to keep this thing alive. So now I'm going to request information from the other two people using this thing. So people tell me about your summer what your currently doing and how it's going for you.

My summer has been going alright. First month or so at Motorola proved exciting and challenging. I was labeled as the expert of a IT environment because I worked with it last year and the old expert moved to a different division. So my first job was setting that environment up and shipping it over to Russia so they can run it there. Apparently lots of things got outsourced since I left. After that project I started working on some Nextel specific issues and whatnot. It's been slow but it's slowly picking up so it's good. Not the work I want to be doing but right now I can't complain.

As for not work things. I moved into an apartment July 7, 2007. It's a two bedroom apartment with a large kitchen and a fireplace. The location is halfway between my house and my work so my commute has shortened from an hour home to more like 20-30 minutes, much more manageable. Last weekend Mindy and I got some couches for the apartment and some barstools for the breakfest bar. It's been quite a ride with all the wedding things and it's only going to get crazier.

Alright guys let me know what you've been up to!