We have something like 216 people in our class. :X I’m on the right in the second row, third one in, not that you can tell. :P
I’m not sure I can adequately convey in words how absolutely amazing it feels to know what you really want in life and to know that you’re headed in that direction after years upon years of hard work. Granted, I still have many years ahead of me, and I doubt I’m the only one who ever worries about flunking out, but to be here still feels almost unreal. I’ve apparently really only been here for just 2 months and a day, but it feels like it’s been forever. One of these days, I’ll take a picture of the pile of notes/lectures I’ve gone through and learned thus far. It’s pretty frightening, but I’m more surprised that I’m actually retaining it most of it.
I think I definitely made the right decision when I chose to go to this school, and I thank God every day that He helped me with that decision. (Honestly though, the second they accepted me, I was pretty much jubilant and dead-set on going here, because I completely fell in love with the school and this place when I came here for my interview.) It is unbelievably rare to have such a warm, friendly, incredibly supportive, encouraging and genuinely kind community (students included) looking out for us. From the way they take care of us, I find it hard to believe that it’s really a public school. I honestly feel like I’ve been adopted into a family.
This is a couple of us with one of our professors at the president’s reception during orientation week. The school keeps us very well fed. <3 I swear that’s not the reason I chose to come here.
I promise not all my friends are Asian. It just kinda looks that way sometimes a lot of the time. ._.
Waiting at our desks before the ceremony!
Pre-coating! (We’d actually already been coated, but let’s pretend we can time-travel for the time being.)
We bonded partially because we all speak Cantonese (and we like food). I actually peaced out to grab food because I was super hungry so I missed the group-group picture we were gonna take. I’m awesome like that. ._. :O Andrea’s dad made 饅頭 that she shared with us and it was pretty darn awesome. :O :O
Post-Coating!
Some more cam-whoring. :X
Meet my super awesome neighbor (the new addition to this picture)! We have a pet skunk.
I told my family (well, parents, since my brother’s in the Philippines) to save money and stay home so they wouldn’t have to fly all the way out here (and wouldn’t have to use vacation days/call in sick and also miss two weddings for family friends that we’ve known all our lives). So they watched the live streaming, and apparently, I’m psychic, because I smiled and waved at the camera right when my mom was like, “There’s Farrah! Hi Farrah!!!” Ninja apparently also started meowing insistently outside my parents’ door to be let in shortly before I appeared on the screen. (This is highly unusual, because if my dad’s in the room, she usually avoids it like no other. Not so in this case. Mayhaps my cat loves me after all. <3 ) :]
:D! (I consider this an accomplishment, given the fact that we had an exam the morning before, my sleep deprivation + horrible cold.) Hoorays! :D! I will probably camwhore some more pictures later when my coat is embroidered. <3 There will probably be more also when I uh, obtain the rest of the pictures that were taken at the ceremony. :D
I’m in an especially joyous mood today because we just finished the final for our second course! <3! And musculoskeletal (my favorite :D!) is next up! I am running on a total of 1 hour and 20 minutes of sleep and aside from that, I’ve been up since 6 a.m. yesterday. I migrated to my neighbor’s place yesterday at around 2 p.m. and we’ll just put it this way–I didn’t emerge until 5:30 a.m. this morning. It’s nice to know that hard work pays off though. We’re both experiencing an upward trend. :] I think I’m going with him tomorrow back to his hometown so I can see what real rural West Virginia looks like. :O It’ll definitely be a nice break after all the hours of studying we’ve been doing.
Speaking of studying, I’ve been contemplating doing something I’ve neverever contemplated before–willingly skipping class. Even at my worst (best?) when I was taking 10-12 classes per quarter, I never missed a single one unless I was practically dying, but these days, I’ve been considering it more and more, due in part to the fact that we’re in class from 8-5 passively learning (for the most part), and after that, we need to go over it again–active learning–but by then, we’re all exhausted and nothing absorbs as well. Still mulling over it, but I’m going to experiment with not going to class next week and see how that goes.
