I haven't written anything in a long time, about a year or so. This is mainly because I got lazy with this and then completely forgot I even had this. Today, I had an interesting set of experiences from studying Thermo for the MCAT to helping my brother with his PSAT prep to almost being in a car accident and it made me a bit reflective. From now on, I intend on keeping up with this blog mainly as a journal, but also as an informative guide to what life may throw at you, and hopefully anyone who reads this will be able to relate to some of the situations I will discuss. To give you all a brief overview and to allow myself to briefly reflect on my past year, here's what has happened:
I finished my Junior Year (3rd Year since I'm at UVA and we insist on being pretentious)quite successfully. I was able to improve my GPA slightly by getting good grades both semesters despite taking some difficult courses. By far, my favorite course of the year was Biochemistry. It is such a fascinating topic and I encourage anyone who is interested in science to take that class, even if it means auditing it for fun. Aside from academics, my a capella group, Ektaal, of which I am the president, had great success this year. We finally released our first CD and got some good reviews. We also competed in our first intercollegiate performance at Johns Hopkins and received great applause from the crowd. In my capacity as Cultural Chair of the Indian Student Association, we ran an outstanding India Day with numerous participants and a wonderful crowd. I also changed my research focus mid-way through the year. I used to work in a lab doing research on pancreatic islet dysfunction in type-II diabetic mice to determine the potential anti-diabetogenic effects of drugs. It was very interesting at first and the pathogenesis and pathophysiology of diabetes is a pretty cool thing to learn about, but pippetting and running Calcium-fluorescence models just became to mundane and boring for my taste. When all said and done, I am now working with Dr. Druzgal in the Division of Neuroradiology in the Department of Radiology at the UVA Medical Center. I'm doing some very interesting work with autism in adults and the Theory of Mind network in the brain(I will go into the detail of my research later as I am sure it will continue to come up). Despite the good times, I also had some unfortunate circumstances this past school year. Since my last post, my grandfather (on my mother's side) died, primarily of kidney failure among other complications. It was truly heartbreaking for me as he was a great motivation and idol for me to pursue medicine as a career. He was an ophthalmologist, and a very eminent one in India. He was probably my #1 supporter in all that I wanted to accomplish whether it be tennis, music, or academics. I really miss him and I will continue to talk about him and some of the plans I have regarding his legacy later. In addition to my grandfather's demise, I also failed to get selected for a few scholarships (sad face), though I did manage to get selected for the U.S. Patent Office Summer Externship Program...which I declined to accept.
So, hopefully that was a brief enough overview of my year. From tomorrow's post onwards, I will talk about that day's events and other commentary and general advice I may have. I've been thinking of a clever way to sign off, but until my creativity kicks in, trite phrases shall prevail...
Cheers!
- BK
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