I’ve been planning this for months now. I spent all my spare hours accumulating supplies over the summer because, hey, I hated my summer job and looked forward to going back to Purdue. I’ve been trying to pick up as much cheap food as I can. Mom helps when she can. She bought some soy sauce and handed me a SoCo sized glass bottle of “the good stuff”. I reached for the smaller pint-size bottle. She asked, “But how will you eat?” I brought chopsticks just to appease her, as well as a remarkable quantity of utensils she never found a use for. (Mostly pasta-related.) I also brought about 100 lbs of dry or canned foods that we got cheap on sale: cereal, soups, Tuna Helper, granola bars, and ramen. Sadly, I forgot the rice. (Please comment on my fail below.)

It’s a small three-bedroom condo about a mile from the engineering mall, part of a complex located next to a busy interchange next to a bridge. Well, it’s not right next to the highway. There’s a thicketed ditch between the highway and our two balconies. The front is right behind two laundrymats/tanning salon/gym and a bar. Aren’t I afraid of drunken guido attacks? Of course I am, who wouldn’t be? It’s why I carry mace and a New England Journal of Medicine article on the dangers of tanning bed overuse.

We have a shoe rack to keep dirt off the carpet and a foosball table to make the place less gay, but also to serve as a visual centerpiece that ties the room together with contrasting hues and directs the eye towards the TRON poster on the far wall.

However, in order to keep this place affordable, we’ve had to undergo certain cost-shaving measures:

• pantsless Saturdays
• shirtless dinners
• cold showers on days containing S
• buying our soap from a lady named Strawberry out by the river
• illegal recycling
• saving on the electrical bill by running cold water through a dynamo
• turning tricks at the bus station (juggling mostly)

No more brand name foods either. If it is a family name, it’s out of our price range. If, however, the brand name was thought up by some underpaid marketing intern in a basement cubicle in Fort Worth and lacks one or more vowels that would ordinarily place it among words in the English language, we’ll buy it (if it’s on sale). So right now our pantry is a library of Kroger, Valu-time and Safeway products all teetering on the edge of expiration.

Dylan is the shower curtain nazi and I’m the shirt nazi. Dylan makes sure the shower curtain is always unfurled so it dries completely and never gets mildew. I, the shirt nazi, always ask, “Why turn the AC on when you can just remove an article of clothing?” Chris is Britain. He appeases the nazis, then goes back to whatever he was doing.

The neighbors are loud and hard-drinking, but they are pretty much the same as any hall full of freshmen. Some of them started smoking and laughing on the balcony below us and the second hand cloud filled up my room before I could shut off my window fan. I was pissed at first because I had morning class the next day but then I relaxed. It turned out to be easy to get to sleep because I felt like I was floating.

I know their names well enough. I’ve graded their homework and collected their quizzes. I just don’t know their faces.

But today, I shook hands and recited names to myself as I mingled among friends who had already formed their own cliques in the past two years. I guess I’ll join one eventually once my acquaintances in a given clique reaches some critical mass. But for right now, I’m only up to one or two people here and there.

And frankly, I’m not sure how they’re feeling. From what I hear, they were at each other’s throats three months ago. But now we’re all in the special club and can finally let our guard down.

After more speakers, some freshmen year-esque ice breakers, there was a catered lunch with faculty where the food wasn’t actually that bad. Now that we’re sorta-almost-technically grad students they’re not gonna cut corners and assume we’ll eat freshmen-level food.

After lunch my group was herded into buses and taken into the woods next to the airport by a wildlife major. That sounds very scary now that I look back on it, but it was just more team-building. To people I went to middle school with, I’ll can just say: Lorado Taft. To everyone else, I will say: cliched summer camp activities.

Fast forward to the second day. They make us come in formal dress for no other reason than that we’re going to have to dress up a lot in the future. I sit there in another giant conference room, yawning a lot, picking at my name tag and playing with my tie. More speakers; more faculty who sincerely hope to be our mentors. An old R.Ph with a J.D. (who I will call “Dad”) rails on about how people who drink to make themselves stupid are stupid. I was muttering that people also drink for the euphoria. But considering how we are all wearing either ties or heels, I’m guessing euphoria is not on the itinerary today.

I did perk my ears at the curriculum overview. Dosage forms and patient counseling.

The orientation closed with a solemn divulgement that the amount of pharmacy jobs in the state has dropped precipitously in the past twelve months as the supply of PharmD graduates has increased thanks to the 25 pharmacy schools opening in the last ten years. So much for the competition being over.

As I sit there, surrounded by 159 excited PharmD students, I can’t help but continue to feel such gnawing, persisting guilt. My spot in 160 means someone else couldn’t be here. I don’t want to become a pharmacist; I never wanted to become a pharmacist. Others did. Others who weren’t so welcome from the waiting list. I only applied because I was too afraid of failing at pre-med. I didn’t have the confidence I have now.

But I’m here now. And I can’t cede this spot to anyone else. But I can go to med school and become a kick-ass MD with a PharmD.

And I will.

I came really early for training week: Saturday the 14. How couldn’t I? I won’t identify my summer job back in Illy, but I will say that I wore a tie, represented a corporation and endangered the health of hundreds of people.

My mom and aunt dropped me off at the house of Los Tres Camisos Negros: Audrey, Sherry and Liz. They were gracious enough to lend me their couch and let me get naked in their shower for a week while I waited for my lease to start.

Living near the Fowler bridge across the river was a new experience. My only other exposure to overpasses and ramps like that was in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. But I finally know how to navigate that big street by the river without hopping over a concrete divider. Unfortunately, hitting X does not let me do bunny hops over pedestrians. But something I could do here that I couldn’t do in GTA: take the bus to the downtown station so I could transfer to another bus that would take me to work.

Back at the Harrison Grille, with many of the supervisors gone, a lot falls on the shoulders of those who remain, most of all, the grey shirts. Luckily, we have a good looking group of tan shirts that we’ve gotten to know well over the last week. We all bonded over a group espresso binge and a minor smoothie Chernobyl during preview days.

Oh, did I mention we have fresh fruit smoothies. Hells yeah, bitches. Available with or without yogurt.

Bitches.

Also, here is a picture of Audrey’s dog. Please feel free to squee in comments.

Some companies have the shadiest damn job application web sites. Even the ones that contract out to third parties.

“No SSL? Seriously? It looks like you’re having me enter my social security number into a long abandoned Geocities homepage. These forms sits in a bordered table on a tiled background. This looks like the Gary, Indiana of the Internet. Is that a frame? WTF?!”

Target is pretty good. But the movie theater is barebones: forms and a submit button. Like Joe’s Crab Shack.

Dunkin Donuts is classier, contracting out to a third party website, but it requires registration. Also, they tried to sell me cheap plane seats. But they contract other companies too, so I can apply to Pizza Hut and Burger King because they require the same website.

CVS and Menards are ugly, but seems functionally sound; McDonalds’ looks good at first, but the further you get from their corporate home page, the more sparse the design becomes. Eventually you get to that plain-white-background-content-and-back-button sort of style near the end.

Six flags actually required an emergency contact before I started. How bad could this application be? Could I suddenly pass out during?

Awesome. If the job app makes me pass out, what will the interview be like? Will they put me on the Giant Drop to see how I handle stressful situations? The ultimate lie detector.

The application turned out to be just more of the same but at least it attempted to keep things legit. Like many others, it had a bunch of questions at the end that were supposed to gauge my personality. You probably expect that these would be pretty easy, but they’re designed to have content validity but to not be transparent. Most are transparent measures of customer service. But occasionally, they’re ambiguous, and you can tell that the test writers got you.

IE:

“You look back and feel bad about things you’ve done.”
Who hasn’t? If I disagree, then I’m unrepentant. Even a sociopath. If I agree, then I tacitly admit to doing bad things.

“You don’t act polite when you don’t want to.” Is this a question of manners or a question of free will?

“You finish your work no matter what.” A Sith deals in absolutes. For example, if my job were to make sure everyone leaves the park, then aerosolized nerve agents will expedite the process.

“You’ve done your share of troublemaking.” Okay, if I agree, then I come off a troublemaker. If I disagree, that could be interpreted as saying I’m not done making trouble yet.

It’s not to say as if I’m complaining about the Spartan design of some of the webapps. I just think it reflects a lot on the company what the first thing their potential employees see. Like at the job fair where a multiregional, corporate drug giant was luring graduates with a bowl of lollipops.

So what I’ve learned from all this is that online web applications do nothing. No one will ever see it. Show up at the place. Wear a tie. Hold a resume. Don’t be surprised to be deferred to another day.

Now to pick out a toaster oven, American Idol style.

I’m sick. But I also got an A in Immunology. So I know what’s going on in my tonsils which makes me yell at them. Which doesn’t do much more than make my tonsils hurt. Stupid lymphocytes. Of course, this is probably my fault. Staying up until 3AM every night for a week huddled in a steel carrel twenty feet underground in a building that, I’m pretty sure, doesn’t exist until finals and shotgunning sweetener with coffee on it is bound to decimate anyone’s immune system. Oh, well. Three finals in twenty hours. Had to be done. Right now, my GPA’s activity comes down to 10 points of Biochem questions and something involving Sanger sequencing.

Anyway, it’s hard to be funny at a time like this (even though my tweets may contradict) so I’m going to stop now and try to live like a normal person.*

*No! I’m not going to stop blogging and live normally. Chill the hell out.

Tommy: Tara, do I freak out too much?
Tara: It’s natural.
Tommy: Well, yeah, for a rabbit.

*Tommy is casually putting dressing on a salad.*
Eric: (without provocation) Dammit, Tommy! We will not stand for that sort of obscenity here!
Tommy: Just because I’m tossing my own salad?

Audrey: How are shakes coming-?
Tommy: I’m givin’ ‘er all she’s got, Capt’n! I dinnae have any more mixer heads!

Sam: Oh, god, why do you have handcuf- never mind. Don’t tell me.

Call outs

“Orders 291 and 292, your shakes have been up for so long that I’ve given them nicknames. Please come claim Herbie and Shelly.”

“Oh, 763, I’m your shake and I’m cold and lonely. Please come get me.”

“568, did you know that your Grilled Cheese sandwich contains as much calcium as a glass of milk? For the sake of your growing bones, please come claim it.”

“The Harrison Grille is now closed for the semester. We hope you’ll join us again when we reopen on the Sunday before classes start in January, but right now, our sleep-deprived employees have to go home to their wives and mothers. Good luck on your remaining finals and have a good break.”

*Someone in a electronic Darth Vader mask is at the pickup area.*
Tommy: No, sir, I’m afraid your sandwich isn’t ready yet-
Darth Vader: (incomprehensible)
Tommy: We have a lot of tickets right now, but they have to be done in the order they came….
Darth Vader: (Incomprehensible, holds out hand)
Tommy: (grabs neck, chokes)

And let’s not forget the computer-system-is-down-so-everyone-dance-in-the-kitchen nights.

Such is the case with this momentous week of finals. People are gearing up and cracking down as they always will. The vending machines normally full of Rockstars are empty and the libraries are full. Even now, I’m typing this in a computer lab that smells strongly of a vegetable stir-fry.

From what I’ve seen at work, choosing energy drinks is like choosing a fine wine. I’ve seen caffeine junkies cradling and swirling Pomegranate Rockstars and NOS like wine connoisseurs with Parkinson’s.

If they want to punish themselves, such as if they’ve procrastinated all semester, they’ll choose a NOS Powershot; all the caffeine and a bitter aftertaste as a reminder for them not to do this to themselves again.

Monster M-80, otherwise known as the Peach Schnapps of energy drinks is for the casual crammer or even for social all-nighters for the more laid back students.

Myself, I avoid all that because energy drinks at work aren’t eligible for employee meals so I would have to pay for them. What are free however, are the mixed drinks at the soda fountain. Of course, those same 10 Coca-Cola-leased flavors got old freshmen year. I’ve learned to make mixed drinks to increase variability substantially.

Cream Soda = Dr. Pibb + Barq’s Root beer
Raspberry Punch = Raspberry Iced Tea + Fanta
Hawaiian Punch = Blue + Red Powerade + Fanta
Water + Raspberry Iced Tea = Vitamin Water
Elixir of Life = Blue Powerade+ Red Powerade + Vault + Sorcerer’s Stone

By the way, that last one only works if you keep drinking it. Thank you, Nicolas Flamel.

Today, my very Chinese professor, was explaining the probability of getting blue balls when randomly picking from a blind sack. And people were laughing. And he didn’t know why. So when I made the mistake of lingering after class, he came up and asked me what everyone had been laughing about. What was I to do?! Should I have to be the one to explain to my professor what blue balls are? Did I make the right decision to feign ignorance and get the hell out of there?

I really, really like being a TA. I’m coming back next year, for pay hopefully. It’ll be very convenient because I can reuse all my mutilated pig jokes. Rugg was right, being a teacher does have its perks.

Another thing I’m coming back to: Boiler Blast. You can see for yourself how much fun it was in the Facebook album. Incidentally, there’s a member that is the spitting image of young Mr. Rugg (from high school, which means that no one in the eastern time zone will get this). But not only that, I get to bring my obsessive bureaucracy to the group. This year, I mostly helped design the logo. See below for the part I made from scratch in GIMP. The rest of the picture may seem a bit… derivative. Ahem.

Soooo… I sort of left everybody hanging with my pharmacy interview, huh? Well, I was sort of inconsolable and frustrated for a good couple of weeks. Spent an entire Spring Break venting my spleen (< – figure of speech; all of my students should know that the spleen is a secondary lymphatic organ and has no exocrine capacities) with pixelated violence.

Because… well, it didn’t go that well. So, yeah…

Life goes on. Exams, returning from break with 8 lbs of granola/tube socks. Yada, yada. I fight zombies, blog about it, work, which pretty much brings us up to today.

I get the committee’s letter, the Saturday after break. The diagnosis is: Wait-list. #19/80

Which is slightly better than expected. Considering how my interview went. Tough crowd that day.