what if we were infinitesimally small?

So as part of my summer program, we get to take day-long workshops on different microscopy methods, modeling techniques, etc.  I took one about SEMs (scanning electron microscopies) and they talked about how images of a sample surface can be formed by scanning it with a high-energy beam of electrons.  As a perparation step, often a layer of gold is 'scattered onto the surface' of the material. 

As the instructor lady went on through her slides, I suddenly drew a mental picture of me as a tiny bacteria on the top of a surface material and as I'm being send into a huge tunnel of darkness, a sudden explosion of gold particles showered on top of me, like fireworks on 4th of July, except now I'm covered in gold.  It made me wonder what it's like being something so small, or even slightly bigger, like an ant.  What it must be like to feel the whole ground shake when someone walks toward you, aiming to squash you with their gigantic foot...maybe it's like the empire state building coming after you.  What about when I flushed that cockroach down the toilet, was it like a being in a hurricane or a vertex except it's 100000 time your body size?  If they had the same mental capacity as we did, what would they think of us, and how they would curse at our merciless actions.  If I was really an ant, I'd be eating hamburgers the size of 2 bath tubs!  and I'd have hundreds of kids in a life time...  Oh what horrifying thought to ponder upon.  I think I'll stop now.

    So working in lab is not what i had expected...then again, what did I expect?  for one thing, it's definitely not like chem lab, haha  i guess that's a good thing.  It's more like 90% reading and figuring out what you're suppose to do and 10% of actually doing it.  Of that 10%, 8% is me repeating the experiment because something's gone horribly wrong.  It's quite interesting to say the least. 

    Several of my friends from this summer program are also applying to med school at the moment and it suddenly made me realize how close I am to another crazy year of the application process.  Everyone has something that makes them stand out, have something extraordinary.  But I can't think of anything that makes me special.  The application requires you to list 15 things you've done in college outside of school work.  I looked at my fingers and counted.  I could only come up with 9.  I need 6 more things!!  I can't even come up with 6 more things I can possibly do, let alone actually doing them with 19 credits of engineering classes!   I am NOT looking forward to school next year.

    I called my dad today, I delivered the 46 on my bio exam carefully to him, expecting another hour of lecture on how to study and why I did poorly... i was wrong.

    He told me it was ok, that I tried and I'll just do better next time. 

    So why am I the one beating myself up over it?  Why do people like me have such high expectations knowing that we'll just fail and hurt ourselves.  Why do I care so much?  If we can all just be happy about what we've done and how far we've come, then wouldn't life be much easier? 

    Now that I think about it, life isn't hard, we just make it hard.  We make it impossible, and then we complain and cry about it as if we're the victim.  But in reality, we're the victimizer.  So why am I complaining?  I shouldn't be...

    Ok, I'll stop now.

    Gosh I'm good at comforting myself. 

ok...i couldn't resist visiting xanga....

so, as I sat on the chinatown long distance bus last weekend, with still 3 1/2 hours of journey left, I was bored out of my mind when I found an issue of Discover Magazine mixed with a bunch of papers in my bag.  I flipped open the last page and there it was the most interesting thing i've read in the entire school year:  20 THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT RATS

Now, i'm not going to write down all of them, but here's a few interesting one:

1.  A female rat can mate as many as 500 times with various males during a six-hour period of receptivity - a state she experiences about 15 times a year.  Thus, a pair of brown rats can produce as many as 2,000 descendants in a year if left to breed unchecked. ( A rat matures sexually at age 3-4 months.)  An average rat's life span is 2-3 years.

2.  A rat can tread water for 3 days and survive being flushed down the toilet.  There is approximately one rat per person in the United States.

3.  some rats are endangered....how sad!

4.  Perhaps they're reincarnated teenagers:  According to a study by Martin Schein, the favorite foods of city-dwelling brown rats include scrambled eggs, macaroni and cheese, and cooked corn.

5.  Rats eat their own feces, purely for the nutritional value.

6.  A recent study at the National Institutes of Health revealed that decreasing the caloric intake of rats expands their life span.  So feed them as much as you can.

7.  Drats!  A rat can fall as far as 50 feet and land uninjured.

8.  Innie or outie?  Rats don't have gallbladders or tonsils, but they do have belly buttons.

bye bye....