Totally Metal Pre-med Road Trip Woooo! Day 1

Today was the first day of the rest of our lives. I suppose that applies to the day before that, and tomorrow, but you know... there you have it. We left our old home in the Great American Southwest, and headed east. It was hot as balls, but we were not to be repelled by the Southern Plains.

Today, we saw corn. A. Lot. Of. Corn. And wheat, and cows. And hay. The cows smelled cow-like.

Then we went to a Wal Mart in Kansas. Hilarious. Get your groceries, your playstation 3 games, and your 55 caliber anti-aircraft gun ammunition.

My co-pilot Bobbykins worked very hard. He guarded the area near my thigh tirelessly. Or is that tiredly?

Tonight we are in Dodge City, and we ate steaks made out of the cows that we've been seeing all day. They were delicious!! And now we are going to sleep.

Photo credits: Heavy Metal Vixen
Bodyguarding credits: Bobbins

Der turk er jerbs!

Ugh - craziness.

-I have completed about 15 secondaries out of 22, so I'm almost there. My soul has been completely sucked out of my face. Like a dementor.

-Tomorrow, we are moving to the east coast! Which is exciting, but there's a lot to do. It's going to be a hell of a road trip- I'm gonna see some corn fields! I might even keep a Totally Metal Pre-Med Road Trip Diary and post it here! And I might not!

So there's all that. Instead of dwelling on the massive list of shit I got to do before tomorrow, I will dwell on:

5 Awesome Things by Axl Rose the Pre-med-not-the-singer

1) In Waves. Its the name of an about-to-be-released album and just-released single by Trivium. It rocks so hard. I was afraid that Trivium was over for a minute there, but they're back, hardcore. Two thumbs up. And speaking of music...

2) Spotify. The king of online streaming music service is finally available in the USA, and I got it! It's by invitation only right now, but I gots dem connexions. I've been test-driving it, and I have to say, it's quite metal. One thumb and a half up.

3) Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I saw the HPot movie over the weekend. It was sweet, but mostly I was excited about the trailer for the Rise movie. It looks sick. Two simian knuckle-thumbs up. And speaking of simians...

4) Messin with Sasquatch. My favorite commercial campaign by far. They are all on youtube, and they will make you smile, chortle, and, at times, guffaw. Watch them.


5) South Park. It's been around for a long time, but honeslty, every time I come back to it, it's good for some laughs. Do you all remember "Der terk er jerbs"? With all the rednecks complaining about people from the future taking their jobs? Classic. Goood good times.


That is all. Carry on.

Me + Sunshine = That marshmallow you forgot in the fire

I have come to learn about myself the following fact:

My body hates sunshine.

To let the proverbial cat out of the bag regarding my race, my people come from the north. The far, far north. If I had to choose an environment to camouflage perfectly in to, I would choose to stand stark-balls naked in front of a fresh snowfall. I would disappear. My people are used to winters where the sun literally disappears for a few days a year. And you know what? I love it that way. I enjoy the sun more as a concept than as a thing.

Which is why living in the American Southwest does not agree with me. I can't go outside without burning, and every weekend I get heat stroke from playing soccer for a couple hours on Saturday mornings. Literally, I play soccer every Saturday morning, and I spend the rest of the weekend with a headache due to sun exposure. It sucks. This morning, I waited for the bus for 15 minutes, and now I feel dizzy and disorientated. Sun-drunk.

Anyways, this all makes me very pleased to announce that I am officially moving to New England, where the summers are short, the winters are cold, and the people are warm (some of you might think that I am being facetious, but all three of those statements are true!). The people of the Southwest are very warm too, but mostly I'm tired of spending my life running from AC to AC, and sweltering like Satan's taint in between. I miss shoveling snow! I miss scraping ice off my windshield! I miss going shirtless in the summer and not getting any browner at all!

The Dreaded Massively Multiplayer Interview

The topic of the day in Pre-Med world is the NYT article about the new Multiple Mini-Interview (MMI) format for med school admissions. People are freaking out because it's new. In a sentence, in this new interview format, you have 8 or 9 mini-interviews instead of one or two half-hour ones, and each interview is a scenario or ethcal dilemma that you have 8 minutes to deal with. Then on to the next room.

I think it sounds pretty cool - way more entertaining that explaining for the billionth time why I want to be a doctor (same 4 reasons as everyone else dude: chicks, money, power, and chicks), and why this school is my fave ( "There's just no place as dope as this, mister! You have a sim lab!" I swear, when I find a school that doesn't have a sim lab, I'm giving them a frikkin prize).

Anyways, for those of you freaking out about the MMI, fear not! For your eyeballs's pleasure:

Axl Rose's Once-a-day Low-sodium Acne-fighting Blemish-Concealing One-night-only Guide to Winning the MMI!

Rule #1: Be a Dick

Counterintuitive? Sure, why do you think I wrote this guide? (For the $benjamins$, of course). You might think that being a dick is a bad thing for med school interviews. Get with the times grandma! That was in the OLD system. Wanna know who is going to win the MMI? Do you remember that frat guy who stood on the porch of the frat and blasted his douche music and, on Halloween, named eveybody's costume as they passed by, preceded by the word "slutty"? Remember that? "Slutty vampire! Slutty cow! Slutty robot! Slutty ninja!" Well not only was he strangely accurate in his evaluation of your costume, but THAT is the guy who's going to rock the MMI. This new interview format is all about being confident in your own opinion, about thinking on your feet, and being able to chill with the interviewer. If you are going to think too much, you're toast! Dorks are out, dicks are in!

Rule #2: Have sex with the interviewer, immediately.

Regular readers of my blog might recognize this step from my BAFTA-winning entry on How to Win the MCAT. Look, I understand that some people might be uncomfortable with this rule, especially since there are 9 interviews in a row. But you know what, sometimes you have to roll the hard 6 (or 6-and-a-half in my case). The medical profession is all about sacrifice - and it starts now. Do the right thing.

Rule #3: Don't punch the interviewer in the face.

Counterintuitive? Sure, why do you think I wrote this guide? You may be tempted to punch your interviewer in the face. I recommend against it...







Rule #4: Wear one of those tear-away stripper suits.

But Axl, I thought you were supposed to dress conservatively at these things? Yeah dude, you were, in the OLD system. Get with the times Larry King. In the OLD interview system, you had a leisurely half-hour or an hour to make an impression. Now you have 8 minutes. So how are YOU going to make an impression, huh? Answer the questions honestly to the best of your abilities? OH! Good idea! Good thing nobody else thought of that!

[facepalm sigh] It's ok. That's why I'm here - to guide you through this thing. You need to make a big impression in a little time? Tear-away stripper suit. Every time. I speak from experience - I don't think I've ever been forgotten by an interviewer after stripping for them. If you had more than 8 minutes, I'd recommend a regular suit, but since it's just 8 minutes and you have to do it 9 times, I'd go with the tear-away model. Oh, and if you have a bachelorette party coming up, or a bar mitzvah, or a retirement party, and you need a stripper, I offer very reasonable rates. And I have experience and photos if you need them.

Rule #5: Always send a thank you card after the interview...

And inside the card? Cold hard greenbacks baby. Nothing says thank-you like money in the bank-you. Whatever you can afford, it doesn't have to be much. But that's the way the system works, you know? It's not pretty, but it's the way it goes. Oh, and don't mention the word "bribe" or "kickback" in the card itself. They are a little sensitive about that kind of thing. They prefer "secondary application fee".

(Burrrrn! :)

~~~

And there you have it folks! Foolproof! Bulletproof! Axlproof!


(P.S. Props to rude-boy13 on deviantart for the slutty robot - aaawesome!)

Secondaries: do they blow? Discuss.

Secondaries. Ugh. I'm trying to get through them as quickly as possible while still keeping the quality very high. I have I think 23 secondaries to fill out, plus DO schools which I'm still waiting for rec letters on. I've taken a closer look at one school and will probably not fill out a secondary there, but that still leaves a ton, and they all want it back within a reasonable amount of time.

Here's thing number one that bugs me about secondaries: fee farms. Fee farms are schools that invite everybody to submit secondaries and then reject 90% of those people literally within 24 hours of their application. Are you trying to tell me that within 24 hours, you gave my application $110 worth of your time and closely evaluated it and decided that I suck? If it was that obvious that I was a bad fit, could you not have spotted it from my primary app before I sent you $110? Whatever...this hasn't happened to me yet this cycle, but it is happening to some applicants right now, and it grinds my gears.

The other thing that annoys me about secondaries is stupid questions. "Tell us what you think learning means?" "Is honesty important?" "Can you watch this video of a person yawning and not yawn yourself? Why or why not?" "We see dog's wieners all the time, but have you ever seen a cat's wiener? If not, how do you suppose they bone? Discuss."

OK, so the questions are slightly less dumb than that (where IS a cat's wiener tho?...), but only slightly.

NEwAs, back to work.

Holy F*(&$h#T Batman!

Wow. When it rains, it effin' innundates me in a shitstorm of ridiculousness.

(deep inhale)

Yesterday I spent 8 hours on 3 planes to go 800 miles on a trip that should have taken me 2 hours on 1 plane had it not been for bad weather on my layover and then I got home at 2am, slept for 5-6 hours, then went to the cat boarding house to pick up Bobbins Chookums Magellan Mouse-Destroyer 3000 so that they wouldn't charge me a whole nother day of rent and then I turned around and went straight to work where I found that I was late for my phone appointment with the dean of admissions at University of Derp-derpistan so I called her and apologized profusely and had a good discussion about how sad my previous application was and how I promised that this one would rock her balls off and then I went back up to my lab and did an experiment and while the experiment was going I completed two out of the 16 trillion secondary applications that were sent to me over the long weekend and now I am doing another experiment and then I will go home and show the piano to a potential buyer and then finish up two more secondary apps that were due in 42 BC and then I will poop and then I will do laundry and shower because I smell like a fart because I havent had time to clean myself from the 8 hours of travel yesterday.

(inhale)

I need some down time. If the weekend comes at the end of this week, then I will sleep...