Blogging on a School Night

Its crazy that I have to be up at 6am for rotation and I’m still up, which is very unlike me. Its the first time in a while I’ve been unable to sleep and had to actually leave my bedroom because the tossing and turning for hours was so bad. I wonder if its just the accumulation of stuff on my mind: Finals. Girls. The Future. Getting a summer job. Did I mention acing my finals and girls? It seems like there’s just so much on my plate that it’s tough to know where to begin. Hopefully I’ll figure it all out, in the matter of two weeks. I don’t have any other choice do I?

Priorities

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
– Robert Frost “The Road Not Taken”

In my friend’s car on the way to grab something to eat after exams, I got a text from a friend, saying there was a party going on tonight. The first reaction of any college student is most likely a “hell yea” type of response, which was mine, until the thought of a pharmacy lab and pharmaceutics midterm on Monday and medicinal chemistry final on Friday dawned on me, and reality set in. At that point I was leaning more towards going.

“Why do parties get in the way of studying?” I asked my friend.

“Actually, it could be studying that gets in the way of partying,” my friend replied.

And that made me wonder. This phrase is pretty much all about priority, and now that I think about it I’m both happy and depressed at my response.

In a sense, I’m probably another step closer towards maturing, which deserves a pat on the back. But when? I guess during my break in between reading my lab manual and pharmaceutics textbook.

You know, I think Robert Frost knew what he was talking about, right down to the sigh.

Response to Daily Post #50: If I had a million dollars

The topic of the day was what would I do with a million dollars, tax free.

I thought this was a pretty tough topic, but here is the list of what I would probably do with the money. Since a million dollars doesn’t just fall on your lap, and in the case of this question it does, I figure why not live a little and spend all of it?

1. Finish paying all my tuition (next year and two years grad) = 120,000
2. Pay for the rest of my sisters law school = 60,000
3. Buy a crapload of clothes, enough that I won’t need to worry about it ever again = 50,000
4. Pay off my parents mortgage = 50,000 (I reckon?)
5. Get an apartment in Forest Hills for the remainder of college + grad school (+groceries, etc) = 160,000
6. 20 ticket packages for New York Yankees games in the suites for about 4 seasons = 30,000
7. Buy a Tesla Roadster (stylish and electric!) = 120,000
8. Donate money to various charities = 300,000
9. Expensive dinner for me and my family = 1,000
10. Trip to Japan with me and my friends = 50,000
11. Help cousins/family with the rest = 50,000

I think I’m still left with 9,000. I think I would spend that on getting a french bulldog and taking care of it.

Well, that’s what I’d do with a million clams.

Playoffs

In most sports, currently College Basketball, there is a tournament at the end of the regular season where 64 teams are invited to compete in a tournament put together by the NCAA  where one team is crowned the champion.
For teams like mine, (St. John’s University) this has been a very positive season. We’ve lost a few really bad games that we should have won, but we also won a lot of big games against teams that were supposed to be better than us. I remember in one interview Steve Lavin, our new head coach this year started talking about determining your own destiny. To paraphrase, instead of having the NCAA Selection Committee see whether you’re good enough to be in the tournament or not, you can take destiny into your own hands and do what you can to make that process a little easier on them.

For me, I draw a lot of inspiration from sports. I think it’s a great source of it, there’s so many stories every day of the people who had to overcome a lot of adversity, to the teams that are considered severe underdogs blowing out the top teams. Being one of the underdog teams this year, I’ve been drawing a lot of inspiration from my basketball team this season.

Its the concept that you can go out there and get whatever you want to achieve. The harder you work at it, the more you put your heart into it, you’ll get what you want. Doesn’t matter whose counting you out, or whatever odds aren’t in your favor. I have a feeling that this is my year and that every goal I’m setting out to accomplish will be achieved.

 

Till then WordPress.

 

P.S

GO JOHNNIES!

Everyone Loves a Hero

Right?

Everyone loves the story of the hero. The person who no one believed in. The person that persevered through all the obstacles to make his dreams come true and on his/her journey to the top, become loved and revered by many. In a book I recently finished, I thought I was being promised this, but towards the end it took a more realistic turn. It went from a story of a pure and natural being, to a corruptible human.

The Natural by Bernard Malamud is the story of a man named Roy Hobbs, who dreams of playing baseball in the Majors (and breaking every record with his unnatural abilities to play every position extremely well). The story opens up when he’s about 25, and on his way to a Chicago Cubs practice to showcase his talents. On his way there, he meets a known Slugger in the league, who challenges him to the task of striking him out, which our hero does after much suspense. Towards the end of the chapter however, he gets shot and with that bullet, loses his youth and chance to play in the Majors.

Fast forward ten years, and he makes it at the age of 35 to the bottom feeder New York Knights, whose coach (Pop) just wants a pennant so he can retire peacefully. After seeing his abilities at the plate and as an outfielder, Roy quickly helps the Knights to contending for first place, as well as win over the hearts of fans. On his journey he meets two women as well, one who he is obsessed with for most of the novel (Memo), although he knows she is no good for him, and the other (Iris) who is perfect in every way, other than aesthetically. His corruption starts here after falling in love with both and choosing the one that inflicts more damage than helps.

After facing health complications and learning that he may only have this year left in the majors (with a rookie’s salary which was not enough to pay for his living expenses as is) and Memo saying she would be with him if he had more money, he makes a deal to give the game away in order to win enough money to retire with happily. When it’s his turn to bat as the final out of the 9th after blowing much of the game away, he realizes how important this is to him, only to strike out swinging. The novel ends with the media finding out about his deal, a boy asking him if what the newspaper said was true, and him crying on a bench.

This is the story of a hero who was corrupted by his inability to learn from mistakes. After having his heart broken, as many of us tend to do as well, he still keeps trying to win Memo’s love, even at the expense of another, Iris, who would have been perfect for him. It’s a sad story of a person who was given a second chance, only to blow it for some money that he inevitably feels horrible about, and throws it away. It’s something that I hope to take away from the book, which is to learn from life’s lessons as i discover them, and to hold onto things I believe in before others.

Greetings WordPress!

I come to you with open arms. I’ve been doing this blogging stuff for years now, dating back to the high school Xanga days. It seems with those and the countless other blogs, I’ve been slowly maturing and I hope this is just another step on the Blogger’s journey. I’ll be updating with a real post soon.