Yet another test for grad school

A little gem whilst I further enjoy eschewing graduate school applications (from PhD Comics):



To be fair to myself, I did apply to two schools already. The other three I anticipate applying for are due in the middle of January, a week after I hear back from Teach For America. Since I know where my priorities lie, I've almost completely convinced myself not to fret about these next three applications until I know for sure about TFA. Yet I've already dropped so much time and money (and little Link-esque hearts) on GREs, official transcripts, letters of rec and more, that I almost feel obligated to play out the season with these last applications and see what schools I can get into.

That does remind me: I need to write about Teach For America sometime soon. Now there's a quickie New Year's resolution.

Holiday Bowl: FINAL

CAL: 45 TEXAS A&M: 10

Holiday Bowl: Predictions

It's here!

I actually had the opportunity to make it down there for the game tomorrow, but I decided to stick around in the South Bay throughout the holidays. In retrospect, that was somewhat of an unwise decision. Watching it on TV is just as good... yeah?

My predictions for the game: Cal will utterly whomp Texas.

Cal: 174 Texas A&M: -2*

Go Bears!

(*I freely admit I'm not a football blogger. You can find some real analysis here and here.)

UCLA Taser Forum

(Technorati Tags: UCLA, taser, hall staff)

Gotta love students' sense of activism (from the Daily Bruin 12/7):

UCLA officials held a town hall-style discussion Wednesday night to facilitate conversation between students and university officials regarding the Nov. 14 Taser incident.

...

But student turnout was sparse, with nine students present throughout the course of the discussion.

Evan Shulman, a third-year cognitive science student, attributed the low turnout to dead week and finals. "As a resident assistant I tried to get my floor to attend, but most told me they were too busy to come," Shulman said.

The forum was organized by the faculty-in-residence program, and if theirs is anything like ours here at Berkeley, it's small and works closely only with the residence halls and the career center. This event was likely only advertised in the halls for residents, but the numbers in attendance are still telling. Here's an event allowing for students to speak their minds in a forum slightly more important than an online message board, and for students to hear officials comment and debate what happened and explain their positions on the matter, and yet only a handful of students take advantage of it. I almost want to attribute it to facebook activism and the general apathy of our peers, but there were also successful on-campus protests that drew large crowds, so I don't think that's it.

Is it obstinacy? Perhaps. A couple of cops make a bad judgment call and the entire conglomerate of officials at UCLA are all taken down a peg. Students might not respect their opinions, and might not think it effective to even communicate with the older folks about the issue. Given the pending investigation, that's all that can be done and so trying to reason with idiots is a waste of time. This viewpoint won't help win any debates or convince anyone, but it might not matter for students. And if college students are this obstinate at this point in their lives, just think of what will happen when they get old, cranky, and lose their sense of open-mindedness. *shudder*

Is the issue just plain dead? Perhaps. The taser incident happened over a month ago. Do students just not care anymore, or think that the poor tasing of one of their brothers takes the silver when competing against that approaching calculus final? If our generation is that quick to forget, our future is still looking grim.

Did students realize they were wrong to judge the police so quickly and decide to call off la résistance? I doubt it.

None of the students in attendance actually spoke during the discussion. Instead, they listened to faculty members and university officials.

...and thought up more inane protest cheers about not tasing them for forgetting their IDs.

Merry Christmas!

To those who celebrate it: have a Merry Christmas! Otherwise, Happy Holidays!

Berkeley Blogging

The Berkeley blogosphere needs your help! Tens of thousands of students attend Cal, all hailing from a wide array of backgrounds and comprising a subset of the diversity found all over the world, yet weblogs, a new and increasingly useful medium for disseminating information, portraying perspectives, and accentuating activism, are only utilized by a select few. As technology rapidly advances, it seems college students here are inapt to embracing it.

A new class offered this Spring, "The Weblog as a Medium for Nonfiction Creative Writing", seeks to change that. I encourage readers who attend Cal to consider enrolling in this class, to better your writing skills and to add to the voice we Golden Bears have on the web. Why not start your own blog today, and get some practice before class begins?

Holiday Wishes from the GREs

(Technorati Tags: GRE, Graduate School, Education)

Back again

And after a torturous finals week, we are back to our regularly scheduled blogging, and I'm back in San Jose for two weeks.

I'm thinking of changing the template around slightly (as I've done somewhat already), but will wait for further divine inspiration (or feedback) for what exactly that will entail.

Blogs (and a departure from studying)

The Berkeley blogging atmosphere is a trifle stuffy lately, what with the lack of everyone's will to write anything of value. Finals week has a way of crippling the collective will to create.

And, try as I may (and I have), I just cannot get into the Berkeley livejournal speek. Don't tell me what to confess anonymously, oh random wretches of cyberspace.

But I do enjoy pixelated goodness.

Racism? In America?

Knowing that this is actually news to some people only makes my headache worse, but it also serves to embolden my intentions.

(CNN) -- Most Americans, white and black, see racism as a lingering problem in the United States, and many say they know people who are racist, according to a new poll.

But few Americans of either race -- about one out of eight -- consider themselves racist.

Praise!

Happy end-of-classes, Berkeley students! Good goddamn riddance.

Mind Controlling Fungi!

Here's a short clip testifying to the haunting nature of Nature itself. Much like the checks and balances used within an ideal democracy, Nature has its own ways of preventing any one species from gaining absolute power. Mind-controlling fungi just happen to be one of them.

These ants are showing some worrying symptoms.... Spores have infiltrated their bodies and their minds. Its infected brain directs this ant upwards, then utterly disoriented, it grips a stem with its mandibles.... Like something out of science-fiction, the fungus erupts from the ant's head. It can take 3 weeks to grow, and when finished, the deadly spores will burst from its tip, and any ant in the vicinity will be in serious risk of death. The fungus is so virulent, it can wipe out whole colonies.

It's not necessarily that far-fetched to suggest that, given our own species's domination of this earth, perhaps there will one day evolve a fungus that targets our own neurological systems, dictating our last moments of life in an effort to get our puppet-like bodies as close to concentrated areas of the populace as possible, while this growing parasite consumes our insides and propels its own species forward.

I'm not eating mushrooms for a month.

Finish Line

As this semester winds to a close, I've two grand themes running through my head: that I'm a blessed man to be at this school and to have survived this long, and that I need to concentrate on encroaching finals if I want to pass.

Aside from finals and lab reports and applications, I'm preparing a 5-minute teaching session on the scientific method to 9th graders for my final Teach For America interview. And Big Game is this afternoon! More to write on soon, and yet, I really, really shouldn't.