Friday, July 31, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Hi, my name is Brad, and I'm a bookaholic.
So I have to let you in on a couple of secrets. First: I have a reading queue in my blog side bar... but it's not super accurate. Yes, I plan to read all of the books in it, but my to-read queue is a bit longer than what you can see there. There are 18 books listed on my blog, but the true queue actually contains 797.
Second: reading pays. I've received 5 free books in the past 6 months or so, plus a $10 gift certificate to a local restaurant. All for reading... woohoo!
The summer reading program at the local library is pretty great--they were the source of the gift certificate. The books came from a website called Goodreads, which just so happens to be one of my favorite websites ever. Basically it's a giant database of books with social network functionality. So you create a profile and start telling the website books you've read, and marking other books that you want to read. You can rate books and leave reviews on them. You can be friends with other people who use the site and see what they are reading and what they think about it, etc. So anytime I hear about a book that sounds interesting to me, I'll go to the website, find it, and mark it as "to read". Then it doesn't have to sit in my brain anymore. I also haven't lacked for new books to read since I started using it--I know exactly what books I'm wanting to read rather than trying to remember what that cool book my buddy told me about is called. I've outsourced a nice little non-essential portion of my brain.
Now, I can't possibly read all of these books in my queue in any reasonable amount of time (at best it will be over 10 years...), but it'll keep track of them for me nonetheless. I've also figured out how to choose what to read next: I go to a random number generator and give it the number of books in the list, and the number it gives me is the next book. Sweet.
There's a section on the site called "Firstreads" where you can enter free drawings for books that are coming out soon. Publishers and authors put them up, and if you see one that strikes your fancy, you can enter for it. If you win, they send you the book for free, end of obligation. They hope you will read it and give a review, but you don't even have to do that. If you do, though, it makes it more likely that you will win more drawings in the future (as it plays into their algorithm for choosing). Out of the 5 books I've received, only one was a real stinker, so after I read it I sent it off to the DI.
Anywho, I really like Goodreads. Feel free to add me as a friend on it if you wish. Goodreads + libraries = reading bliss. Also, I've linked to my profile if anyone cares to see what it looks like.
Second: reading pays. I've received 5 free books in the past 6 months or so, plus a $10 gift certificate to a local restaurant. All for reading... woohoo!
The summer reading program at the local library is pretty great--they were the source of the gift certificate. The books came from a website called Goodreads, which just so happens to be one of my favorite websites ever. Basically it's a giant database of books with social network functionality. So you create a profile and start telling the website books you've read, and marking other books that you want to read. You can rate books and leave reviews on them. You can be friends with other people who use the site and see what they are reading and what they think about it, etc. So anytime I hear about a book that sounds interesting to me, I'll go to the website, find it, and mark it as "to read". Then it doesn't have to sit in my brain anymore. I also haven't lacked for new books to read since I started using it--I know exactly what books I'm wanting to read rather than trying to remember what that cool book my buddy told me about is called. I've outsourced a nice little non-essential portion of my brain.
Now, I can't possibly read all of these books in my queue in any reasonable amount of time (at best it will be over 10 years...), but it'll keep track of them for me nonetheless. I've also figured out how to choose what to read next: I go to a random number generator and give it the number of books in the list, and the number it gives me is the next book. Sweet.
There's a section on the site called "Firstreads" where you can enter free drawings for books that are coming out soon. Publishers and authors put them up, and if you see one that strikes your fancy, you can enter for it. If you win, they send you the book for free, end of obligation. They hope you will read it and give a review, but you don't even have to do that. If you do, though, it makes it more likely that you will win more drawings in the future (as it plays into their algorithm for choosing). Out of the 5 books I've received, only one was a real stinker, so after I read it I sent it off to the DI.
Anywho, I really like Goodreads. Feel free to add me as a friend on it if you wish. Goodreads + libraries = reading bliss. Also, I've linked to my profile if anyone cares to see what it looks like.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Pain and puns
These are the two elements of great summer television. Case in point: I Survived a Japanese Game Show! and even more so, Wipeout.
These two shows bring me waaaaay too much joy. Seriously.
These two shows bring me waaaaay too much joy. Seriously.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Application is in!
Today is momentous: I finally finished my med school primary application. This thing a beast and has taken me about a month to fill out. One of the worst parts was inputting every college class I have ever taken, one at a time. And I have to send them my transcript. So why do I have to put the info in manually? I dunno.
Anywho, it's finished. I submitted it this afternoon, and it feels really good to be done. Here's the list of schools I applied to: (drumroll, please)
Utah
Colorado
Washington
Oregon
Stanford (CA)
Ohio State
Duke (NC)
Johns Hopkins (Baltimore, MA)
Texas schools have their own, separate application (do they seriously still want to be their own country or something?). I'm currently thinking about applying to three of their eight schools, but 1. feel too lazy to basically fill out the same long thing again, 2. don't have any particularly strong reason to apply to Texas, and 3. each application costs money, and I'm pretty happy with my current list.
Any thoughts? Can anyone convince me to apply to Texas? Any other schools I should have included in my list? Why? Should I be avoiding any of the schools that I did apply to? If so, why?
And the waiting game commences...
Anywho, it's finished. I submitted it this afternoon, and it feels really good to be done. Here's the list of schools I applied to: (drumroll, please)
Utah
Colorado
Washington
Oregon
Stanford (CA)
Ohio State
Duke (NC)
Johns Hopkins (Baltimore, MA)
Texas schools have their own, separate application (do they seriously still want to be their own country or something?). I'm currently thinking about applying to three of their eight schools, but 1. feel too lazy to basically fill out the same long thing again, 2. don't have any particularly strong reason to apply to Texas, and 3. each application costs money, and I'm pretty happy with my current list.
Any thoughts? Can anyone convince me to apply to Texas? Any other schools I should have included in my list? Why? Should I be avoiding any of the schools that I did apply to? If so, why?
And the waiting game commences...
Thursday, July 2, 2009
MCAT
First, a quick breakdown of the test: it has four sections--physical sciences (physics and inorganic chemistry), verbal reasoning, two essays, and biological sciences (biology and organic chemistry). Each of the three non-essay sections is given a score from 1 to 15. These three numbers are added together to give your total score out of 45. The essays are scored separately and given a letter from L to T (T is better). Your final score is reported as a number and a letter, 45T being a perfect score on all sections of the test.
I took the MCAT on the 28th of May, and had to wait until June 30th for my score. Needless to say, it was kind of a long month. And here are the results: 36O, with a 12 on each of the multiple choice sections. The score report also gives what percentile you rank with your score. Interestingly enough, a 36 ranks in the 96th percentile (confusing, since 36 works out to 80% of 45), and I should be able to get in somewhere for medical school. Now we'll just see if it's where we want to go.
Now it's time to finish the stupid application.
P.S. My "O" score on the essays turns out to be in the 50th percentile. I couldn't help but laugh when I saw that. Fortunately, the number score is the one that schools look at more.
I took the MCAT on the 28th of May, and had to wait until June 30th for my score. Needless to say, it was kind of a long month. And here are the results: 36O, with a 12 on each of the multiple choice sections. The score report also gives what percentile you rank with your score. Interestingly enough, a 36 ranks in the 96th percentile (confusing, since 36 works out to 80% of 45), and I should be able to get in somewhere for medical school. Now we'll just see if it's where we want to go.
Now it's time to finish the stupid application.
P.S. My "O" score on the essays turns out to be in the 50th percentile. I couldn't help but laugh when I saw that. Fortunately, the number score is the one that schools look at more.
