Remembrance of Sparky's Past

So yeah, I'm pretty much done with this course now. Or at least, I'm done with what I could get finished in time. I took this course solely because it was recommended to me in a school email, and I thought to myself "sure, I could use the extra credit hours".

I didn't know I'd have to do so much so fast. The blog posts are one thing, sure. But a 12 page research paper as well? Ah geez, that was a lot. Some people reading this might think "What's the big deal? I can do those easy". The problem isn't that I'm bad at writing assignments, not at all. The problem is that I can barely bring myself to start them in the first place, as I procrastinate to hell and back. They just terrify me on an existential level, so I stall them out of pure anxiety. It doesn't matter how easy or hard the thing really is, I just don't like writing about things that don't come from a special place inside me. I can definitely write about something from the bottom of my heart that I'm 100% passionate about [like cartoons], there's no question about that. But a research paper that I could hardly ever care about? Ugh...

If there any people reading this who have ADHD and struggle with procrastination like I do, I FEEL YOUR PAIN.

The real problem that comes with writing assignments is that my procrastination puts more stress on me than what's necessary. I easily could've finished the assignment much faster, but I could hardly bring myself to do it in the first place. Delays, delays. That goes for the blog posts as well. Who delays themself when writing a blog post of all things? I do, cause I've never written a blog post before in my entire life up until just this month [as part of my assignments]. Because all forms of writing that don't stem from personal passion are hell for me, I stalled those as well.

If you wondered why many of my blog posts seemed rushed or sloppy in any way, that's why. I couldn't afford to waste any more time, and just wanted to get the thing out of my way. I still did the best I could with the time I had, but I know I could've done far better.

Regardless, I still enjoyed learning about various subjects related to digital media as part of my course. The stuff related to data collection and advertisements was disturbing [SCREW YOU BIG BROTHER IM NOT LETTING YOU TOUCH MY CHEW TOY], though I'm glad I was able to learn what net neutrality is [my heart goes out to the many impoverished indigenous families that struggle due to lack of good internet].

Because the final day of this course just passed, I sadly don't think I'll be able to cover the material for a Module 7 blog post [real reason---I'm tired as hell and need a good break]. While I'm very glad that I was FINALLY able to finish that research paper and get it turned in the last minute before the due date, I sadly wasn't able to get an abstract written in time. As a result, it will be left absent here.

In addition, I will also ignore the required presentation video. I do have PowerPoint, but I do NOT have any time to use it to piece together a video presentation. I apologize, but I just ran short this time.

Regardless of my shortcomings, I'm very happy to have met the many other aspiring students who have also participated in this course. Special thanks goes to Maurice Bailey, who I really loved speaking with even if I didn't agree with some of his positions regarding...certain things. [I don't trust BitCoin one BIT] Even so, I still think you're a pretty cool guy and I deeply admire your accomplishments and ambitions.

I also give a VERY special thanks to my instructor, Dr. Zeng. I am deeply grateful to have been able to speak with you about my term paper, as I was nerve-wracked the whole way and needed all the good advice I could get. I think you're a very wonderful teacher, and I'm happy to have been able to work with you.

I hope everyone here will have a wonderful summer, whether it be spent through vacations or studies. I love having the opportunity to attend college, and I'm grateful to have a wonderful education.

Sincerely,

Sparky T. Dog

WOOF!

omg who is this amazing person i see? how are you? :)

the amazing person is u, ur looking in a mirror 👀 i'm okay tho! nervous (i have a date thing today and i've never been on a date before so i'm asfdoashdi freaking out!! but i'm okay!!) how are you sweets? :D

my brain is too tired from this shakespeare research essay to Actually come up with three or less questions (also why i haven't continued the mlb sk8 conversation... this freaking paper ugh), so feel free to ramble about literally anything that you want and also i hope your day gets better <3

You mentioned Shakespeare and my brain went BRRRRR because while /he/ isn't my field of expertise, his period and contemporaries are (or gonna be? The Renaissance makes me super excited and I hope that if ever I go further in my university studies, I'll get to work on that period)

So I will take this opportunity to ramble about the Renaissance and my man Edmund Spenser and his epic The Faerie Queene!

I know I've mentioned this before, but my favorite character of that poem is Florimell. She's just absolutely wonderful and she goes through so much shit, but in the end, she gets her happy ending. But even her happy ending is not perfect.

I wrote a whole paper on her and her husband to be, but OH MAN HER WEDDING EPISODE IS ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS.

Context: basically all Florimell does throughout the poem is run away from men because she's super pretty and they all want her for themselves. At some point, she comes across a witch and her son, and of course the son wants her. She runs away and the son loses his shit, ready to die of a broken heart, so his mom creates a fake Florimell for him. And everyone is fooled by this fake Florimell to the point where the men don't believe the real Florimell is the true girl.

Anyway, WEDDING! Homegirl has finally found the guy she's been in love with this whole time/her soulmate and they're finally married. Everything is going well until the fake Florimell shows up and makes everything go to shit. People don't know who the real one is and there's a bunch of conflict because of that. BUT IMAGINE! YOU JUST GOT MARRIED TO THE ONLY GOOD GUY! YOURE FINALLY WITH YOUR SOULMATE AND THEN AN EVIL VERSION TO YOU APPEARS AND CRASHES YOUR WEDDING! AND PEOPLE DONT KNOW WHO THE REAL YOU IS! WHAT DO YOU DO???

And wait. To make things worse. Right when the false Florimell finally disappears/dies/melts, ANOTHER RANDOM ASS KNIGHT CRASHES THE WEDDING BY ATTACKING THE EVIL FLORIMELL'S BOYFRIEND BECAUSE APPARENT HE STOLE THE KNIGHT'S HORSE 3 BOOKS BACK

This poor girl has gone through so much shit, I love her so so much but damn, she just goes through so much shit. At least she's happily married and can finally live a happy life 💛

hello! i was looking through your career stories tag and was inspired to ask for some advice of my own. lately i've been feeling very lost in undergrad. in high school, i was super successful, had goals and stuck to them, and had a path in mind. however, i ended up revising that plan a million times, and now i feel super behind in comparison to my peers. i feel like i lack a ton of skills and that i'm not where i should be (1/2)

(2/2) do you have any advice? and do you/your followers have any stories about people who were successful, got stuck in a rut, but found their way back? i keep reading stories about people who didn’t do well in school then found a successful career, but i never hear about people who were successful in school, got lost, then recovered, and it makes me wonder if there’s hope for me

Hi anon! (Thanks for sending in that 2nd part again after tumblr ate it the first time round)

I fee like I took a similar path to you, and before I launch into my story, here’s my advice on some things you can try:

Break the bad habit of comparing oneself to others. We are all unique, with unique pasts, presents, and futures. To compare two people’s achievements or lack of achievements is unfair. That’s giving an experimental treatment to a sick person and another to someone already healthy and then comparing the results directly to each other. Not a good scientific study huh. Well, we should look at our lives like that too. It’ll take time and practice and a lot of active thinking, but let’s all try our hardest not to compare ourselves to others. We are all carving out our own paths. 

Talk to others with experience and get their insight. Talk to your professors, your counselors, your parents, your parents’ friends, and even older students (like me!). Ask them for advice. Ask them what opportunities you have. Ask them what career choices one can make with your interests and goals. Basically, broaden your knowledge of what’s out there in the world so you can find a niche to fit in. I really wish I had done this because I was very myopic in that “interest in biomedicine” = “clinical doctor or bust!”. I didn’t know that I could go to grad school to study cancer research and then go work in a biotech company (my current path and goal). 

Once you find a career path that interests you, try to experience what “a day in the life of” is like. Because something that sounds great on paper may not be a good fit in person, and vice versa. Options for this include: volunteering, internships, entry-level jobs, shadowing, informational interviews (where you talk to someone in the field in a casual setting and ask them what their job is like), and well-rounded research. Doing things like working in the field or even shadowing also gives you the benefit of learning transferrable skills that could help you on your next step. And that brings me to:

Take a gap year (or a few) if you feel like you need it, especially if you need to gain more experience in a certain field. It’s also a great way to give your body and mind a well-deserved break after decades of school! I took a gap year (well, 2.5 years) to work and get lab experience and it was the best. 

Do not give yourself a timeline. This sounds… counter-intuitive, but what I mean is: do not set goals like “dream job at age 30!!” “a house at age 31!!” because they may be a) unrealistic, and b) could set us up for disappointment. Also, we need to realize that we don’t know what the future will bring, and that it’s also ok to take one’s time. We’re all gonna live until we’re 70-80 anyway right? So let’s just take things one step at a time. We’ll set goals and work towards them, yes, but let’s not set deadlines for ourselves. We’ve had enough deadlines in school already! 

Don’t give up. Things will be ok. I know it’s not.. super helpful for me to say this, but it’s a real point to make. No matter what happens, keep trying. We can’t reach the light at the end of the tunnel if we stop walking forward, yeah? 

I hope those points are helpful. If you’d like more detail, or have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me!

Alright, now to my story, because I feel like I may have gone through the same thing you’re going through right now, so I want to let you know that times may get tough like it did for me, but if you keep going and trying, things will eventually be ok:

Just like you, I was pretty darn successful in high school, also did well in college (like good grades, had goals and met them, etc). I always knew my path was going to lead me somewhere amazing, because that’s how I was brought up my entire life. Then I got stuck in a rut because my original plan A (med school) turned out to not be right for me, and then plan B also turned out not right either (pharmacy school), and then I got straight out rejected from plan C (physician assistant school). I even had to change my major 3 times because of my change of plans (well, one change was because the US recession hit and my college had to cut my original program ugh), so I had to really cram my classes into the summer. I graduated college with a degree that wasn’t going to get me where I wanted to (B.S. in Microbiology, and jobs were still hard to find because of the recession, and basically nowhere to go. I had no job and had no idea what to do (or what I really wanted, really). So I moved back home with a feeling of emptiness that no end in sight. 

My plan was basically to find a job that would open doors for me in the biomedical field. I even got my pharmacy tech license, and I was applying to receptionist positions at clinics. It got to a point where I was so desperate I interviewed to be someone’s personal assistant and they were like “you are way too qualified for this I can’t hire you”. 

And I was so confused as to how I could’ve ended up on the wrong path. I mean, I knew what I did wrong (I didn’t do those point of advice I gave earlier because I didn’t know I had to do them). But I didn’t know how it went so wrong. How did I go from straight A/B’s and proactive student leader in a bunch of clubs to unemployed with no concrete plan in sight? I was bright. I was a hard worker. A fast learner. I knew I could be good at anything I did. This rut I was in wasn’t really supposed to happen. And all the while my friends were going to grad/med school or starting successful careers–a fact my narcissistic and emotionally abusive mother would remind me of every. waking. moment. She would scream at me every day that I was an embarrassment, a disappointment, a “poor investment”, etc. The look of pure hatred she would give me–I have never seen that on another person’s face ever. I couldn’t even see my friends because she essentially put me on house arrest as “punishment”. 

It really was absolute hell. I was cleaning some old storage boxes recently and I found my old diary from that time, and inside was a note. It was a note of despair and resentment and an ending that may have happened… I don’t remember how I got the strength to keep going, but I think I had conjured up the slightest sliver of hope that night, put down my pen, closed the journal, and went to bed. 

So, I kept at it. I studied for the GRE, I looked up grad school programs, and I kept applying to jobs in the biomedical field. I got picked up by a temp agency that was hiring out contract workers to local science companies, and even interviewed for a few available positions. Things were looking a bit better. 

Then I saw a job ad on craigslist looking for a research tech at a lab at my old college. I applied, interviewed, and was turned down. Bummer. Then my mother (in a rare moment of helpfulness) asked a friend of a friend who was a PI in a research institute in Florida if they wanted a totally free unpaid intern. I had a skype interview and they accepted, and I was getting ready to move halfway across the country to be a volunteer with a Bachelor’s degree when I got an email from another new PI at my old college. She had gotten my application from the first PI who I had interviewed with and wanted to meet to see if I could be her research tech. And then literally a week before I was supposed to move to Florida that PI told me she wanted to hire me. Oh thank god. I had graduated in May, and got hired at this position in October. Even though it was only 5 months, it felt like forever for me to finally find my way out of the dark cave and back into the light. 

This PI did research on cancer biomarkers. Working in her lab was one of the best things to ever happen to me: I got the lab experience I was missing, I found a love for cancer research in particular, I applied for (and got into) grad school to study Cancer Biology, and I met a coworker who eventually became my husband (and you betcha we invited the PI to our wedding and asked her to give a speech lol). 

I graduate (hopefully) next semester with my PhD in Cancer Biology, and my husband and I plan on moving to Seattle (a biotech hub) afterwards. I plan on getting a post-doc position at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center, then a scientist position at a local biotech company, and then see where that takes me. Life is good now. Things really did turn out ok. 

I’m so glad I never gave up. 

And I hope you won’t give up either, anon. I pray you don’t have to go through anything as tough but! Yes there’s still hope for you! There is always hope

well got a D on my final and my research paper and i feel so sad rn like i don't wanna be at school anymore i just wanna go home and sleep all day i don't wanna talk to anyone i don't wanna eat i feel so ducking stupid and it's my fault i didn't study hard enough and i've been slacking so i'm not even surprise but i thought i'd at least get a C on everything and i just wanted to pass the class. i think my grade dropped to a 52% and im finna have to retake the class and im gonna go on academic probation and im so afraid they're gonna take away my classes next semster and i genuinely want to kill myself at this point. all i wanna do is get good grade and know wtf im doing in college idk how i'm gonna be a successful psychologist if i can't even pass simple classes like sociology. i have to do this extra credit and it's only 13 points so it's not much but im gonna do it anyways bc im really really praying to god that i miscalculated my grade and that i just have a 70 in class i was trying to avoid ranting on here or going on my phone in general bc i need to do this extra credit but i can't focus on the assignment bc im too busy thinking about how much i fucked up and there's no room to fix it now and so fucked and idk what i'm gonna do i actually feel like crying but im not letting myself bc i feel like a drama queen but idk when i'm gonna stop getting Ds and Cs on everything when will i get Bs and As it's so hard for my brain to think sometimes and i think my anxiety and fears get in the way of me understanding things in class. i just wanna know why i'm like this and how can i help myself i feel like my life is over i just paid for my classes next semster and i'm broke af rn and im too embarrassed to ask my parents for money so i'm just taking shit out of savings but not my savings WENT TO FUCKING WASTE BC IDK IF I CAN DO GOOD NEXT SEMSTER I JUST HATE THIS SHIT SM UGH i don't even wanna go back and read this shit bc im pretty it sounds terrible and that im a little princess who complains over stupid bullshit but im just really upset rn and im sitting in this stupid computer lab crying idk what to do anymore