Phew, with human anatomy done now, it sure feels like summer is coming on fast. Right now, I’m working on finding ways to fill up my days this summer between coaching basketball, volunteering at the pediatric OT clinic, and studying for GREs. So far, I have penned in a gig doing one-on-one SAT tutoring for the company that I used to work with while I was in Americorps. They’re great and really take care of their tutors with a great hourly wage and paid prep time, so I’m excited to jump back into it again. The flexibility is also ideal when it comes to working around all the other things that I have going on.
Looking back all the way to October 2010, I think things have turned out much better than I would have thought. I feel like I am chugging along at a good pace, even though sometimes I feel like I am dragging my feet (and am sometimes reminded by my parents to hurry it up) but slow and steady wins the race right?
There’s that part of me that feels like if I hurried it up, I wouldn’t have met the incredibly engaging professors that I had this year for Anatomy, Abnormal Psych, and Spanish. Taking classes this year has helped instill more confidence in myself academically. I was speaking to one of my classmates in anatomy recently, she’s a little older and got her bachelor’s at Cal Tech, and she was saying how many times people end up going to really good colleges and you lose confidence because you end up being in the middle of your class instead of the top like you were in high school. Then, when you come out of college, you kind of doubt yourself because you’re still measuring yourself against your college peers when in actuality you are fully capable of taking on a lot of things in the real world.
Hopefully this summer will allow me to see some people that I haven’t seen in awhile, and venture out into the outdoors a little more. A kayaking trip is on the books as is a tentative trip out to North Carolina and Nashville, so that’s something to look forward to! I may actually be able to use some of those 120,000 frequent flyer miles from my previous job now!
Basketball this summer should be good. I’m excited to see the girls get down to business and work on things that they didn’t get to do during the regular season. Some of the girls joke around that “I don’t have anything better to do than to be in the gym with them” –and maybe I do have a little more time than most people — but I guess when you care about something, you can always find ways to make things work. Plus, looking into the next few years with things kind of a little up in the air, what if right now is the only time I have to put in this amount of time? I’m usually kind of sensitive to people saying stuff like “don’t you have better things to do?” or overanalyzing that their parents think that I invest way to much time into basketball — but then I think, better to do it right, instead of wishing I had done it better. As I get older, I can’t seem to get the phrase ‘time is of the essence’ out of my head.
Oh, and on a random note, since I have been living off of the stock market for income, two penny stocks that seem to be doing well and have potential:
8×8 (EGHT) and Antares Pharma (AIS).
They’re worth looking at since they’re really cheap right now at $3 and $1.80 —and reports seem to have them looking pretty good. I will be extremely grateful if they can help me pay for grad school — or at least my gas expenses for the next year.
Yesterday was definitely a Friday well spent.
I started off with anatomy enrichment in the morning at West Valley which is basically a study hall type of deal, where those who are taking anatomy can have extra time looking at cadavers/have a place to study. With the information on the internet these days, I amazingly haven’t actually had to buy our $180 textbook, thank goodness.
Grabbed lunch with a friend and went over to her place to do some work…which ended up being talking, her yelling at me to finish writing an email I had wanted to write a long time ago, and then playing the online version of “The Game of Life” because we had forgotten how to play it and she wanted to use it in curriculum that she was writing for work.
Let’s just say that THE ONLINE VERSION IS IMPRESSIVE. The graphics are great and guess what else….
They let you marry someone of the same sex! So progressive! Though if they really wanted to make it realistic they’d charge you more tax $, and charge you for invitro/artificial insemination too.
It kind of feels like you’re watching an interactive animated movie. Hasbro totally did a great job on this one. We were only able to play for an hour because of the trial period, but we played through one round in classic mode and one in enhanced play mode.
Things that I learned today:
1) Kohar is an Armenian name for females.
2) To get new handlebar grips to slide onto your bike handles, use hairspray to spray the inside and then slide them on. Works like a charm
3) High school softball games are 7 innings as are high school baseball games. Once a softball pitcher brings her hands together she cannot bring them apart again or else it’s called an illegal pitch. In the game today, the pitcher had to cough or sneeze and took her hands apart and got called for an illegal pitch which advances the runners to the next base.
So two night ago, I had a really strange dream that involved me standing in the bathroom looking into the mirror and wiggling a lower front tooth, which was strangely unstable, and then it came out! I pulled it straight out of my gums, root and all. So there I stood, holding the tooth in my fingers and I tried aiming the root back into the hole to put it back. Then, half of my top teeth and my gums fell out. I don’t quite remember it too well, but it was incredibly frightening at the time. Even when I woke up, I remember being very alert and kind of on edge.
With this being said, I had to figure out what it all meant. Of course, I know not to trust dream research on the internet, but it’s always interesting to look at, even if you don’t really believe it. One site said:
Psychological Meaning: Dreaming of teeth falling out may represent insecurity. These dreams often occur at a time of transition between one phase of life and another. When we lost our milk teeth, we also gradually lost our childhood innocence. Loosing your teeth therefore show that today you have similar feelings of uncertainty and self-consciousness as you did in childhood.
This is kind of interesting because I AM in what you could call a transition period, or I guess kind of in-between two transition periods. The first would be from working to now taking classes, and the second would be now trying to find an internship/volunteering/fieldwork now that basketball and abnormal psych are over. Truth is, I am a little nervous and excited about it all, though I’m not very good at making decisions and planning things out, mainly because I want to try to do everything —and therefore it’s hard for me to commit to things without knowing how everything else is going to line up.
What I really do need tonight though, is some catch-up sleep after driving at 10:30pm up to Sacramento to help coach a 9am basketball game the next morning (9am game = get up at 7:30 to get ready to get to the gym by 8:30am). We usually also play at 9am on Sundays because our team is still in the works of getting wins, which doesn’t really bode all too well for my sleep. The first night, I woke up in the middle of the night and opened my eyes to find Nibbles (Tiff’s cat) staring down at me from the counter because I was sleeping in the living room. Probably could have slept a little bit earlier those two nights, but Tiff recently discovered Friday Night Lights so we had to watch episodes before calling it a night. I’m pretty sure I could watch those seasons over and over again if I had endless amounts of time. The way they draw you into each character in the show is pretty amazing….and frankly, makes me want to live in a football town. The only problem would be that I think that I’m a little too progressive to be able to deal with all of the machoism and sexism associated with those systems.
My dear bicycle! Since my brother isn’t really riding it in Davis anymore, I am looking forward to getting it back and hopefully riding it around here to motor around or just to get on some trails. It’ll be a good way for me to keep my legs in shape, no muscle atrophy for me!
To be honest, I don’t think we’ve taken as good of care of this bike as we should have, but if there’s anything Kona does well, it’s build nice bike frames. The best thing about this bike is that it is ridiculously light. I’m a pretty big weakling when it comes to upper body strength and it has always been so easy for me to lift. Hopefully after a tune-up and some new road/hybrid wheels, it’ll be in good shape to cruise around.
Too bad I have to wait 2 weeks until I pick it up from Davis! Soon enough ol’ bike, soon enough.
Seeing that sometimes it’s hard to study in my house, I’ve been wanting to find new places to study at but sometimes it’s hard for me to feel ok shelling out $4 for a drink so that I can sit and use their space. I think I may have found the solution. My new pastime has been browsing eBay and craigslist for cheap coupons to places that I usually like to go to and I came across a winning deal earlier this week.
I found quite a few auctions where people are selling “free drink” coupons to Starbucks for an average price of $2.50 each coupon. Keep in mind that I’m pretty sure that these free drink coupons can be used for any size drink so you’d ultimately be saving maybe $2 per drink. There are some auctions that sell batches of 10 coupons at a time for a dollar amount that comes out closer to $2 per coupon, which is essentially 50% off your drink.
Here’s an example:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300534721703#ht_500wt_1078
I usually check the feedback of sellers to make sure the coupons are legitimate. Usually if there is an auction that is the same that has had positive feedback, that’s a good indication that it’s not a scam.
Next up, finding some Jamba Juice ones.
my favorite season of the year is now over. Basketball season that is. Well, to be more specific high school basketball season. Thank goodness there is still the rest of the NBA season, March Madness, Asian League basketball, and maybe some Campbell League basketball to be had before summer basketball starts.
I swear, lately it feels like basketball makes me more sane, although on some days during this season I probably went a little crazy–or a lot crazy at times, but it was definitely worth it.
I’ll have to say that even getting stopped multiple times to get asked (and once followed and hunted down) for my ASB card at our own gym as I walked in the door to coach a game was pretty funny. The most recent incident occurred at the CCS finals game at Santa Clara University where I had bought a regular ticket and handed it to the guy collecting them, and he looked at the color ticket that I had and said “Oh, forgot your ASB card huh?” …. haha, I told him I was 25 and he laughed and apologized. I told him that I actually did find my old Lynbrook ASB card the other day, and was contemplating bringing it..and he told me that I should have!
One of the coolest things about coaching is that you end up learning a lot about yourself as you do it. Even though the explicit task is to teach the game of basketball and to guide players in understanding teamwork, work ethic, etc. A lot of these things I learned while thinking about different frustrations that I had over the course of the season and talking to our girls about how they learn, and then comparing and contrasting what they would do with how I would do things myself. I guess I always feel that when you can figure out why a person acts the way that they do, or how the process things, there’s more empathy when it comes to reacting to people’s actions.
I’ve learned that half the battle of coaching is figuring out the right way to communicate and motivate players and people in general. Some people need to be pushed and given directives, where as some players need to be given suggestions and explained reasonings behind why things will and won’t work. Some players are more sensitive than others and are harder on themselves than people will be able to see on the outside. I guess the most rewarding part for me so far has been trying to figure out how each player responds the best and using that to help motivate them to be better. One of my favorite quotes that I found this season was “A man who won’t read has no advantage over a man who won’t.” We can teach players all that they can do on the court while in practice, but sometimes the trick is to give them that confidence so that they can use it in the games. I’d say the latter is the tougher of the two — and where the breakthrough comes.
I think that now coming back to our basketball program I feel more able to speak up for things that I felt were wrong when I was playing. I may be seen as being young, Asian American, and female, but I’ll stand up for my girls if you’re trying to take advantage of the fact that they’re girls and that boys outrank the girls.
I’ve learned that sometimes as a coach you can see things happening, but really you can’t do anything to stop it. You have to be ok with how situations pan out and not feel responsible if there was nothing that you could have done that was in your power. You can be there for your players as a coach and as a friend, but you can’t control their decisions — and you can’t try to change their minds about things, you can only give them ways to look at it differently.
I always say that “you can’t ever really care TOO MUCH about something” and I still think it’s true. Now that I’ve thought about it a little, I think the fear of “caring too much” is a result of how that caring is perceived. Quite a few times this season I’ve thought to myself, “Man, I’m pretty sure their parents think I have no life” or “I sure hope people don’t think I’m obsessed with high school basketball” because of the time that I’ve spent the past couple of months getting to know the girls and making sure that they know that they have someone to talk to. Maybe it’s not my job to do this, and maybe some people may think that I’ve spent too much time doing it, but if I genuinely like the relationships that I’ve created and the trust in a sense that I feel like I may gained with them, I’ll gladly spend that time each year.
Through conversations with players and coaches I’ve learned that I get stressed out when I don’t feel prepared in general or when I don’t feel like the girls are prepared for a game. I’ve learned that I am way too gullible, but I am ok with that. I’ve learned that sometimes I worry too much (though I see it as a result of caring haha).
The most important thing though that I’ve learned this year is how far you can go on sheer heart and wanting to be around your teammates. Watching our team encourage each other on the court and from the bench during our last win against 3rd seeded St. Francis was one of those moments that summed up how much people cared about each other. That game, there was communication, there were people rushing over to each other to tell them to shake things off when they missed a free throw or made a turnover and were frustrated. There were people high fiving, pumping each other up . Watching four players surround one of our players before she shot an important free-throw, telling her that she’ll make it…that they have faith in her, was one of those moments where all you can do is smile.
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