Last Blog!

Posted by Purna C. | Posted on May 4, 2012

Last week, I turned in my lab key and checked out of my lab station for good. On my way out, I declared my happiness to the world and embraced the grand sense of freedom I felt from being released from the clutches of Intro Chemistry Lab II. It felt like a new era; an end to a predetermined eternal loathing that was as fervid as a flame. At that moment, I felt that nothing would have made me want to go back to Chem Lab even for the slightest bit!

A couple hours ago, I got back from taking my Chemistry Lab final exam. I thought I would feel MUCH more thrilled than I actually do now that I am completely done with that class. I have complained and whined about Lab so many times throughout the year (like actually, so many times) for the incredibly ridiculous amount of work we are expected to do for just one credit. But now that it is over, I realize that I am actually starting to miss it. So I shall go back on my previous word and admit that Chem Lab was actually kinda fun. Even thought it was a lot of work, I have had some great memories in that class. In Chem Lab, I became a master at sigfigs and writing error analyses, had friendly little contests with my neighbors to see who could get the highest percent yield, and met one of my best friends who I’m going to be living with next year!

The Chem Lab Building! I will strangely miss Fridays in the Mergenthaler basement.

Today was the last day of classes for the school year. For many of the seniors, undergrad is completely over since final exams for seniors are optional (so jealous). But for me, it is equally exciting because I am one step away from completing my freshman year! It feels weird to be able to say that freshman year is basically over. I am nearly 25% of the way through with undergrad but it still feels like I just got here! Today in physics and calculus, everyone broke into applause at the end of each lecture as a way to thank our professors. It was the same as applauding for an aircraft pilot at the end of a really long flight when he/she safely lands the plane. It never really hit me until today that my flight was actually over and that next year, I would be boarding an entirely new one.

I have two more weeks of freshman year left. That means only two more weeks of living in Building A, two more weeks of eating at the FFC, and in general, just two more weeks of this freshman lifestyle I have developed over the past year. Freshman year was a bit hard for me. Adjusting to college life was something that took a lot of time, but now I feel like my days have finally become a routine. Even though I will miss being a freshman, I am greatly looking forward to spending another three years here, for I know they will be filled with incredible memories and enriching experiences.

My Building A girls! Many who have been characters throughout my blogs, such as my Alaskan Roommate, Crazy-Awesome Lab Partner, and Hip-Hop Dancing Floormate!

My best friends! We all met on the first day of school and have been really close ever since! I look forward to another three years with them at Hopkins:)

Reading period is about begin, so I will end my blog on that note and go study for finals! Thanks for reading and congratulations again to the class of 2016! Feel free to ask me any questions about student life or Hopkins in general and I will answer them right away!

A Day in the Life of JHU_Purna

Posted by Purna C. | Posted on April 19, 2012

I was just getting back from volunteering at this week’s SOHOP event when I remembered that I wanted to write an “A Day in the Life” blog. I was debating between my Mondays and my Fridays for the longest time, but then I decided to write about my Wednesdays instead. So here it goes!

8:00 AM: Wake up I know I know; it’s awesome because it’s so much later than waking up for high school! Looking back, I don’t know how I used to wake up every morning at 6:00AM, rush to get ready on time, and on some days wait outside in the cold and rain for the school bus to arrive. Now I get to wake up later, get ready, and leisurely walk two feet outside my dorm building to grab breakfast. I don’t even have to deal with beating an annoying younger sibling to the bathroom! (…although I do have that Alaskan roommate)

Hopkins waffle for breakfast!

9:00 AM: Gen Chem II My first class of the day is General Chemistry II in the ever so famous (or infamous…depending on the day!) Remsen 1. Remsen 1 is this humungous lecture hall that seats hundreds of students in classes like chemistry, biology, and other large lecture classes. Right now we’re learning about lasers and the chemistry of light! It’s pretty interesting:

Looking over the power point after class!

10:00 AM: Free Hour I don’t have a class at 10:00 AM which is super nice. During this time I either take a nap or go to the library and catch up on my readings for my classes :)

11:00 AM: Gen Physics I Probably one of my favorite classes this semester. The class is taught through clicker questions, or multiple choice questions on a projector that students answer by using a CPS clicker. It’s like playing Jeopardy or Quizbowl! After each question, the professor reveals the right answer by doing a live demo using props to illustrate a mechanics concept. It’s very useful during exams since we don’t have to really memorize the concepts. All we have to do is remember what happens during the demos!

12:00 PM: Calculus III Class #3! I’m glad I took it in the afternoon when I’m mostly awake because this class requires a lot of focus!

1:00 PM: Silk Road Express Silk Road is an Asian food place located in the Mattin Center. I always go there before my art class and get iced chai bubble tea. My art teacher is super nice and allows food in the classroom, so sometimes I get spring rolls to eat while I paint!

Chai bubble tea!

1:30 PM: Painting I Best. Class. Ever. It’s four hours of painting and I kid you not, it’s the most relaxing class I’ve ever taken. Currently, my class is working on master copies of European paintings showcased at the BMA. I chose to do a Seurat painting, while my classmates have chosen works ranging from Picasso to Botticelli. I love chatting with my classmates while painting and listening to my ipod. It’s like recess!

I painted fruit! It was fun.

5:30 PM: Call home As soon as I get out of art class, like the minute I take one step out of the studio room, I pull out my phone and call my family. It’s the perfect time to call home since all my classes are done for the day. Plus, my family is guaranteed to catch me in a good mood since I would have just gotten done painting! The conversations can some days last 10 minutes and other days last 100 minutes. I’m especially excited because they’re coming to visit me this weekend!

6:00 PM: Grab dinner This is when I get to spend time with friends and eat (two of my favorite things) at the same time!

6:30 PM: HERTU I help out with the Hopkins Emergency Response Teaching Unit. Right now, we are working on teaching our fellow Hopkins students how to run emergency medical scenes, such as coming across patients with asthma attacks, allergic reactions, and drug misuse. The class is completely student run. I took the course over intersession and now I help out with the spring semester course as a TA. The classes are very informative and at the end of the course, each student receives an EMR certification.

10:00 PM: Library M level Homework time! My friends and I start off at M level for group study, but then we end up getting distracted from our work and talking to each other the whole time. So we eventually have to split up so we can focus and be productive. (Unless it’s studying for midterms, during which we are all very serious!)

2:00 AM: Sleep The best part of the day :)

Hope you enjoyed reading that! Feel free to ask me any questions about student life or Hopkins in general and I will answer them right away!

Why Hopkins: My Experiences With JHU!

Posted by Purna C. | Posted on April 7, 2012

Congratulations to the Class of 2016!!

While thinking about what to write, I became incredibly reminiscent of all the events leading up to how I ended up here at JHU. I toured the campus in my senior year of high school and instantly fell in love with the overall positive and motivated attitude of the student body and professors, and not to mention the beautiful campus!

Now that I am officially a Hopkins student and have almost completed a whole year, the greatest thing I have come to appreciate about this school is the amount of opportunity: opportunity to learn, opportunity to do, opportunity to teach; there is an endless amount of ways to get involved and gain exposure to the field of your interest.

As a super math and science nerd in high school, I have always for the main part pictured myself practicing medicine and doing research in a lab. I’ve also pictured myself riding a vespa past gorgeous gardens and cobblestone villas while sipping cappuccino every morning on a balcony that overlooks the riverside. A large portion of my adolescent life has been spent playing punch buggie with Ferraris, stalking Rafael and Da Vinci on ARTstor, listening to Andrea Bocelli sing “O Sole Mio” a thousand times on constant loop, and trying to convince the world that tiramisu is possibly the greatest thing they will ever come across in their life. Yes, I do secretly wish I was Italian. And by the time I was a senior in high school, I set a goal for myself: After I got my MD, I would become the proud owner of a vespa and set up a practice on the Italian Riviera so I can occasionally paint landscapes of the riverside if time allowed.

As crazy and farfetched as my dreams appear, it’s definitely worth working towards them. To my extreme fortune, Hopkins encourages that. Hopkins knows that every student here pictures big things for themselves, whether it is to become a hospital manager in Honduras while simultaneously working to refine irrigation in Africa, or to become the most renowned brain surgeon on earth and win the nobel prize in medicine, or even the next great fashion-designer/lawyer/adult fiction writer of the century. (Those are real goals set by real people here and they are well on their way!) We have an excellent network of alumni, professors, and advisors who are always supportive of their students and are whole-heatedly willing to help them achieve in every way possible.

Image of a mouse neuron. Courtesy of Ryan Patterson, my neuron-obsessed floormate!

When I told my academic advisor in the fall about my doctor/artist/Italian goals, she suggested I start by taking general chemistry and focus on fulfilling my premed requirements first. (Don’t worry, I have prioritized!) She then told me to set aside some time in my schedule to work towards a Homewood Arts Certificate for visual arts by taking art classes of my choice. And finally, if I must be Italian, she suggested I try taking Italian elements, which has conveniently taught me to become proficient in reading an Italian menu. I feel so grateful to be able to receive so much support and guidance from a school that is genuinely interested in helping me work towards my very specific goals.

I am also very grateful to go to a school that gives me such great preparation for my subject of interest. Science at Hopkins is perhaps the biggest reason I decided to come here. Although the science courses are very rigorous, my friends and I have all agreed that we have learned a lot (like really, a LOT). I remember walking into chem lab on my first day and having to pick my lab station. I was in awe at the rows and rows of lab stations that took up the entirety of Mergenthaler first floor, for I had never seen a lab room this huge! I haven’t had a chance to take pictures of my lab experiences, but my hip-hop dancing friend has documented the squid dissection unit in General Biology Lab and was nice enough to let me use her picture! I never got a chance to do the squid dissection since I am not enrolled in gen bio, but from what I’ve heard, it was a very interesting experience.

So much cooler than the pig dissection in high school. Courtesy of my hip-hop dancing friend!

The gen bio class is very interactive. Some of their assignments require them to go on field trips to the Maryland Zoo and even the National Aquarium at the Inner Harbor! I may or may not have (but definitely have) pretended to be a gen bio student and tagged along on the aquarium trip…

Me (left) with my hip-hop dancing friend and crazy-awesome lab partner (who are actually gen bio students) at the aquarium!

Reflecting upon my freshman year so far, I realize that I have learned so much more academically than I ever thought I could. I’ve learned so much chemistry in such a short amount of time; I’ve learned what it really means to be in Lab; I’ve learned CPR and have become EMR certified through HERU; I’ve even had the opportunity to become AHA Instructor certified to teach CPR at the Johns Hopkins Hospital! On top of all that, was still able to pursue art and Italian, which I hope to pursue in my next three years as well. I’m really glad I came to Johns Hopkins; I never would have thought to get involved this much and make use of all these opportunities if I had gone anywhere else.

A (Spring Break) Day in the Life of JHU_Purna

Posted by Purna C. | Posted on March 22, 2012

Lately, a lot of my fellow freshman SAABloggers have been posting A Day in the Life blogs about their typical Johns Hopkins day and they are possibly the greatest things I’ve ever read! I really want to write one, but right now, I’m home for spring break. I’m having a lot of fun being back in my hometown and spending time with my family. But I’ve come to notice that a day in my life during break as a college student is quite different from one when I was in high school. So I guess there is room for me to post an “A Day in the Life” blog after all. (I shall eventually come around to writing one about my day at Hopkins!)

So without any further ado, here is A (Spring Break) Day in the Life of JHU_Purna! (I picked Tuesday)

7:00 AM: Rise and Shine! I know this is way too early to wake up during spring break, but I wasn’t headed to class, so it’s okay! Instead, I was getting ready to watch my high school compete in the National Junior Classical League’s Annual Certamen (basically like a Quizbowl for Latin grammar, history, and Roman mythology). I was on my high school’s team for the past few years and now I get to support them as they compete this year!

NJ Junior Classical League Banner at Princeton U!

8:30 AM: Head off to Nassau Street! Every year, the New Jersey Regional JCL competition is held at Princeton University, which is about an hour away from my house. Normally, I would complain about having to drive that far, but I was actually really happy to be able to drive again!

9:30 AM: Find parking by the Princeton train station. Time to meet up with my high school’s Certamen team. I became super nostalgic almost instantly. I was so glad to see my friends as well as my old Latin teacher!

Me (right) with my friends on my high school's JCL team!

11:30 AM: Wander around Palmer’s Square! Like Princeton, NJ is a really nice place to shop or go out to lunch. Although Nassau street is very unique, I felt a little like I was back at Hopkins, but that just may be because I was in a university town! My friends and I visited the Princeton University Art Museum, where we uncontrollably “oohed” and “aahed” at their collection of Monet paintings. Visitors aren’t allowed to take pictures of select paintings, but the museum guard was nice enough to let us take a picture with a Monet painting we really liked, seeing how excited we were to see it!

My friend and I freaking out over the Monet painting!

1:30 PM: Head back to Flemington. Luckily, the traffic wasn’t as bad on the way home as it was in the morning!

2:30 PM: Back Home! Now it’s time to watch some TV, which is sadly something I’ve missed…like a lot. I do watch TV in college, but I watch it on my laptop. And watching TV on a lap top is NOT the same as watching TV on a TV :)

4:00 PM: Log onto Blackboard. Even though it’s spring break, I have to take advantage of the free time to do some catching up and reviewing in my classes. From what I’ve experienced, Hopkins does not assign homework over breaks; however, they do give you a heads-up on all upcoming assignments that will be due after the breaks. In other words, you can totally get away with doing no work over break, but it definitely helps to get a head start!

7:00 PM: Dinner! I legitimately get excited for every meal at home. Home cooked meals are not something I complain about anymore since they are quite hard to come by in college.

8:00 PM: Skype dates with Hopkins friends (and even friends from home)! When you go home on breaks, you will miss your Hopkins friends terribly. They are like a second family to you and it is hard to spend even a day away from them. On the bright side, you get to see all your friends from home, whom you would have missed terribly during college. Unfortunately, Johns Hopkins has spring break a lot later than most universities, so it is really hard to get together with friends from home since most of them are back at school from having earlier spring breaks. So Skype is the next best thing! (The break schedules are more coinciding for Fall and Winter break).

My flexitarian friend skyping me from all the way across the country! JHU friends are hard to be away from:(

10:30 PM: Goof around with the family! Monopoly is our absolute favorite board game. We started a game over the summer and we continue playing the same round every time I come home from college!

12:00 PM: Sleep! The absolute best thing about going home for break is being able to go to bed early and catch up on all that missed sleep during college!

Well that is just one day in my spring break life! Hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to ask me any questions about student life or about Hopkins in general and I will answer them right away!

5 Things You Should Know About Hopkins That Can Make Your Life a Little Easier…

Posted by Purna C. | Posted on March 17, 2012

I’m home for spring break and for the first time, I do not have a secret desire to be back at Homewood. I guess my true homesickness has finally kicked in about 7 months into the school year, for I completely and absolutely want to be home right now and cannot be more happier that I am. Don’t get me wrong; being away from home definitely has its pros, but after a while, calling my family and only getting to talk to them for less than an hour every other day became frustrating. I missed being able to come home after school every day and spend an unlimited amount of time telling them funny anecdotes about my friends and professors. I also missed being in a familiar setting and being able to jump in a car and go wherever I wanted (Freshman aren’t allowed to bring cars on campus).

So yeah, right now I’m spending a lot of time with my family and a few friends who have spring break at the same time as me (Hopkins has a later spring break than most universities). I’ve even had some time to do some thinking and reflect on my past 7 months at Hopkins. I realized for the most part, they have gone pretty well, but there are a few little things I have learned and feel I should warn you about before you begin your Hopkins journey.

So without any further ado, here are 5 things you should know about Hopkins that can make your life a little easier…

1. Buy your Hopkins gear at the right time: In late August/early September, the JHU Barnes and Noble has a sale on sweatshirts where you can buy 2 for $55 (select styles only, but the select styles are the generic ones that you would normally buy even if there wasn’t a sale). You can just find a friend and split the cost. It’s a pretty good deal considering sweatshirts are normally around $35.

This is one of the more popular designs!

2. General Physics and WileyPlus: For those of you planning to take General Physics at some point during your undergraduate career, you are required to purchase the course textbook as well as an online WileyPlus account where you can access and submit your weekly problem sets. In addition, the account has various resources, like video lectures and concept simulations, than can help you better understand the coursework. But here’s something the department doesn’t tell you before you make your purchases: Spoiler alert…The textbook is on the account! Just a couple days ago (after having both the book and the account for nearly 2 months now), I was browsing through my WileyPlus account while studying for my midterm when I literally found a cover to cover ebook included as a feature of the account. I was like, “Are you kidding me?” This whole time, I could have just purchased the account and still have been able to access the textbook. On the other hand, if you are a student who usually highlights and annotates their readings, you might still want to get a textbook. But if you are comfortable with using ebooks and doing your readings online, you may want to consider just getting the account. (Textbook and account info will be available right before school starts so don’t freak out about this now.)

3. Don’t spend your dining dollars all at once: It will come back to bite you. Dining dollars are a set amount of money that is added to your Hopkins student ID card and can be used at certain locations on campus to buy food. The amount of dining dollars you have to begin with depends on what meal plan you get. Although FFC food is satisfying enough to be able to eat all your meals there, the food can once in a while get redundant and it’s necessary to eat at other locations. I have a meal plan where I get 100 dining dollars at the start of each semester. This semester, I have been obsessed with the F’real milkshakes that you can get at Charmar, so I’m already down to 17 dining dollars. And we have 2 more months of school to go. So now I can’t get milkshakes as often, which makes me sad.

This one's chocolate. But mint chocolate chip is better.

4. Laptop size: Don’t get anything bigger than a lap top with a 15″ screen because it would be really hard to carry around, especially to your huge lecture classes. I have a 14″ and I sometimes find it hard to use in a giant lecture hall because the seats are all so close together and the desks are pretty tiny. Also, I personally wouldn’t suggest anything smaller than one with a 13″ screen since a lot of homework is done/submitted online and it could hurt your eyes; however, a lot of students carry around netbooks and ipads and find them okay. I guess it’s a matter of personal preference.

5. Don’t bring a bike to campus: Unless you really want to, there is simply no need to bring a bike to get from class to class. A lot of people I know brought one, but then ended up not using it…or they used it and faced some problems like getting to class way too early or nearly running someone over along the way. For practical purposes, it’s more convenient to walk to your classes since the campus is pretty small and you only really need a maximum of 15 minutes to get from one end of campus to the other. But as usual, there are exceptions, like if you are an athlete and use biking as your form of exercise, then by all means, bring your bike because Baltimore is really hilly and that’ll help strengthen your quads.

I thought this was funny!

So that’s my list so far. Maybe I’ll add onto it as the years go on! But until then, feel free to ask me any questions about student life or Hopkins in general and I will answer them right away!

“I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.”

Posted by Purna C. | Posted on February 27, 2012

Picasso said that, by the way. I’m sitting in my room right now listening to my Alaskan roommate and neuron-obsessed floormate quote Noam Chomsky and discuss the birth of linguistics. They’re both surprisingly very calm and ironically enjoying themselves considering what they’re studying for is their Cognative Neuroscience midterm…yes, midterm…that they have tomorrow morning! But I guess what would be a freak out study sesh for me is nothing but the equivalent of a riveting book club meeting to two neuroscience majors here at Hopkins! And I’m sure they’ll do great on their midterm considering how interested and passionate about the subject they both are!

Me (left), my neuron-obsessed floormate (middle), and Alaskan roommate (right) showing our premed pride -_-

Earlier today I had my painting class, which is my absolute favorite class this semester, in the Mattin Center, which is my absolute favorite building at Hopkins! The Mattin Center is the arts center on campus, where students have various art/photography classes, music rehearsals, and dance practices. Mattin is also home to the Digital Media Center (DMC). The DMC is really cool. In the beginning of the year, they offer many free classes and tutorials on programs such as Photoshop and InDesign.

The Mattin Center

But back to my original point, Painting I is a studio oil painting course where our reference objects put on a table in the center of the classroom with one light source. Each student picks an angle at which they want to observe the image and then do their best to replicate it on canvas. So far, we’ve finished working on a gradient color grid and a still life project, which happens to be my very first college painting!

The still life reference objects!

Close to the angle I chose to paint

My first college painting:) Oil on canvas

After stalking their website last summer as a prospective student and visiting the studios for Student Art League once in a while during the first semester, I’m finally getting to take a class from the Homewood Art Workshops! In general, the art classes here are studio style and about 3-4 hours long for one day a week (the same as Chem Lab, but more fun). The classes are also really small (maximum of 15 students) which allows the professors to give each student specific feedback and help us improve right then and there. Just today, I was unable to mix the right shade of blue to paint the base surface and my professor caught my mistake and spent legitimately ten minutes helping me mix my paints. The art faculty here is very dedicated and incredibly talented! Anecdote #2: I was also having trouble getting the bottle in the still life look rounded and my professor did a quick demo to help me where she painted a cylinder in under two minutes. I was in awe.

Overall, my Homewood art experience has been really fun so far! I can’t wait to take more art classes in the following years! Feel free to ask me any questions about student life or about Hopkins in general and I will answer them right away!

Kids, Don’t Try This At Home…

Posted by Purna C. | Posted on February 9, 2012

Last night, I pulled my very first Johns Hopkins all-nighter at the library. And no, I didn’t cheat and take little five minute naps here and there…it was a legit all-nighter. I headed down to the library at around 11:55pm with my brief case and neatly spread out my mint-conditioned Vector Calculus textbook, my gold embroidered spiral-bound notebook, and my fancy Visconti fountain pen on an empty desk on M-level. I then sat down, opened my textbook to the first problem set question, and began. At about 6:45am, I victoriously finished the problem set, headed out of the library just in time to grab breakfast at the FFC and get ready for my 9:00am physics section. I then breezed through the afternoon and submitted my beautifully completed problem set during my calculus section at the end of the day. You know…it was no big deal.

MSE Library!

Reality Check: as much as I would love to brag about being able to stay awake for nearly 36 hours without succumbing to even the most profound weight of the night’s soporific triggers, an all-nighter is definitely not an experience I would like to repeat. The library at midnight is pretty lively though; however, once 2:00am comes around, the place begins to gradually clear out, leaving behind only the victims of excessive coursework and perpetrators of procrastination. I’d consider myself both. Luckily, I was accompanied by my nocturnal guitar strumming floormate, and with the help of caffeine, a 3:00am Subway run, and multiple Sporcle breaks, we managed to stay awake the entire time without crashing for even a minute. My old, worn-out copies of used textbooks were messily scattered across the desk, while I struggled to crank out each problem set question on scrap paper; and the greatest of all, having to deal with the tip of my flimsy mechanical pencil snapping off literally every two seconds. I don’t want to recall how much my eyes burned, having to stare at my textbook for hours in a row trying to understand the course material. But alas, even my finished problem set was far from truly being finished. By the time I got to the last couple of questions, I simply scribbled down some work, made up some answers, and called it quits by 6:45am.

I tried to take one of those artsy pictures where only the words on the page are in focus and the background is not.

And that was just during the all-nighter. I then proceeded to suffer from post all-nighter syndrome. The walk back from the library was far more painful than usual. Then again, it may have had something to do with the fact that it was freezing outside and my guitar strumming floormate and I were completely disoriented from our lack of sleep. After getting breakfast at the FFC (and by breakfast, I mean coffee), I tried to get at least one hour of sleep before my 9:00am class. 10 minutes into my nap, my Alaskan roommate’s alarm clock went off and after that, it was hard for me to fall back asleep again. Physics section in the morning was nearly impossible to sit through: I kept feeling dizzy and I absolutely could not focus or pay attention to the lesson. Following section, I had to attend lab, and following lab, I ended my day with my calculus section, where I got to finally hand in my “beautifully completed” problem set. Even at its eventual completion, I knew I would have to face the possibility of a low grade on the assignment. It would probably be wise to not put next week’s problem set off to the last minute to prevent myself from having a sequel to this episode.

I kid you not, pulling an all-nighter in college is possibly THE WORST way to get anything done. There are so many other ways to cope with the workload that your classes throw at you. I cannot stress enough how important time management is at Hopkins, for unlike high school, it is pretty much never going to work out in your favor if you do all your assignments the night before they are due. Start working on the assignments at least two days before their due dates. In addition, make use of the various tutoring services available on campus. There are a lot. It is true that you may have to give up a lot of relaxation and socializing in order to follow a reasonable work routine, but I promise you, it is not worth risking your grades and losing sleep. If you manage to have a proper study/work routine, your academic life here can be very enjoyable and stress free. It just takes planning and motivation to accomplish.

So yeah, that was basically my day and everything I wanted to share. In short, all-nighters are bad. Don’t do it.

Feel free to ask me any questions about student life or about Hopkins in general and I will answer them right away!

From the Desk of Purna C.

Posted by Purna C. | Posted on January 23, 2012

I’m currently sitting in the Building A laundry room waiting for the remaining 27 minutes on the washing machine timer to pass. I have barely a quarter of an episode of Doctor Who loaded onto my computer, which is enough to last me a good nine minutes. (Over winter break, I was introduced to the wonders of Doctor Who by my exceedingly obsessed friends from back home and I must say it is one of the strangest yet greatest things I’ve ever seen.)

Only now, I have developed an inconvenient fear of statues, so going to the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) over intersession was interesting, especially since they had statues everywhere! (I’m just kidding; that was a joke)

But instead of getting immersed in the episode and fantasizing about being a time traveling doctor from another planet who owns a police box-esque space ship thing called a Tardis, I’ve decided to take this time to reflect upon my past two weeks of Intersession and blog about it!

My Class: In one of my previous blogs, I mentioned a list of courses I was interested in taking over intersession. Guess what? I got waitlisted in all of them. So in a moment of frustration, I ended up signing up for a biology class called Bioinformatics. After one week, it turned out that the class was a really good fit for me: the professors were both knowledgeable and funny, the class size was small, and even though the class duration was only two weeks, I have learned a ton! Bioinformatics is an introductory course based around giving students hands on exposure to using the PubMed database, which is a medical database. To all of you nerdy premeds out there, definitely play around with PubMed in your free time to get a slight sense of how to use it! It’s a great way to get pre-college exposure since you’ll all most likely come across it at least once during your premed Hopkins career. So the moral of this story is (apart from Bioinformatics is awesome) don’t get frustrated if you get waitlisted in any of your classes; you’re going to love the classes you end up taking anyway!

Surprise party: Yesterday was my sleepy suitemate’s birthday so my Alaskan roommate and I decided to throw her a party! It was going to be a surprise party. Unfortunately, I completely failed to mention to everyone that it was a surprise party. Within literally a day of the planning, one of our floormates spilled the beans and my suitemate then told me that she would like her birthday cake to be an ice cream cake from Charmar. But we all had a lot of fun, nonetheless!

Me (left), my sleepy suitemate (middle), and my Alaskan roommate (right) along with the ice cream cake (on table)!

Celebrating at Tambers:)

BMA visit: Last week I went to the Baltimore Museum of Art with my crazy awesome lab partner and my guitar strumming floormate. Don’t worry, I braved the statues. The BMA has several exhibitions but my absolute favorite (and one that I would definitely encourage everyone to check out) is the Print by Print: From Dürer to Lichtenstein exhibition, which will continue to be displayed until March 25, 2012. The Print by Print exhibit features a range of prints by various artists, including Picasso, Duchamp, and of course, Durer and Lichtenstein! The styles of prints range from screenprints, stencils, and my personal favorite, etchings. They were so incredibly detailed that you could spend hours admiring just one piece (and I totally would have too if time were to stand still. This is when a Tardis would come in handy.)

Apart from that, I played several rounds of apples to apples with my floor, baked a cake for the first time in a while in the Building A kitchen, and had my first slice of Maxi’s pizza (so good)! On a completely unrelated note, it snowed here a few days ago and the campus looks really pretty!

Me in front of Gilman Hall!

Feel free to post any questions about student life or about Hopkins in general and I will answer them right away!

Art as Applied to Medicine

Posted by Purna C. | Posted on January 2, 2012

I’ve never realized how quiet my hometown is until now. It’s hard to believe that I’ve spent the past few months exploring and learning my way around a whole other city: browsing the farmer’s market, thrifting at Hampden and Fells Point, listening to live music at Towson Square, etc. I’ve even learned how to take shuttles and public transport! After spending an entire semester in Baltimore, “The Greatest City in America” (where there’s always something going on!), coming back home to the quaint little town of Flemington, NJ for winter break amusingly almost seems like a new experience rather than returning to something familiar! But nevertheless, it is great to be home where I can enjoy home-cooked meals and sleeping in every day! And after catching up with all my old friends, it’s exciting to know that they have all had similar college experiences!

The Flemington Train Station...

...versus the Baltimore Penn Station!

One of my favorite things to do is draw, and during winter break, I have had a lot of free time to do just that! While browsing for inspiration, I came across something really interesting that I just had to share with you guys: JHU’s Art as Applied to Medicine department for graduate students! The department teaches students interested in fields such as medical illustration, medical animation, and even prosthetic design. The Art as Applied to Medicine department is the first in the country of its kind and is a very competitive program, accepting as little as four graduate students per year!

Although there is no similar program for undergraduate students, they can prepare for the medical illustration field by majoring in the natural sciences, taking courses from the pre-medical track, and taking various visual arts classes that focus on enhancing basic drawing and painting skills!

Definitely check out the department’s gallery featuring works by both students and faculty! It was a great source of inspiration for me! Here are some drawings I did over break:

Skull--pencil

Heart--pencil

Anyways, I hope the Art as Applied to Medicine department intrigued you as it did me! Feel free to post any questions about student life or about Hopkins in general and I will answer them right away!