Eminently practical and yet appropriate as always.

My title tonight comes from the Sweeney Todd movie soundtrack, which I've been listening to nonstop since it was released.
I really, really want to see that movie.
I saw "Juno" this weekend. I seriously don't think I've ever been so entertained by dialogue in my life. Every single line made me laugh (I'm not even kidding).
I successfully located my ex-English teacher yesterday. It took me a long time to find the guy, but I eventually was able to pull his class schedule from the tangled BYU website. A select few of us are going to go visit him one of these days.
I'm writing from my pretty, new Mac laptop. I love it to death.

The research proposal I've been writing has been the best learning experience I've had in high school so far. And it isn't even an assignment. Go figure. Because of my work on this formal proposal, I've taught myself technical writing in APA format, learned to locate and interpret literature related to my subject, researched subtopics within the related literature when I realized I couldn't understand anything if I wasn't familiar with the vocabulary of the specialty...the list goes on and on.
This is what school should be like.
I find myself putting off the homework assignments I should be doing over the break because they now seem absolutely trivial compared with my little pet project.
Ironic.

You know what I've been thinking about lately?
Professions.

It's interesting to me that every profession attracts a certain type of person. Take, for example, the surgeon stereotype: arrogant, egotistical and easily irritated, but for good reason--they know they're the best, so they deserve to act like it. Or the nurse complex. I don't care where you work--if you're a nurse, you have this complex. If you've worked in a hospital, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Law attracts adversarial egotists with highly developed verbal skills, psychology draws pensive observers (or those who would seem so), and engineering appeals to the socially dysfunctional who feel more comfortable with integrals and matrices than human beings. Yes, I know these are stereotypes, but you have to admit that stereotypes are universally understood for a reason--because most of the time, they're right on.
Which leads me to a question I've focused on lately: which type does education attract?
Teaching is probably the most egotistical profession I can imagine. In what other career do you get paid for listening to yourself speak every day, expecting students to think your ideas matter, and making an analysis of how well the student will do in the future based on how well they listened to you? It's interesting.
I don't think I could ever stand teaching high school.

Contracts under law.

A successful high school party is extremely difficult to pull off.
This weekend, my friends and I beat the odds.
We had over eighty people come to our Ugly Sweater Christmas Party, and nearly everyone went all out to dress up.
It was wonderful. The Friendship's collective self-esteem and social status has risen exponentially.
Every group was represented in some way, so everyone had someone to talk to.
After the last people left, we were so overjoyed with our absolute success that we had a crazy dance party, just us girls, until 2:30 AM, and then collapsed on the floor, falling asleep all at once in a pile of blankets.
The Friendship is the tightest friend-group there is.
We're sisters.
Don't mess.

You know what I've been thinking about lately?
Lawsuits.

Patients sue doctors all the time. How far off is the day when a doctor can sue a patient for not following a treatment regime? I mean, we can sue people for not taking TB medication (and subsequently exposing a population), but if a patient can bring up a frivolous suit against a doctor, can't it work both ways?

Also, one area that really hasn't been touched yet is the student-teacher contract (though it isn't an actual document, in legal terminology it's implied, just like in the doctor-patient contract. A contract is basically an agreement between two parties in which each is expected to fulfill a specific responsibility to the other).
Can a student bring a suit against a teacher because he or she did not teach the student anything or use the student's time efffectively? In a breach of warranty suit (due to a breach in the student-teacher contract), a student would technically have legal standing to bring a case if he or she could argue that the teacher did not adequately fulfill his or her responsibilities to the student.
Or, take the converse: under the same criteria, can a teacher take a student to court for not doing his homework or coming to class?
Interesting.

In the context of suing McDonalds for making us fat or for the fact that coffee is indeed a hot beverage, these cases honestly do not sound so ridiculous.

I wish I were interested in going to law school, so I could capitalize on this.
Instead, though, I'll end up a doctor--someone who loves what she does, but has to live in fear of this kind of frivolous litigation.
It really isn't fair.

Azithromycin.

Azithromycin.
That's what's inside me right now, blocking the protein synthesis in the 50S ribosomes of the staphylococcus pneumoniae that have taken up residence inside my lungs.
I'll be better in five days.

The doctor was nice.
I quizzed him on microbes and related drugs.
He seemed a bit confused to hear me care so much, and gave me quite generic answers.
Oh well.

I had a good day today.
I'm really tired, but what else is new?
I should be doing homework instead of playing on the computer, but what else is new?
I guess that's the real question.
Nothing else is new.
You know what?
I really don't mind.

I want to be better at making conversation.
I think that sometimes I'm just scared of people, as weird as that sounds.

You know that feeling, like the teacher is centering the whole lesson on you? The way they keep looking at you, asking your opinion, and watching for your approval so they can direct their comments to the way you react?
This is why I like my senior year.
I like being respected for the things I know.
Heaven knows I've worked long and hard enough to learn.

I also like winter clothing.
Coat, jacket and sweatshirt weather is exciting.
I can't wait to go skiing.