ςτατιςτιcα∠ ιηςιgηιƒιcαηcε: Year in review.

"New Year's Eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights."

--Hamilton Wright Mabie

"For last year's words belong to last year's language

And next year's words await another voice.

And to make an end is to make a beginning."

--T.S. Eliot

"A happy New Year! Grant that I

May bring no tear to any eye

When this New Year in time shall end

Let it be said I've played the friend,

Have lived and loved and labored here,

And made of it a happy year."

--Edgar Guest

2010 began with a New Years' Eve dinner party that ended with my friends passed out on couches and me cleaning the house by myself at 4 AM. (For some reason we've never really scored with New Years' plans.) :-)

I hosted Amanda's huge masquerade-themed birthday party and learned about the staples of college life (Macs and Snuggies) with the now-ex-roommates I still adore.

I entered the world of amateur adult figure skating thanks to two inspiring Olympic performances by Johnny Weir and snagged eight stitches in my chin after a shaky one-foot glide turned into a bloody mess.

I applied to biomedical research programs all around the country and was accepted as a (well-paid!) summer intern at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. When I got my acceptance e-mail (during a particularly boring honors program lecture) I was so excited I gasped out loud and squealed to everybody around me.

I signed my first sublease agreement with a girl I found on Craigslist and flew myself all the way across the country to spend the summer doing stem cell research for Children's Hospital in Boston.

I met lots of friends in Boston and (for the first time) really enjoyed the singles-ward experience. Exploring the city on my own, bit by bit, gave me confidence and honed my itinerary-planning skills. I researched all the best restaurants and destination sites and really took advantage of my time.

I presented the real, important, original research I had worked on all summer in front of some of the world's best stem cell researchers at a Harvard conference. I painstakingly designed that poster all by myself, and I personally produced every piece of data on it (including the statistical analyses, all of which I did by hand). I'd never spoken in such an intimidating setting, and my presentation didn't go very well. Accepting that fact was a learning experience.

I finally made it to New York City and Washington, DC, both of which I loved visiting.

I started fall semester by moving into a new apartment and meeting the new roommates I now adore. I worked two jobs (web design at Independent Study and semester 3 as Medical Parasitology TA), changed my major from microbiology to linguistics, learned to despise organic chemistry, and made the decision to apply to medical school in 2011...but for the very first time, after much soul searching, I opened my eyes to the possibility that a career in medicine was not my only option. What I loved more than anything was learning Arabic, so I decided that I will attend grad school for Arabic or for linguistics and pursue a career in academia. I dropped my chemistry minor and added one in Ancient Near Eastern Studies.