Sometimes beginnings aren't so simple.*

College was good. College was bad. College was easy and college was difficult. College was crazy and apathetic, exhilarating and boring, surprising and predictable, painful and reassuring. It was nothing and it was everything.

As humans, we have an often-unrealized desire to define our experiences with labels, to assign singular categories to pluralities, and to endeavor to simplify incomprehensibly complex phenomena. Classifications bring about a superficial sense of stability, but they often fail to provide a truly accurate representation of the events in our lives.


I remember freshman year like it was just yesterday: the boys crowding into our iconic Smith 114 room, never ceasing to exasperate, entertain, enlighten, and, ultimately, endear us all through the unpredictability of their actions; the late-night conversations about love long-lost and life lessons learned and all that the uncertain future might hold; and, most of all, the ways in which we allowed ourselves to fall, to tumble to the ground in uncontrollable laughter and collapse into each other’s arms in irrepressible tears, because we knew we had a family of friends that would find a way to pull us back up in the end.

And, yet, at the very same time, it feels so long ago.


It’s as if yesterday was both a recent present and a distant past – composed of a million unforgettable, undeniable memories – memories that continually resurface when I least expect it. The nostalgia hits when I unconsciously breathe in the pages of a newly-published book in true Namrata-fashion, when the off-key recordings of Ashwin’s guitar-playing and singing randomly come on my iTunes, and especially when someone yells “EXPECTO PATRONUM” in a Harry Potter movie.

For me, the smallest things have always held the strongest meanings; and now, more than ever, they give me something to hold onto until we see each other again. College was more than the sum of my classes, and definitely much more than my GPA and my GRE or MCAT scores. It was four years of intricately intertwined, unquantifiable moments – moments that defined me even though I can’t define them.

In the meantime, I can look forward to detecting honesty in games of mafia, spending an amazing six weeks in Paris, and adjusting to new modes of communication to keep in touch, regardless of where we are or what we end up doing post-graduation.


*"Shadow of the Day" by Linkin Park (Minutes to Midnight Album)

Tonight's the night the world begins again.*

A graduation update, complete with nostalgic descriptions of college memories and photographs of friends and family, is coming soon...

But, in the meantime, here's a preview of how I'll be spending the first half of my summer - in PARIS. Although it's probably obvious, dates are in bold and semi-elaborate explanations and/or descriptions of events and places are italicized.

A sample of what's already on the itinerary:

May 26 (The day after we arrive in Paris)
Afternoon boat ride down the Seine

May 28
Cimetière du Père-Lachaise/Père Lachaise Cemetery
Chopin, Jim Morrison, Jean-Dominique Bauby (see my blog post from Feb. 26th: "Three months of winter and wealth"), and Oscar Wilde (recall the short film on the XXe arrondisement in Paris, Je t'aime) are just four famous individuals who are buried there.

June 2
Cité des Sciences et d'Industrie/The Science Museum of Paris
Exhibitions and interactives that highlight absolutely amazing scientific discoveries; my favorite as of now is the "current" science exhibit that has all things scientifically relevant to our lives today, "Science Actualités".

June 5
VERSAILLES

June 9
Musée Fragonard/Fragonard Museum
A museum within the National Veterinarian School in the Maisons-Alfort suburb of Paris

June 16
Musée d’histoire de la médecine/The museum for the history of medicine

June 18
Palais de la découverte
An extraordinary science museum in the 8th arrondisement, with exhibits on physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, and everything and anything in between.

Other must-see sights/excursions for the weekends:

TBA
Le musée Rodin (Museum that houses the works of Rodin)
Two words: The Thinker.

TBA
Le château de Fontainebleau/The Fontainebleau Castle.
EIGHT centuries of royal history.

June 21st (a.k.a., the day after my birthday/the summer solstice!):
World Music Day/Fête de la Musique
It's almost as if the city of Paris knew all about my trip and decided to reward me for living 21 amazing years by further propagating my love of music, as well as my rarely realized desire to attend (free) live concerts.

Oh, and sometime in between all the sight-seeing and cultural excursions, I'll be taking (and occasionally studying for) two upper-level neuroscience classes - one on primary research literature in French neuroscience (with special topics like the impact of nationalized healthcare on basic science research) and a second class on the molecular mechanisms of neurological disorders (e.g., Alzheimer's and ALS).

Hands down, the most memorable way to celebrate the end of my undergraduate career and my subsequent (legal) entrance into adulthood. Freshly-baked croissants, heavenly pastries, and made-to-order crêpes with fruit filling await...

*Title quote from "Better Days" by the Goo Goo Dolls.

"Just get back up when it knocks you down."

Maybe I should've joined a girl group at age 14 and then decided to be a theater major at Emory...

Because then I'd have a better chance at being more like Keri Hilson.


She's a 26-year-old singer-songwriter from Decatur, Georgia - her debut solo album was released about a month ago, and four of her songs ("Hero" from Nas's quickly untitled album, "Energy", "Turnin' Me On", and "Knock You Down") have been on the Billboard Charts in the past year or so.

Since it's too late and too unlikely that I'll ever get close to being more like her, let's hope she might be a part of Emory's "Art of Songwriting" panel again in the future, so I could at least meet her one day...

I'm feeling knackered right now, but, I think I may need to re-figure things out soon. In the words of Keri Hilson's songwriters (Louis Biancaniello, Rico Love, Sam Watters, and Wayne Wilkins), "I can't afford to slip much further from the person I was meant to be."


*Lyrics from Keri Hilson (ft. Kanye West and Ne-Yo)'s "Knock You Down" and "Energy", respectively.

You could be happy.*

5 Random Things that Make Me Happy...
... because writing out 100 things would take too long, and no one would want to read all of them. But mostly because grand endings and amazing new beginnings call for a little bit of nostalgia.

1. 1 psuedo-made-up word: imeem. It's the concept of YouTube (by the public for the pubilc) combined with the intuition and originality of Pandora - a.k.a., a music lover's heaven. It's where I found Elliott Smith's cover of Jimmy Eat World's "Half Right", one of my all-time-favorite songs, and Leona Lewis's cover of Snow Patrol's "Run".
2. Discovering new music. Recent favorites: Adele, Laura Izibor (I found her and her songs before VH1 did... her song, "Shine" was in the credits for the movie The Nanny Diaries about 2 years ago), and acoustic versions/covers of popular songs (sometimes they sound better than the originals - like the piano version of "Pokerface" and Lily Allen's cover of "Womanizer").

3. Celebrating noteworthy occassions with friends and food. Some memorable and delicious places from this year (and previous years): Baraonda, Chow Baby, Fogo de Chao, and Sun Dial (they have a live jazz trio on Wednesday nights!).
4. Finding answers to questions. If there's a problem, I like figuring out a solution. If there's a blank crossword puzzle, I have this unstoppable urge to write in all the correct answers... "soupcon" was definitely a soupcon.
5. Doing (or making) nice things for other people. There's an argument that no one's truly altruistic and all of us just do nice things because charitable acts make us feel better about ourselves. Sometimes, it's what you do, not why you do it - if it makes me happy to make you happy, why question the motives? (See photo collage below as an example. Also, if you have access and/or a subscription to The New Yorker - or Google Scholar - check out "The Gift" by Ian Parker, from August 2, 2004. The first time I read the article was in high school, but it's still just as mind-boggling today as it was then.)

*Purposeful reference to Snow Patrol.

Biscuits with butter bring bliss.

Recently, Alabama (my hometown, specifically) was in an article of the NY Times - surprisingly, for something positive: biscuits. Not just any biscuits, but buttermilk biscuits that taste homemade and "Parker-style yeast rolls [dipped] in real butter."

From fluffy buttermilk biscuits for breakfast to yeast rolls with lunch and cheddar biscuits served at dinner, biscuits (and rolls) have become a staple of American cuisine, and not just in the South.With graduation coming up in less than a month, I've started thinking about my favorite memories of college, and how most (if not all) of those memories involve food, friends, and family, or some combination of those things. That being written, here are my top three biscuit-related picks for graduation weekend brunch: (hopefully, they'll include family and/or friends, as well.)

1. The Flying Biscuit: My all-time favorite order is the turkey meatloaf, with horseradish cream sauce, served with pudge (mashed potatoes with sundried tomatoes, basil, and olive oil). It doesn't hurt that you also get the best biscuit ever with cranberry apple butter on the side. It's pretty crowded on the weekends, but it's totally worth the wait.

2. Bobby & June's Kountry Kitchen: Don't let the cute misspelling fool you - this place has cuisine with a kick (or should I have written, "kuisine with a kick"?). It's probably one of the only places in Atlanta that you can get a Southern-style breakfast with eggs, bacon, and sausage (and biscuits, of course), and then come back for lunch to have BBQ with a homemade chili sauce tang.

3. Java Jive: I've never been here in person, but apparently, this restaurant ties with the Flying Biscuit for the best homemade biscuits - plus, they have a nice ambiance, complete with great jazz and 1950s decor.

The weather has been really weird in Atlanta the past few weeks - I can't really tell if it's winter weather or starting to become summer, because the temperatures have been fluctuating so much. But, as the Russian author Anton Chekhov** once wrote, "People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy." And, as soon as I get biscuits, I'll be too happy to pay any mind to the weather.

*Photo taken by S. Arora; from an impromptu celebratory dinner at Panera - i.e., food, friends, and great memories.
** I've been reading Chekhov for my English class; an explanation for the seemingly random insertion of a quote by a Russian author.

P.S. This post was written on my new MacBook =) I branched out a bit and got a case that's not black or white (part of my unofficial campaign to put more color in my life).

My First (and probably only) Top 13 List.

So, I'm sitting in the computer lab, trying to come up with brilliant ideas for the final paper I have to write for my senior biology seminar on ethics & genetic testing, but I just can't seem to concentrate on the task at hand.

For once, though, I can say that my inability to focus is not completely my own fault; the French-American couple at the table ahead of me is to blame for my lack of productivity.

Typically, I would hesitate to stereotype an individual (or pair of individuals) - especially when they're just a few feet in front of me. They seem happy enough together, so maybe there's something I'm missing. Maybe he treats her differently when they're not in public, maybe he's not being serious when he makes fun of her personality, and maybe he's just as nice to her and she is to him. But from the hour or so that I've been in the same room with them, most of what I've seen points to a classic "nice girl dating a jerk" scenario.

It happens all the time, especially on college campuses: attractive and/or perfectly nice girls date not-so-nice guys. And it only leaves me wondering - why???

And that is the reason I have come up with this list - because it's easier than doing my work and because it's more fun than doing my work, too. That being written, here are a couple explanations, albeit overly-generalized, not always true, and not really all-inclusive, that might shed a bit of insight on this inexplicable phenomenon.

The Top 13 Reasons Why Attractive Girls Date Jerks

No. 1. Low self-esteem.
Sometimes, really attractive (and/or talented) girls don't realize how attractive and talented they actually are, so they settle for guys that are jerks.
No. 2. The fear factor.
Let's face it - deep down inside, way too many of us are afraid of not having a significant other at all in our lives, so much so that we're willing to date someone who doesn't treat us well enough.
No. 3. Physical attraction.
If you don't want a serious relationship but you do want to have fun without the emotional entanglements, then dating a jerk is definitely the way to go.
No. 4. Inexperience.
The simple and unfortunate truth of the matter is that some college girls just don't know any better at this point in the game.
No. 5. The enigma factor.
It's hard to explain, but, for some reason, some girls like it when guys have something to hide - it's as if the less a guy says (no matter how much of a jerk he actually is), the more a girl is attracted to him. And then, there's...
No. 6. The surprise factor.
You know when you're watching a really great, action-packed film and you think you have the personality of the "bad guy" figured out, but then the he does something that completely surprises you 10 minutes before the end of the movie? (Slumdog Millionaire is a perfect example of this.) Makes a girl think - there's always the possibility that your jerk of a boyfriend might surprise you in the end, too, right?
No. 7. Potential for change she can believe in.
Despite copious amounts of evidence to the contrary, you can't change a guy if he's not willing to change himself. You can try and try and try, but sometimes when a guy is a jerk once, he's always a jerk. Some things never change, like a person's...
No. 8. Reputation.
A lot of the time, guys who are jerks can get away with it because they have other things going for them - an IQ that parallels Einstein, a musical ability to sing Bob Dylan like no other (like one of my favorite female artists, Adele), or an athletic talent to throw 3-pointers better than Marcus Jordan.
No. 9. Less pressure.
(Something Michael Jordan's son probably never experienced in his lifetime.) If you're not dating someone who's nice to you, there's less of a reason for you to be nice to them, too. Not to mention, if things don't work out between the two of you, no one will fault you for breaking up with him. Although, that's not to say some girls can't handle...
No. 10. More drama.
Dating a nice guy is just oh-so-boring - they're always complimenting you, giving you way too much attention, telling you how beautiful you look, etc., etc. If you date a jerk, though, you can complain 24/7 to all your friends and get a lot more attention.
No. 11. Deviations from the norm.
There are, at times, however, those rare moments of kindness, when he doesn't degrade you or belittle your every action; those exceptions to his general tendency of being a jerk, the niceties that are few and far between - they're just enough to keep you in a suboptimal relationship.
No. 12. He used to be nice.
But as soon as he started dating a girl as attractive as you, he started to take it for granted and turned into a bona fide jerk. I guess, when that happens, a girl can always feign...
No. 13. Apathy and/or affinity.
Sometimes an attractive girl just doesn't particularly care if a guy is a jerk, and other times, she's actually attracted to a guy who treats her like she's worthless - a sentiment that might stem from a multitude of factors (the most common of them being some sort of dysfunctional relationship between her father and mother, which left her thinking that all guys were jerks and that all relationships were supposed to hurt).

It's true that sometimes jerks do get the girl first, and nice guys end up finishing last. But, at least the nice guys get the nice girls in the end, right? For the betterment of humanity, let's hope so.

Maybe eugenics is only a good thing if scientists happen to discover a gene for niceness and parents selectively choose to have offspring with that gene... that's an idea I could actually use for my paper.

Better later than never?

Over the past month or so, I've been reading V.S. Ramachandran's Phantoms In The Brain (along with about a dozen or so other books for my English and music classes), writing too many papers, tutoring more students than I can keep track of at the Writing Center, and stuffing in as much socializing as my stressful senior-year-second-semester schedule permits - it's still hard to believe that graduation is right around the corner.

What little free time I've had in between has been spent learning about blue people (in my course on ethics and the human genome) and preparing for Emory's 5th Annual Barenaked Voices A Cappella concert and Relay for Life this upcoming Friday night - two amazing events for two very different, but incredibly worthy causes. If you're interested, you can make a donation to the American Cancer Society (ACS) and help my team reach their goal at this site: Woodruff Against Cancer.

In other news, I'm getting my first-ever laptop this weekend. I'll be transitioning from my current desktop to a new MacBook by the end of the semester. It's made with arsenic-free glass, no brominated flame retardents, no mercury, and no PVC - I guess if I ever have to toss it out, at least my actions won't be environmentally-unfriendly (MacInTouch Review).

Oh, and awhile back, I cut off about 14 inches of my hair and donated it to Locks of Love. The morning I went to the salon, the weather changed from rain to sleet to snow as I sat in the salon chair. Crazy weather in the month of March, even according to Atlanta's standards.

I also officially (and definitively) decided that I'll be attending Rollins School of Public Health at Emory next fall, which means I'll be staying near Atlanta. Congrats to all the other Emory students who'll be staying here after graduation - whether it's for med school, grad school, work, or anything in between - and congrats to everyone else who's finalized plans elsewhere, too. Maybe we won't all be in the same place, but hopefully we'll see each other again down the road*. Better later than never, right?


*Last photo (of snow near Emory) taken by my friend, A. Rawat.