Senior Formal, One Health, Fountain Hopping

It has been quite the weekend. This is hell weekend #2 of the quarter in terms of school work, and I have a bit of a long night ahead of me. That being said, it’s also been a blast thus far, and I’m soaking up the senior experiences.

In terms of my foot, it’s likely a stress fracture but I’m still waiting for an MRI to come back to know for sure. When I have more details, I want to do a full post on that. In the meantime, I’ve been playing the game of “how many ways can I keep myself amused on a spin bike?” Luckily, I’m certified in that!

While I am totally swamped, I did want to take the time to blog about this weekend. Lots of pictures!

Friday right after class, I headed to my MRI. Totally fell asleep in the middle of it. You know you’re in college when…

We had been considering going out to dinner before senior formal, but given I wasn’t going to get back from my MRI until 6, we scrapped the idea and ate at the house.

My friends and I got ready together, and I popped a bottle of fancy champagne, courtesy of Black Friday shopping at Domain Chandon.

Then we took some pictures before boarding the bus to SF. I never look fancy so be prepared for a bit of a photo overload.

Formal was held at the Metreon, which had a gorgeous view of the city from the balcony.

It was so fun to see everyone from my class so dressed up!

There was a live band playing, a (crowded) Photo Booth, and plenty of food. Not a lot of Aurora-friendly food, so I didn’t have much, but it looked good! The mac and cheese was a hit, and I had some chickpea channa masala.

We got on one of the earlier buses back, but even still, I wasn’t in bed until around 2.

Saturday morning, I was up bright and early at 6:30am to be at a conference I was working at and attending as part of the pre-vet club. The conference ran 8-6, so it was quite a long day after 4.5 hours of sleep! I have zero caffeine tolerance so I can’t drink coffee, but I found that a few sips of green tea here and there really helped. Yes, my tolerance is that low. I don’t get it.

The conference was One Health focused, and was very interesting. One Health is the concept that the medical, veterinary, public health, and environmental fields are intertwined and all interact with each other. As such, we need to link them in our approaches to problem solving in various realms. For the conference, we had tons of speaks, ranging from MDs, veterinarians, and researchers. The conference covered 4 main areas: influenza, Seizure/Epilepsy research, Antibiotic Resistance, and Bats (as a vector for disease). The influenza section touched on particular types of flu epidemics, and the spread of flu from animals to humans (and vice versa). My favorite section was the Seizure/Epilepsy research. Presenters shared research in both humans and animals, and two of the presenters showed some incredibly cool research on new technology for predicting seizures (in epilepsy) based on brainwaves, and then potentially trying to prevent them. In the antibiotic resistance module, speakers discussed the growing problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria, resulting from over prescription of antibiotics and of uniform antibiotic dosage within the food animal industry to increase growth rate. Antibiotic resistance is a serious issue, because it is not unforeseeable that in the future we will no longer be protected by antibiotics. For those unfamiliar, antibiotic resistance occurs because bacteria can mutate and evolve at extremely fast rates, and can change in a way that allows them to evade the effects of antibiotics. The final module was on the spread of disease through bats.

One of my roles was a lunchtime discussion facilitator, and in my group, we spent a lot of time discussing animal use in research (something I am fairly knowledgable about) and the public’s view of it.

It was a long day, but I definitely learned a lot!

Immediately after the conference, I went out to dinner with my family for a little early birthday celebration since I have a midterm on the night of my actual birthday. Per my choice, we went to Lyfe Kitchen.

Goat cheese and mushroom flatbread to start.

And a gluten free chicken and avocado sandwich for my main meal. Plus garlic parmesan sweet potato fries to share!

We went back to my sister’s apartment for cake afterwards, and I got to hang out with her kitty, Lava!

Lava is a sweetie, and extremely easy-going. The only way to blow out candles clearly is with a cat in your lap! I certainly tested out my range.

My mom made a beautiful ice cream cake!

Gluten free chocolate cake on the bottom Strauss mint chocolate chip ice cream on top. It was delicious! (Was/Is. Definitely had a slice Sunday night!)

Sunday has been spent simultaneously trying to get my life together and trying to enjoy the last half quarter of senior year. I started my morning with a spin class, because I can only spend so much time on a bike by myself. I let the instructor know beforehand that I couldn’t stand on the bike, and it was still a great class. (Sidenote: I taught a class Wednesday without standing, and my class were rockstars! They were super understanding an followed my cues perfectly!)

I spent Sunday afternoon grinding away at a take-home test, before breaking for a little fountain hopping.

Fountain hopping is a huge thing here. Because of the drought, the fountains have been turned off for the past 2 years, but they turned them back on for the final month.

I was greeted with an unexpected roll out when my friends knocked on my door with a boom box.

It was the perfect weather for hanging out in a fountain. I hadn’t been fountain hopping since just after my freshman year! Crazy.

It was fantastic to see some friends I haven’t hung out with much this quarter.

Froyo afterwards was totally necessary as well.

I got plain with fruit from Fraiche, the froyo place on campus. (They also make their own normal yogurt and it’s so good! I never get it!)

And then it was back to the reality of take home midterms and pages and pages of reading. *Sigh*

How am I a senior though??