I'm Back!

My dear loyal readers, and by dear loyal readers I mean Chris, I have been MIA for a while. This is because of the extremely stressful process of partially re-doing my qualifying exam, which felt more like doing an entirely new qualifying exam, which felt like shitting out a frozen porcupine, but the good news is it all ended yesterday and I PASSED! Yay!!! I am officially a candidate for the PhD in molecular cell biology. In other words, I can now continue life doing what I was doing before, but without a gun to my head. This is a great relief for me, because given that my parents have a very good retirement fund planned, that fund being me, I need to do well in life. No pressure.

Now time to continue my life. However, from all emotional indicators, my life isn't as peachy as I think it could be. This year when I turned 25, I felt rather blue and depressed about it. First of all, I turned a quarter of a century. That is a milestone, I think. However, I didn't have that much to show for 25. And while some people who tried to console me used the usual educational achievements as the "things" I had to show, those types of things were not exactly the yardstick by which I measure success, per se. I think that it is a good thing when people do well in school and progress further educationally, and that such achievements do mean that the person has had some amount of success, but I am not sure it means anything if you haven't done any good in your life. I'm not one who usually measures a person's worth by things like where they went to college, or IF they went to college because I'm pretty sure that there are as many things interesting about someone because they didn't go to college as there are about someone because they did. Anyway, so I was blue about turning 25 and people consoling me about my "achievements" didn't help because to me, when I am lying on my death bed, seeing the afterlife floating towards me, I am not going to be calling out to my diploma to save me. I figure that in order to lay dying and not feel absolutely horrifyingly desperately F-ed, I need to be able to look back on my life and know that I had done good things. That somehow, because of things that I did, someone, somewhere, who is not related to me, has had a better life.

Now don't get me started. I seriously lack good things to look back upon and it's beginning to carve a little hole in my soul. Hence my turning-25-depression. So I pledged to myself that by the time I have another birthday, if Allah spares my life to see it, I will have something to look back upon and at least be satisfied that the hole in my soul is slowly closing. Now I recognize that "doing good" is all relative. Some people may consider giving a handjob to a homeless man in the park doing good. I mean, if you think about it, there aren't that many people willing to do it, and it would probably make the man happy. But this is not what I mean. I am looking to provide longer lasting happiness; the equivalent of a daily handjob, in my previous example. So I responded to a craigslist ad seeking an "intern for a nonprofit". I figured, hey, if they're a nonprofit, they must be doing good. They need someone to research grant opportunities and do office work part time. It's an unpaid position, which is great, because I want my payment in afterlife points and money tends to nullify afterlife points sometimes.

It turns out the nonprofit is an established organization called "Doorways" that provides housing and medical care for people living with AIDS. Perfect! I have an interview next Thursday, but the woman accidentally responded to my email address with the words, "good candidate, me thinks...", so I get the idea they think that at least on paper, I'm a "good" candidate for the position. This should also make for some very interesting blogging, if I do end up a part of that institution. So this is where my life is headed and hopefully, next year at the end of May, my soul will be less porous.