I'm awful at this blogging thing!

Dear friends,

It has been 8 months since my last blog... Oops! A lot has happened since my last post (obviously) so I'll just update you on the past few months... Here goes:

1. I have officially graduated and I have a Master's degree in Public Health!! ~Emily, MPH :)
2. I am an Albert Schweitzer Fellow for Life!
3. I am spending my summer in Florida and working at the waterpark. I miss the original supervisor crew, but it's really fun working with my former lifeguard babies. The summer is going by way too fast!

• Things I'm going to miss when I leave: Margarita Monday, Frozen Drink Friday, paycheck parties with the Bulgarians and Ukranians, dinner and a movie with my love, just seeing Sean on a regular basis, being in the sun everyday, the beach (I'll actually miss that soon.. when the oil hits the beaches here), not having to do school work, and leisure reading.

4. In August, I'll be going back to school and taking nothing but science classes... The journey to med school continues... In fact, here is a list of the classes I'll be taking in the fall:

• Vertebrate Physiology
• Genetics
• Cell Biology
• Organic Chem 1

Well, that's about it for now. I'll try to keep the updates coming, but be patient :)

Love,
Emily

Letters

Dear Friends,
For some reason I'm in the mood to write letters so stay tuned. You might be a letter recipient. :)

Dear Alicia,
Thank you for the reminder to update my blog. Please keep them coming.
PS: Please tell your hogs that they did a great job yesterday and I've never wanted them to win so badly. Boo Gators... Which reminds me...

Dear Florida Gators,
Thank you for playing like crap yesterday and last week. I hope you lose every game for the rest of the season and don't even make it to the National Championship game. That might shrink your heads a little. Be humble. That is all.

Dear Sean,
Thank you for coming in town this weekend. You made the weekend amazing. I love you so much and I cannot wait to see you AGAIN in 4 days. :) ...I am very nervous, however, to meet your entire extended family.
PS: I'm very sorry that you had the swine flu on your birthday and didn't get to celebrate. However, I am very happy that you did not give me the swine flu. :)

Dear friends who came out on Thursday,
Thank you for making my birthday fabulous! I love each and every one of you!

Dear Shannon and Lauren,
I love you too even though you left me to go to Chicago. I'm totally messing with y'all about that btw. I'm sure you're used to my sarcasm by now though.

Dear Angie,
Thank you for lunch on Thursday and for my gift. I <3 you roomie!

Dear housing office,
It would be really great if y'all could do something about the temperature in this building. It is not acceptable for me to have the thermostat set on 82 degrees and for it to still be 57 degrees in here. It is also not acceptable for me to have to go to the store to get a space heater, a coffee pot, and bubble bath just to warm up in my own apartment.
PS: We're still waiting for y'all to fix that light bulb in our bathroom. I put in a work order for that over a month ago. NOT ACCEPTABLE!

Dear work and school,
It would be really great if both of you could just go away yet still give me money and an education. Ok, nevermind. That just sounds ridiculous.

Dear Disney Channel,
I <3 you.

Dear Mom,
Thank you for the edible arrangement that you sent me for my birthday and thank you for being such a wonderful mommy. I love you.

Dear Mark Zuckerburg,
Get your life together. Facebook kinda sucks lately.

Dear Hilary,
Thank you for offering to turn your house into a hotel room for my birthday weekend. I'm sorry we didn't come. I really hope I get to see you soon! I love you bestie #1 :)

Dear Julia,
I'm glad your new job is going really well. I'm so proud of you! I cannot wait to come see you in 2 weeks! Get ready for a crazy-fun weekend!!! :)

I think that's all for now. I'll probably update this again in a month. LOL
Love,

Since July 24th....

Well, as you would assume, a lot has happened since my last post on July 24th. Here's what you missed...

1. My trip to Portland/Vancouver:


2. IRB Application = Submitted!
3. I moved into a tiny, big-city apartment with Angie and we hosted our first game night :)
4. MCAT #1 and #2 = Complete!
5. My trip to Florida:

6. Saint's Pre-Season Game:

7. Lot's of Schweitzer work!
8. School, Ugh!
aaaand... 9. Friday night happy hours and Slice pizza!:

Moooooooving next weekend!!!

I really enjoyed my day off today! I was really excited about getting to sleep in. Unfortunately, I woke up at 9 am, but it wasn't to an alarm clock and I felt fully rested! Since I was up early, I decided to go running. I ran in the parking garage because it was shady in there and not as hot as outside. I really wasn't feeling it though... I just really didn't feel like running. I thought that was going to be the start to an unproductive day, but I actually got a lot accomplished. I went to the housing office and signed the lease for my new apartment.... and then I got to see it. It is definitely old and the building needs to be renovated badly, but it has a living room, a kitchen, and a real closet!.... all of which I'm very excited about... so excited in fact that I went to the UHaul place and bought boxes and tape and then packed up half of my room! Then, I packed for Portland. I'm definitely looking forward to this weekend.... 80 degrees during the day and 65 at night... aaaand we may go to the Pacific coast or the mountains. I'll be sure to take tons of pictures! Well, gotta rest up... My flight's at 7:30 am and I need to leave here at 5:30.

Adios, Calories!

I'm feeling pretty good about the way things are going right now :). I worked this morning and managed to finish my MCAT book and look over some of the notes I took. I forgot to go to the housing office afterward like I planned to... I guess I was too focused on getting Chik-fil-A for lunch hahaha! I walked into the mall for lunch and walked out with a belly full of greasy food and an armband for my iPhone. I've actually been looking for an armband for a while so I'm glad I found one that I like.

Anyway, when I got back to school, I went to work. My 4 pm client didn't show up so I decided to work out instead. I had to teach spinning at 5 pm so I just did some arms and abs (and listened to my MCAT audiobook :)). I'm really glad I did because by the time spinning was over, I had burned 833 calories according to my HR monitor!! I didn't want to ruin that so I had a salad for dinner and I feel great!! Hopefully, the results will start showing up soon! I do give in to my cravings, but I've learned that I can do that as long as I cut back on calories for the next meal and then work out for a little more time than I normally would. Also, I read somewhere that sometimes when you feel hungry, it actually means that you're thirsty. It really seems to be true because sometimes when I'm craving something bad, I just drink some water and the craving goes away (at least for a while haha). I've even started to crave WATER!!! Weird, I know. I never even liked water before!

All of this just goes to show that you can change your lifestyle if you set your mind to it. Diets have been proven to not work... You have to change your whole lifestyle and learn how to discipline yourself. If you eat something bad or skip a workout, make up for it by doing an extra workout or limiting calories during another meal. The only way to efficiently lose weight is to BURN MORE CALORIES THAN YOU TAKE IN!! That is literally the ONLY thing that works! Most fad diets aim to accomplish that objective, but they have bad side effects (because you are eliminating some nutrient that you need) or are not easy to follow (because they tell you not to give in to cravings).... and they don't mention that you HAVE to exercise!... especially if you don't want to be what I call "skinny fat"... (skinny, but with cellulite and no muscle tone). haha!

I am a personal trainer so if anyone wants an exercise plan, let me know and I'd be more than happy to develop one for you. I'll give you the friend discount... JK... no charge. :)

Exhausted and Stressed...

I'm actually really proud of myself for being on top of my to do list this week. I'm right on schedule in my MCAT studying and I've gotten a lot of other things accomplished too! That being said... I'm exhausted, I've literally had chest pains for the past 2 days!!, and my brain is fried!! Some words of encouragement would be awesome! Below is a picture of my life at the moment. The Kaplan MCAT book is 1000 pages long and I'm almost finished with it! The spiral notebook is almost full of color coded notes (hence the colored pens). I have 3 full length practice tests (not including the ones I have access to on the internet. I keep the MCAT in a box flashcards in my purse so that I can study them when I have to wait somewhere. ...and I wear the headphones when I study so that I can get used to wearing them for the real test. I didn't include my phone, but I have an audiobook on there that I listen to when I workout... and I might start listening to it when I sleep. I reeeeeeaaaaaally hope I do well on this stupid test! I have to be at work early tomorrow so I'm about to go to bed and I'll continue the studying frenzy tomorrow!

Productive Week So Far

I guess I've been so productive lately that I haven't had time to update this. Sunday, I finished my training that I had to do to start research for my capstone. It took like 6 hours to do!... Ridiculous! Yesterday, I got a little bit of MCAT studying accomplished, worked on fellowship stuff, emailed teachers with information on how to submit letters of recommendation, requested transcripts, and worked. Today, I went to Target (my happy place)... I wanted to get some headphones so I can get used to wearing them (I like that they block out the noise, but they always bother me during standardized tests.). I also needed a notebook to use for practice tests and extra notes... and I needed a binder to organize my fellowship stuff. After Target, I worked on fellowship paperwork and had a meeting with our academic mentor. Right before this meeting, Shannon told me that her advisor was approached by someone on the fellowship board (She works at the school.). She wanted to make sure that we were not using our fellowship experience for our capstones. Anyway, that started a bunch of drama... Shannon and I freaked out for a little while because we thought that we had done all of this work for nothing, but it's all been straightened out. Thank God! Anyway, after the meeting, I got some more MCAT studying done, taught an awesome spinning class (found a new favorite playlist and burned 684 calories), and got some more recommendation letter stuff done. My advisor wanted me to write my own letter of recommendation!! He said that it would give me experience in writing letters of recommendation. I would like to think that I am at least somewhat humble... and I don't like to sell myself. It's not my style.

In other news, I have a very silly boyfriend. One of his favorite things to say is, "Who loves Emily? I love Emily. I do, I do, I do-oooo!"... like from that old Nickelodeon show, Keenan and Kel (Kel loves orange soda.). Haha! I love him, though.... even if he is a rare breed of man. He really is so much different than any man I have ever met. Maybe that's why I love him...

Here is my spinning playlist from today for those of you that are interested. The playlist really makes or breaks the workout:
1. Jack & Diane - John Mellencamp... Warm Up
2. Womanizer - Britney Spears
3. Right Round - Flo Rida
4. Poker Face - Lady Gaga
5. So What - Pink
6. Great DJ - The Ting Tings
7. Sugar - Flo Rida
8. Be My Lover (Club Mix) - La Bouche
9. Satellites - September
10. Mr. Vain - Culture Beat
11. Hot N Cold - Katy Perry
12. Boom Boom Pow - Black Eyed Peas
13. Crazy Train - Ozzy Osbourne
14. One of the Boys - Katy Perry
15. Here Comes Goodbye - Rascal Flatts... Cool Down
ENJOY!!