This journal is a year old today! It's rather humbling to think of how much has happened since my first post one year ago. It's been a rough road at times, but I'm certainly a happier person now than I was then, for many reasons. Thank you for accompanying me along the way.

Two more announcements... New community for Mutant X fan artists: mutantx_fanart. This should be fun!

Also, a grand welcome aboard to jeepy91, vicellious, and l_vera01. :)

Perhaps I had a wicked childhood
Perhaps I had a miserable youth
But somewhere in that wicked, miserable past
There must have been a moment of truth

This has been such a wonderful day that it warrants annoying caps and irritating exclamation points.

Both Ginger and Insomnia allowed me to sleep until 5 am this morning. Miraculous!

I completed the book on EKGs and retained enough of the information to pass the online exam. Imagine that.

frickangel successfully exorcised the multitude of demons in the bewitched computer. I'm back!

A patient brought me two pink roses from his garden, just because. :)

I received a lovely CD with my song from toomuchfandom. Thank you, dear!

tribeofroses has FINALLY resurfaced. Welcome back!

AND MY SISTER'S COMING HOME TOMORROW! *grin* Let the games begin.

Email update: For those having trouble with ncw2@hotmail.com, it has been temporarily clogged with MX Directory replies. A more effective option for sending important private messages is ncw1@cornell.edu.

The demonic laptop revealed its true paranormal nature last night. As my mother was writing, the computer let out a high pitched beep and proceeded to type by itself. I kid you not. Right in the middle of her document about spiders was the alien phrase:

101..................10003...............Clinton...........by the branch.........1001................is not the..............

We stared in amazement as seemingly nonsensical word combinations continued to appear, then I shut the thing down and unplugged it. The computer we used to have was cantankerous and annoying, but this one is just freaky.

Word to the wise: Never get a Dell.

Yay! I got a job! I can be the lab technician/doctor's assistant at Virginia Eye Institute on a temporary basis, until I go back to Connecticut. Now I can return to being a productive member of society. Thank goodness. The idle mind is the devil's playground. :)

Current Mood: excited

Muahahaha! The Harbinger of Chaos has struck again, my friends. Recent rather odd conversations and confused questions indicate that, as my friends list expands, a brief clarification about my alter egos might be helpful.

1. Nadia. I am the core personality, a 29 year-old female psychiatry intern in Connecticut. I am fairly nice and do not bite. I am not related to The Devil (and as an agnostic, am not sure he exists). In fact, most of my ancestors come from a different country altogether, Jamaica. I am classified as an African American, but my last name is Chinese because my great grandfather was from China. I was named after the Romanian gymnast Nadia Comanechi, but lacking gross motor coordination, I cannot follow in her footsteps. Or her handsprings. Someday, I hope to be a happy Democrat neuropsychiatrist working with adults with autism spectrum disorders. I discuss all things neuropsych in spocksbrain.

Just a few of my loves: my kitten Shadow, my younger sister josiemonkey, eating chocolate (which gives me migraines, damn), watching ice skating and movies, playing the violin and piano, writing, and intelligent debate. I listen to classical music, opera, musicals, and '80s bands...I am definitely a child of the '80s. I will read anything, but my favorite fiction genres are science fiction/fantasy and horror. I crave well-written fanfics. My own fanfiction tends to be so intensely dark and personal that children weep and adults fear for my sanity. Needless to say, I don't share them often. My television fandoms are many, including Star Trek TOS/TNG, Mutant X, Xena, X-Men, The X-Files, Buffy/Angel, Tru Calling, Seinfeld, Will & Grace, Frasier, Daria, That 70's Show, Joan of Arcadia, One Tree Hill, and the ABC soap operas.

2. First Mutant, "The Devil Spawn." First Mutant is my version of Gabriel Ashlocke, the very male Mutant X villain I roleplay on several MX fansites. FM (aka the Harbinger of Chaos, immortalized in the above icon shalgal made months ago), is a mutant psychopath whose life's goals are womanizing, world domination, and having fun while spreading the influence of Pure Evil over the world. His bite has fatal consequences. He is a documented grandson of The Devil. His name is Gabriel, so "Angel in Name Only" applies to him. My tendency to drift in and out of character here can be confusing to those not familiar with him, what with the morality and gender switches. So you will have to look sharp sometimes. First Mutant maintains childofgenomex, mutantx_fanart, forbes_march, _lauren_lee_, The Mutant X Warehouse, and The Great Mutant X Fansite Directory.

3. Jaded44. Several of you met me first on Greatest Journal or through my other LiveJournal, jaded44, which I use to watch communities and to house my more cynical rants. Jaded, though more opinionated, also loves a good debate. She doesn't bite--hard--but might be related to The Devil. I haven't received the bloodwork results yet. "Inside the Mind of the Devil Spawn" applies to her.

4. The Others. I have other aliases as well, which those of you who know me from other fandoms might recognize (Jhyde, Lexajesse, Soapdoctor, Neuronerd5000, Rosemadder, etc.), but that is a story for another time.

That's it for me. If you are really ambitious, you too can become one of my alter egos (why would you want to? Beats me). The application process is lengthy, but there have been success stories in the past. Two examples: socksandthecity, my younger snarkier alter, and onychomys, my smarter mousier alter. Hm. Truthfully, these two got in before the application policy was initiated, and so became alters based on nepotism alone. Ah, well.

Current Mood: full

Okay. *checks watch*

It is clearly time for my shameless promotion of my mother's book, Black Professional Women in Recent American Literature, based on the dissertation she wrote a couple of years ago on going back to school for her PhD. Ta da!

Okay. I'm done. :)

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( And my father... )

The Book Report Song I love this song. My own style fits somewhere between Linus's and Charlie Brown's... :)

I come up with so many words that aren't really words, but should be. FM's neologism for the day:

Perfecrastination. Noun. The reason behind the neverending rewrite.

Perfectionism and procrastination seem to go hand in hand. Without concrete deadlines, I will never finish some projects. Maybe a few of the phrases sound trite, or I'm not satisfied with the order of the subject progression, or some the words don't exactly express the thought I want to convey. Or the stars aren't aligned properly, or I have a headache, or I need to eat something first. And so I will tweak and rewrite until I am sick of looking at the words. And then I will put it aside "to be continued" at some later date. In my next life, perhaps.

La. It has finally happened.

Actually, it's a mixture of snow/hail/sleet, just to make driving conditions really fun. Everything, including the library, is closing early, so I think I will go home and curl up with a book, some hot chocolate, and my kitty.

Can't ask for more. :)

http://www.studentbmj.com/back_issues/0304/careers/110.html

On hearing what I want to do with the rest of my life, people always ask, "What the heck is neuropsychiatry anyway?" Put simply, it is the study of the relationship between the brain and behavior. Neuropsychiatrists care for patients with combined neurological and psychiatric illnesses, for example, a patient whose brain tumor is causing a severe depression, or a child with autism and a seizures disorder. There are many ways to become a neuropsychiatrist, but the two most conventional are 1. a dual medical residency in neurology and psychiatry, or 2. a primary training in psychiatry or neurology followed by a 1-2 year fellowship in neuropsychiatry or behavioral neurology.

I have been intrigued by the brain and its functions for quite a while. I first became interested in psychology in high school, when a career counselor came to talk to our class. I chose a psychology major in college, then decided that I wanted to be able to prescribe medications to my future patients. So I also picked up pre-med courses as well. By my senior year, I had grown rather annoyed with the sometimes amorphous reasoning in psychology. I thought that I would instead become a neurosurgeon, for a more exact and hands-on approach to the brain. I looked forward to my 3rd year rotations, when I could try surgery firsthand. But alas, I hated every minute of it! Surgery for me was tiring and boring, and I felt uncomfortable around the surgeons, who loved to pimp on the most obscure anatomical questions. Surgery was out.

I had the good fortune to attend a medical career fair. I was talking with one of the residents at a psychiatry table about love of the brain and my prior disillusionment with psychology, when this wonderful man, Dr. Sheldon Benjamin, overheard me and suggested neuropsychiatry. I had never even heard of the subspecialty before. La, a way to put my two greatest interests together in a career? I floated on air for the rest of the night. Dr. Benjamin, who works and teaches at The University of Massachusetts, also let me work with him for a month's neuropsychiatry elective. I want to do exactly what he does. He spends each day doing something completely different: a neurological consultant for the psych ward, a psychiatry consultant for the neurological ward, a seminar teacher for the psychiatric and neurology residents, a consultant at a home for mentally disabled children, the co-owner of three different private offices for neuropsychiatric patients... He will never get bored, there are always so many fascinating cases going on at once. What a life.

Still trying to teach myself Spanish. It is a useful language to know some of here in Connecticut (and probably everywhere else in the country), where many of the patients who come in to the emergency room don't speak English, and may not come with someone who is bilingual. There is a phone in the ER for getting in touch with a medical interpreter in different languages like Spanish, French, Russian, etc. The one time I used it, it took an entire hour to get a full history from the patient, and then the majority of it turned out to be incorrect anyway. ( Read more... )