25 Things Meme (Facebook edition)
Well, I did this meme for my facebook and thought it could go here, as well, since I don't post enough. :)
Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.
I tag anyone who wants to do it! :)
1. When I was six, I moved with my family to Pau, a small town in the south of France. We lived there for a year, and I went to kindergarten there. My dad would walk me to and from school every day, which is a very strong memory. When we moved there, I didn’t speak a word of French, but after a few months I certainly did. When we got back, I refused to speak any English for quite a while.
2. After college my French-speaking abilities definitely declined, but interestingly enough, after a few drinks I’m practically fluent again, it’s very odd.
3. My biological dad is a botany and ecology teacher who lives in the woods near High Springs. He’s got a hundred acres of woodland and a gorgeous little house out there, and I absolutely love visiting him. We used to plant thousands of long leaf pine trees together on his property when I was younger. He knows the name & details of every plant on his property, seriously.
4. And I can barely keep a house plant alive for longer than a month. Got a brown thumb.
5. I met Kris in Mr. Harrell’s math class when I was 11. We both tested out of the 6th grade math class, but didn’t want to move up to 7th grade math, so every day we stayed in the computer lab and did Math Blasters. I liked him right away because he was so smart.
6. I really enjoy horribly trashy reality television, which Kris says is making me stupider. I don’t care, it’s hilarious.
7. I have a 5-year-old Maltese dog named Jack. He’s enormous for a Maltese (he’s 11 pounds), twice the size of his parents. I call him a “throw-back”, and I utterly adore him.
8. I’m supposed to get my PhD in May of this year (and the medical doctorate in 2011), and the thought of having an advanced degree and being called “Dr. Gillikin” is simultaneously awesome and terrifying.
9. My current “list” includes: Matthew Gray Gubler, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Billy Corgan, Robert Pattinson, and Cillian Murphy. Some might say I have weird taste. Whatever.
10. I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Type III (Hypermobility), a genetic collagen disorder. Luckily it’s the mildest form: I have super-stretchy ligaments, tendons, and skin. I’m double-jointed in nearly every joint, I have completely flat feet, and my shoulders dislocate way too often.
11. I resent that psychiatry isn’t taken more seriously as a medical profession. Seriously, it pisses me the fuck off. Sure, I know the field needs to be revitalized by the influences of science and neurology, but the body cannot be healthy if the mind is not healthy. We all need to get over this ridiculous stigma of mental illness and accept it as legitimate.
12. Even though Wake Forest was a horrible match for me socially, I’m so glad I went there. Academically it was ideal in every way, so many opportunities. And I did find a good group of friends, despite the conservative bias of the university.
13. I feel very strongly about how wonderful a liberal arts education can be, for most people anyway. I’m sure a degree-focused program is good for some people, but I can’t imagine how boring of a person I’d be without having had to take courses on such a variety of topics.
14. I spent six months in Perth, Australia in 2003 attending the University of Western Australia. It was by far the best time in my whole life. Currie Hall was an amazing place.
15. My favorite movies of all time are the Lord of the Rings trilogy. When Return of the King came out, I was in Wellington, New Zealand, and I was at the red carpet premiere. It was awesome.
16. I believe teaching is the noblest and the most under-appreciated profession. We should pay teachers what we pay lawyers.
17. I can cook pretty well as long as someone else is there to keep me company and help out (like my mom). Kris would say I can’t cook at all, because when he’s around, I never cook. It’s his job!
18. I can’t debate topics that I feel very strongly about, because I always start crying. Kris thinks this is hilarious. So he tries to debate with me (even when he agrees with me), taking the opposite position just to make me flail around weeping like a fool. I don’t generally think this is very fun.
19. My favorite alcoholic drink is a Grey Goose martini, straight up, with olives. (It’s my mom’s favorite drink too.) My favorite non-alcoholic drink is diet coke. My favorite food is CHEESE.
20. When I was in college I thought I wanted to be an ornithologist (a biologist who studies birds). I worked with Dave Anderson in the Galapagos, living on an uninhabited island, studying the waved albatross and the Nazca booby. I still love birds, but I realized I liked studying people more, hence my current field of study.
21. I read constantly and insatiably. My favorite genres include horror, fantasy, and above all, science fiction. This is all my dad’s fault, because when I was 11, he went under his house and got out this huge Tupperware bin full of old sci-fi novels, and gave the whole thing to me. I must have read hundreds of dusty old paperbacks that year. I’ve got four huge bookcases full of books, two layers deep, and I still read at least 10-20 pages of a novel every night before I sleep.
22. I’m endlessly curious. If I could have my way, I’d never leave school and just learn things forever. Sometimes I’ll follow my brain across the internets for hours and hours just learning crap. Huge waste of time, but so fun.
23. My Myers Briggs Personality type is INFP: Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving. I’m super-introverted. Perhaps because of this, I’ve always had a really hard time making friends. I guess I’m hard to like, haha. And as the “N” implies, I really trust my intuition and my “gut” feelings when making decisions (at least, for decisions where logical thought doesn’t help).
24. I’m not claustrophobic at all, but I -hate- heights. And I’m terrified of stairs, for some reason. I have nightmares about rickety, half-fallen-down stairs that I have to cross for some vital reason, and I always wake up in terror. God, stairs. *shudder*
25. I try to live my whole life without regrets. Even things that sucked, I refuse to regret, because I’m the person I am today because of those things.
That took way too long and was way too fun. I love wasting time on a Saturday..
Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.
I tag anyone who wants to do it! :)
1. When I was six, I moved with my family to Pau, a small town in the south of France. We lived there for a year, and I went to kindergarten there. My dad would walk me to and from school every day, which is a very strong memory. When we moved there, I didn’t speak a word of French, but after a few months I certainly did. When we got back, I refused to speak any English for quite a while.
2. After college my French-speaking abilities definitely declined, but interestingly enough, after a few drinks I’m practically fluent again, it’s very odd.
3. My biological dad is a botany and ecology teacher who lives in the woods near High Springs. He’s got a hundred acres of woodland and a gorgeous little house out there, and I absolutely love visiting him. We used to plant thousands of long leaf pine trees together on his property when I was younger. He knows the name & details of every plant on his property, seriously.
4. And I can barely keep a house plant alive for longer than a month. Got a brown thumb.
5. I met Kris in Mr. Harrell’s math class when I was 11. We both tested out of the 6th grade math class, but didn’t want to move up to 7th grade math, so every day we stayed in the computer lab and did Math Blasters. I liked him right away because he was so smart.
6. I really enjoy horribly trashy reality television, which Kris says is making me stupider. I don’t care, it’s hilarious.
7. I have a 5-year-old Maltese dog named Jack. He’s enormous for a Maltese (he’s 11 pounds), twice the size of his parents. I call him a “throw-back”, and I utterly adore him.
8. I’m supposed to get my PhD in May of this year (and the medical doctorate in 2011), and the thought of having an advanced degree and being called “Dr. Gillikin” is simultaneously awesome and terrifying.
9. My current “list” includes: Matthew Gray Gubler, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Billy Corgan, Robert Pattinson, and Cillian Murphy. Some might say I have weird taste. Whatever.
10. I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Type III (Hypermobility), a genetic collagen disorder. Luckily it’s the mildest form: I have super-stretchy ligaments, tendons, and skin. I’m double-jointed in nearly every joint, I have completely flat feet, and my shoulders dislocate way too often.
11. I resent that psychiatry isn’t taken more seriously as a medical profession. Seriously, it pisses me the fuck off. Sure, I know the field needs to be revitalized by the influences of science and neurology, but the body cannot be healthy if the mind is not healthy. We all need to get over this ridiculous stigma of mental illness and accept it as legitimate.
12. Even though Wake Forest was a horrible match for me socially, I’m so glad I went there. Academically it was ideal in every way, so many opportunities. And I did find a good group of friends, despite the conservative bias of the university.
13. I feel very strongly about how wonderful a liberal arts education can be, for most people anyway. I’m sure a degree-focused program is good for some people, but I can’t imagine how boring of a person I’d be without having had to take courses on such a variety of topics.
14. I spent six months in Perth, Australia in 2003 attending the University of Western Australia. It was by far the best time in my whole life. Currie Hall was an amazing place.
15. My favorite movies of all time are the Lord of the Rings trilogy. When Return of the King came out, I was in Wellington, New Zealand, and I was at the red carpet premiere. It was awesome.
16. I believe teaching is the noblest and the most under-appreciated profession. We should pay teachers what we pay lawyers.
17. I can cook pretty well as long as someone else is there to keep me company and help out (like my mom). Kris would say I can’t cook at all, because when he’s around, I never cook. It’s his job!
18. I can’t debate topics that I feel very strongly about, because I always start crying. Kris thinks this is hilarious. So he tries to debate with me (even when he agrees with me), taking the opposite position just to make me flail around weeping like a fool. I don’t generally think this is very fun.
19. My favorite alcoholic drink is a Grey Goose martini, straight up, with olives. (It’s my mom’s favorite drink too.) My favorite non-alcoholic drink is diet coke. My favorite food is CHEESE.
20. When I was in college I thought I wanted to be an ornithologist (a biologist who studies birds). I worked with Dave Anderson in the Galapagos, living on an uninhabited island, studying the waved albatross and the Nazca booby. I still love birds, but I realized I liked studying people more, hence my current field of study.
21. I read constantly and insatiably. My favorite genres include horror, fantasy, and above all, science fiction. This is all my dad’s fault, because when I was 11, he went under his house and got out this huge Tupperware bin full of old sci-fi novels, and gave the whole thing to me. I must have read hundreds of dusty old paperbacks that year. I’ve got four huge bookcases full of books, two layers deep, and I still read at least 10-20 pages of a novel every night before I sleep.
22. I’m endlessly curious. If I could have my way, I’d never leave school and just learn things forever. Sometimes I’ll follow my brain across the internets for hours and hours just learning crap. Huge waste of time, but so fun.
23. My Myers Briggs Personality type is INFP: Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving. I’m super-introverted. Perhaps because of this, I’ve always had a really hard time making friends. I guess I’m hard to like, haha. And as the “N” implies, I really trust my intuition and my “gut” feelings when making decisions (at least, for decisions where logical thought doesn’t help).
24. I’m not claustrophobic at all, but I -hate- heights. And I’m terrified of stairs, for some reason. I have nightmares about rickety, half-fallen-down stairs that I have to cross for some vital reason, and I always wake up in terror. God, stairs. *shudder*
25. I try to live my whole life without regrets. Even things that sucked, I refuse to regret, because I’m the person I am today because of those things.
That took way too long and was way too fun. I love wasting time on a Saturday..