More complains (part II)

Oh boy! My stomach’s bloating from the BBQ chicken and sausages that I had during our picnic. I don’t reckon having that much food though. Just a whole chicken leg and a thigh, 3 sausages, some pasta and kimchi, 6 glasses of lemonade mixed with ginger ale and 2 popsicles. No wonder I feel gross right now. Feels like the food in my stomach is heading towards the other direction O____o Nonetheless, the food was really good, especially the BBQ chicken. Joe Jdsn certainly has a very easy way to prepare those BBQ chicken and they actually taste pretty good too. I think it’s all in the Baby Ray BBQ sauce. It’s not too strong and somewhat sweet, making you crave for more.

Aside from the food, we watched the movie outside the backyard. It was my second experience watching an outdoor movie with the thrills of sitting on fresh lawn, feeling the cool night breeze and being accompanied by little annoying bugs trying to dig out some of our blood for supper. While many people found the movie inspiring, I saw it as unreal. The movie, Facing the Giants portrays the faith of a football coach, Grant Taylor has in God in overcoming all the obstacles in his life. He was on the verge of losing everything – his car, his job, his fertility – but he trusted in God and continued to praise God for the trials and tribulations in his life. Not long after, the table was turned around. His football team began to show tremendous progress, from being a team who had never get into the playoffs to defeating the defending state champion (*yea right*); his students, out of gratitude, bought him a new truck; and his wife suddenly conceived a child even after the doctor told him that he was sterile. I guess what everyone else saw in this movie was to put all you’ve got in God and He will continue to bless you but I didn’t think so.
Perhaps I’m still bitter from what I’d been facing the last few weeks. I found myself hopeless in many situations similar to Coach Taylor yet we had different outcomes. While his team continues to improved, my experiment results were getting worse and worse. I couldn’t even perform Cysteine mutagenesis correctly. But maybe there’s a take home lesson from the movie – always have faith in God. During his weakest moment, with all human resources being stripped away from him, coach Taylor gave his all to God and trusted that God will show him his path. I guess that I haven’t had enough faith in God to lead me to wherever His plans are for me. I think it’s time that I stop complaining and do something about my life and my faith.

Am I giving up?

It has been about half a year since I’ve written anything here. To be frank, I wasn’t even sure that I was going to write anything here again, but too many things happened recently which affected me a big deal and I felt the need to write them down.

My dad used to tell me the story of the carrot, the egg and the coffee beans. Each of them possesses distinct properties from the one another, but after boiled, they are changed entities with features different from before. The hard and sturdy carrot becomes all soft and mushy after it is boiled; the egg, so fragile and weak, becomes solid and substantial; the coffee beans, although small and seemingly trivial, are transformed into something fragrant and pleasant. I’ve always wanted to be the coffee, not only changing myself, but changing my surrounding for the better in the midst of turbulence and hardship. Regretfully, today, I could only see myself resembling the squashy carrot and not the wonder coffee beans.

Too many things happened this week that I do not know where to start. Problems had been stemming out all together at once and I would have thought this is a premature midlife crisis. But it seems to me that everything that has happened is gearing me towards a definite decision: not going to graduate school. But is it too late to take a sudden detour from the path that I was so determined and had worked on so much for the last 3 years of my college life?

Yesterday, my professor wanted to talk to me about my lab results and I know that he wasn’t really happy about them. My results were very inconsistent and many of them were irreproducible. That could only mean that my technique sucks. I had been very meticulous and careful while repeating the experiments yet things still get screwed up and fingers were pointing at me. It’s really frustrating especially after I have worked on the same experiment for the last 3 months. The task is very simple: it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to pipette and run the gel and yet, I managed to screw every experiment that I run. Maybe I’m just not competent enough to be in the lab. I’m already running out of ideas what might have gone wrong. I think I have given up.

Many people reprimanded me for fretting over the second matter, which is my term GPA. Some even hated me for saying that it was shitty. But they did not understand that companies only look at work experience and not CGPA for job applications. Those who cast flaming stones at me were future actuaries or bank managers, and they have good work experience to bolster their resume, while I, who am going to graduate school, rely solely on my CGPA and lab performance to get into a good graduate school. Having that said, I need a good CGPA more than they do. But that’s not really the big deal. What’s really sad is realizing that my academic limit is very low. I tried really hard this semester, spending most of my time either working in the lab or study but I did not manage to get an A for any of my classes. I have even given up playing DotA for 3 months for the sake of my grades but I still managed to screw up my grades. My mom used to tell me that I’m good at nothing but my studies, which I think was really true. But now, I am not even good at the only thing that I am supposed to be good at. It can only mean that I am good at nothing now.

I feel discouraged, helpless and depleted of human resources. I had done everything I could, and made the necessary sacrifices, but my attempts were fruitless. I am like the carrot, being strong and determined before starting my college career, and now I end up being weak and helpless. Perhaps I need a motivational strength to carry on. Perhaps I need to pray harder. Or perhaps this is a sign telling me that I am not a graduate student material after all. I will most probably go back home after I graduate and get a job. Why home and not stay in the US for a couple of years? Well, I felt a familiar yet inexplicable “force” drawing me back home, and that would be another story =) The question is, will I regret my decision five years down the road? Will I look back and wished that I wasn’t this erratic today? I don’t know…