We journey at midnight to watch shirtless vampires

My friends and I went to the midnight premiere of Breaking Dawn: Part 1.

You are probably judging me so hard right now.

But you know what? I have no shame. The Twilight movies are quality entertainment. I’ve seen every one, the first three times with my sister. Each time it looked a little like this:

So, when I was asked,

I had to respond,

Thus, we gathered up our fellow female dormmates and trekked off through the rain and cold. We actually printed out our tickets beforehand and reached the theater an hour early. Regardless, when we got there… it was ridiculous.

As for the movie itself? As entertaining as I had hoped! In my opinion, it was the best out of the series. Which says very little, since the bar was set somewhat-extremely low. But there was plenty of absurdity, plenty of awkwardness to laugh at, so I was thoroughly satisfied. I don’t want to spoil it– just know that it was highly entertaining.

And our group came out pretty satisfied as well.

I’m Facebook whoring and you should like that

I’m Facebook whoring.

I admit it.

I created a so-called “page” for I think in comics. I did it! I really did.

I feel shameless.

Dirty.

So now you can “like” I think in comics on Facebook. The sidebar on the, um, side has a widget to let you like it! Or you can follow this link.

(Pardon. I recently realized how many people follow me from my facebook profile, which I always update with new blog posts. So now I have a page open for everyone! Take advantage of it if you’d like to be updated with new posts!)

Sincerely,

Just Another Facebook Whore

Autumn-colored Boston

The seasons are a’changing, and so are the colors. Boston doesn’t have anything on, say, Berlin in terms of greenery and parks. But for an American city, we’re still doing pretty well.

In fact, Boston is rather pretty in the fall. Naturally, then, I had to pull out my camera. Why? In the words of the cyber-manga Battle Angel Alita, 

…Okay, well, maybe I’m not bloodthirsty, per se, but when I see pretty things, I want to take photos. Here’s just a few of the photos I’ve taken this fall:

A segway tour near Kendall Square, Cambridge.

Candy apples at Northeastern's Parents' Weekend.

Recycled, hand-decorated, candle-lit lanterns being sold at the Jamaica Pond Lantern Parade.

Crossing the harbor on the train to Lechmere.

Trees at Northeastern, next to Ruggles Street.

A tree at the Arnold Arboretum, a tree conservatory located at the end of the orange line.

Boston Harbor.

A view of Boston from the 22nd floor of International Village. See that two-spired church on the left? I volunteer across the street from there.

Shillman Hall on Northeastern's campus, as seen from the 22nd floor of International Village.

The Arnold Arboretum has a sloth infestation, it seems.

So I find Boston in the fall quite pretty! Just nature’s last gasp before a cold, barren winter. Then again, it’s known to snow a lot in Boston… so that’s something to look forward. I just need a good pair of snowboots and I’m set!

I get paid to draw this crap

I’ve been asked a couple of  times about my second job, the one where I draw cartoons.

So, let me explain this in greater detail.

I work for the Northeastern College of Computer and Information Science. There’s a professor there (more accurately, he’s a PhD, so I refer to him as “doctor”) who is running a joint study with Duke University. They research the interactions between people and technology.

Their goal is to develop a mobile phone application that will help people lose weight. They’ve developed the app. Now, they’re running a two-year study where overweight people use this app to test its effectiveness. In the app, participants input the food they eat and the exercise they do into their phones every day. To make sure that people don’t forget, the phone will prompt them a couple times a day to record their dietary activities.

Food diaries like this are extremely effective in helping people lose weight. (I’ve tried it, and I can attest!) However, they are extremely tedious to upkeep day after day after day. My boss, one of the leaders of the study, would like to make the phone app more exciting. He wants it to be edgier, more fun, more interactive. He wants people to have an incentive to use their phone.

And what’s a better incentive than poorly drawn comics?

I was called in and offered this job. Since there’s a year left in the study, I’ll be drawing a year’s worth of comics. And since the participants use their phones every day, this is not a once-a-week strip– it’s a full-blown, daily, 365-comic strip project that I have to create. Hopefully, the participants will like the comic enough to actually check their phones when it beeps.

The other side of this project is that the comic has to be informative. It has to disguise diet and exercise tips in a palatable form. It’s supposed to highlight some of the challenges of a long-term lifestyle change, and how to deal with it. The best way to do this, my boss and I agreed, was for me to write a comic about a character actually in the study using the the actual app.

It’s a bit of an undertaking. But I can do it.

Admittedly, I don’t have much free time to work on it. At this point, I’ve outlined the entire storyline and have about a third of the comics scripted, but not drawn. For the sake of showing what I “have to do,” though, I have here seven “pilot” comics I created at the start of the project. (They had to be sent to Duke to get this whole “comic” idea approved, which, thankfully, it was.)

Enjoy! Apologies for the text-heavy post.

(The participants use Droids for the study.)

And that’s what my job looks like! Until next time!

I get married at 18 (and divorced two days later)

I had a wedding!

It was a beautiful thing.

Though I only got married because of my roommate. She had to shoot a video for her Intro to College Writing class illustrating the flaws of marriage. She asked me to be her bride, and I agreed.

The first step was to get a wedding dress. I didn’t own any white dresses, and my roommate’s only white dress was a short, breezy sundress. Outside, it was cold and windy. Thus, my “wedding gown” looked like this:

Then came the problem of the veil. We had no fancy gossamer cloths, no semi-translucent silks to stick on my head. Nope, we’re improvisational college students. Thus, I wore

Thus, my dear hubby and I (aka my roommate’s friend from her theater club) got married at the Christian Church of Science. Apparently we looked pretty legitimate. Passerby stared. The more audacious pointed. A worker at the church drove up in his golf cart and asked,

My roomie took a few videos and photos of us prancing around like happy newlyweds. They turned out… well, shockingly realistic looking, in fact. Here’s just a few:

Our life as a happy couple was not to last long, though! Two days later, my roommate filmed our dramatic arguments and tragic breakup.

I’m not an actress, nope. She ended up filming me from the back so nobody could see that I was secretly cracking up. My “husband,” on the other hand, is extremely good at improv, so he made up for my lack of talent!

So now… I am sadly divorced. So, so terrible.

It was quite a fun project. If you want to see my roommate’s completed film, check out the video below!

I love my job

I’ve been working at my job for a month or so now. I mentioned it before, I believe– that I’m an office assistant at the NU Procurement Office. And how is it? I love it! Northeastern puts a huge emphasis on “experiential learning” (meaning, the best way to learn is to go out and do it, basically) and I have learned quite a lot at my job! Here’s just a sampling from my newly acquired skillset:

In other words:

In all seriousness, though, I really do like my job! Everyone in the office is really nice and the atmosphere is quiet and relaxed. And though there is a lot of paperwork, I’ll also be trained (eventually) on how to use the university’s finance system for the sake of helping inquiring customers. It’s so much better than my previous job (McDonald’s) which looked a little like this:

Oh, the stories I could tell about McDonald’s. Just another reason why I’m much happier with my current job! Filing papers beats getting burned by burger grease any day.

I am too busy

This is the state I’m in right now: (and in advance, I apologize for the crappier-than-usual-art, unwarranted complaining, utter scrubbiness and general messiness:)

I needed to vent some stress. It’s also my poor excuse for a viable blog post. It’s just that on some days, I barely have enough time to run to my dorm room to grab a snack between classes/working/volunteering, and that’s a little frustrating to me. It’s too easy to complain, though– what I really need to do is suck it up! And stick it out! It’s only a year. I’ll make it through, somehow…

Things guys shouldn’t do

My roommates and I. We are a little harassed. By who? Why, our counterparts of the opposite gender. For often… they are idiots.

So we’d like to put up a little proposal. All guys– dudes– bros— whatever you like to call yourselves– need a little… help. A female life advisor, as one of my roommates eloquently phrased it. We’ll start with a little list– of what you guys should never, ever, under any circumstances, do to a girl you’re trying to pick up. Because it didn’t work on us. And it’s not going to work on anyone.

And finally,

A bit specific? Yes. Tip of the iceburg? Absolutely. Where do guys get these ideas? I don’t know.

And so girls (and boys) what sort of insanity have the opposite gender (or same gender, of course) tried to pull on you? Let me know! The best ones could possibly be illustrated in a future post!

Failing the MCAT

I have an affinity for free things. Who doesn’t? Except my love led me to do something slightly ridiculous– in this case, taking the MCAT.

The MCAT, for those who are unaware, is yet-another standardized exam for medical school applicants. As with any grad school exam, it’s monstrously competitive, perhaps even more so for the MCAT as it’s taken by overachieving pre-med students. Kids usually take at least six months to study for it, if not more. Like any major exam, the MCAT fuels a whole business of study books and preparatory courses.

Kaplan, one such test-prep company, happened to be offering a free MCAT practice exam at NU. I’m a pre-med student. For now, at least. So I decided to give it a shot.

The exam I took had a few differences from the real thing, though. The real MCAT is entirely computerized– but we took it on pencil-and-paper scantrons. Also, Kaplan omitted the writing section and shortened the remaining sections by 10 minutes each.

They might as well have. Because I died.

The MCAT has four sections: physical science, verbal reasoning, biological science, and the writing sample. I took the first three in a process that went a little like this:

In all fairness to myself, I’m just a freshman. I haven’t seen chemistry in one and a half years. I’ve never taken an advanced physics course. Nor have I taken organic chemistry. My AP Biology class in high school was pretty useless. So, while some of the questions went like

The majority of the test looked more like

Since the practice test was only multiple-choice, we got our results back right away. I got the high, high score of

Afterwards, we received an answer key showing which questions we got wrong. MCAT teachers were available for any kids wishing to discuss their results. I didn’t take up the offer, just because

Oh, well. It was a worthwhile attempt. Now I know how much I have to improve! Besides… I’m a freshman. I’ve got quite a ways to go.