Muy Anti-Bueno

I went to an informational presentation about scholarships on Tuesday. The hour of talking was superfluous, given everything had already been condensed into a packet of papers and a few URLs.

Being white, male, heterosexual, and middle-class means I don't qualify for that many scholarships right off the bat. Still, there's thousands available, and between scholarship search engines like FastWeb and this booklet I've found some good ones.

Illustrators/Writers of the Future: Write or illustrate an original sci-fi story and get up to $2,500. Provided by the L. Ron Hubbard estate.

Wine Scholarship: Major in something wine related, and you're set.

Several from the Ayn Rand estate if you write an ideologically pure enough essay based on one of her books (for a rather hefty $5,000 each).

$250 if I watch Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and pass on a quiz about it.

The sites also ask some strange questions about hobbies and association memberships when determining what scholarships you could apply for. If I blog, play video games, am against the death penalty, am involved in historical reenactment, collect coins, or (and it said simply this) interact I am eligible for more scholarships.

The sites are certainly useful, even with the repeated prompts for me to join the military. They also provide information on local job or internship opportunities, and (couched between eight offers from Wal-Mart) there's one's like an internship at the Naval Historical Center.

College is promising to be utter chaos.

Labels: school, weird

Looking through OHSU's website, I came across this nifty blog of theirs:

http://ohsu-hca.blogspot.com/

Bits from old medical manuscripts in the OHSU library. From a 1931 book of satirical verses and anecdotes written by a doctor:

From the life / of every individual
A useful lesson / may be learned
If we but know / the hidden facts.
That the names / heading these pages
Are assumed / is immaterial;
The real names / may be had
By consulting / any Doctor of Medicine.
When this is done / it will be found
That no two lists / are alike,
Yet every list / is correct.

Labels: history, school

During the development of the human body inside the womb, the mezzoderm excretes a chemical around the neural tube. Depending on the amount of the chemical they are exposed to, the cells become different kinds of nerve cells.

The chemical is called Sonic Hedgehog.

Labels: school, weird