Last weekend, I finally took my MCAT!! I am quite relieved to be done with it. I stayed in on both Friday and Saturday night for I think 3 or 4 weeks in a row. Definitely not normal for me. I have to say though, studying for the MCAT has thankfully confirmed my interest in medical school. Aside from preventing me from doing other things, I actually enjoyed learning about the physiology material. For example, I learned that your body vasodilates so that blood can travel closer to the surface of your skin when you're warm, so that heat can be released more easily. That explains why I turn cherry red when I work out and create lots of body heat from all the energy I use! I love being able to relate my studies to real life.
Anyway, being done with the MCAT and fellowship applications has really opened up more time in my life. That said, I am not any less busy, I just can now return my focus to other things that I am working on. I actually ate a fortune cookie today that said "You are busy but you are happy" - very accurate! I need to get my primary med school applications in by early June, I am recruiting students for ME105:Project Design for the Developing World, and we've got a retreat for the Caltech Y excomm this weekend. I am also looking for things to do after I graduate in the rare circumstance that I decide to take a year off before medical school.
Anyway, what the bulk of this blog post will be about is a speaker that I listened to today as part of the Caltech Y Social Activism Speaker Series. Her name is Elizabeth Calvin, and she is an attorney who advocates for children's rights as part of the Human Rights Watch organization. Right now, her work primarily involves improving the juvenile justice system in California. Did you know that children as young as 14 years old can be tried as adults and be given adult prison sentences, despite strong research that indicates that the minds of teenagers are still significantly developing? Elizabeth has been working for the past six years to pass a bill about juvenile justice, which was just made lawful last January. The bill allows for children under the age of 18 who were originally sentenced to life without parole to replea the option of parole after a minimum sentence. Can you imagine being sentenced to life as a teen with no one ever looking back at your sentence? Although many tough sentences for this group of teens resulted from direct heinous crimes, Elizabeth also talked of several cases where teens were receiving adult sentences for indirect offenses. For example, one 14 year old boy in the past week was sentenced for 55 to life for being in the back seat of a car when two adults in the front seats committed a drive by shooting. This video highlights a story about one of the girls that Elizabeth has worked with:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGL_p7BcJqk
Anyway, having dinner with that speaker was a fun break from normal Caltech. We have also been talking about development and emotions like aggression in my psychology class, so I enjoyed being able to think about a functional application of my coursework.
Until next time!
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