What's new?

What's new? Oh I'll tell you what's new. I got to see a hog, 3 cows, and a lamb(goat?) being "harvested"(aka slaughtered) today in my summer Food Safety class. And for those who are wondering what kind of class I'm attending, it's one of the agricultural science class actually on a "Farm", complete with slaughtering room and refrigeration for the meat and etc. And for a microbiology major in College of Agriculture, that class is one of the electives to graduate. The class is not bad at all, and surprisingly easy for a 300 level class... Enough with the explaining.

So how was the experience? Well, most surprisingly, I'm all right. Ok, I wasn't all right when I was in the slaughtering room, but I'm all right now. I guess I am feeling fine this time because first, the slaughtering room was quite small, and second, I already kind of saw it second-hand on tv so it wasn't too much of a surprise. In fact, I just ate a sandwitch with turkey breast ham, which reminds me that one of the reasons that I wanted to be a vegeterian was after seeing a documemtary that showed one of the big slaughtering plants in south america. It looked all gory and depressing on the film, with cows lined up for meters waiting to be killed, and killed cows hanging upside down, people cutting them... I actually thought that they killed the cows in a humane way (using bullets to the head), but just seeing how many cows were being killed made me sick. When I heard that we'll be seing the actual slaughtering and inspection process in the class, first I thought there was no way I'm going to see it, but then I sort of felt responsible to see the procedure. I mean, I try to be vegeterian most of the time, but I do eat meat time to time, and it would be a responsiblity of the consumer to know and see where the meat comes from, and how it's produced. Also, it might be a once in a lifetime chance to see something like that again, and I wanted to sort of overcome my fear of it too.

The only thing that made me flet sick during the procedure was the stench, which consistently made me nausiated and want to throw up. There wasn't as much blood as I expected; I guess I sort of imagined the place to be flooded with blood all over, but the blood gets drained into the hole on the floor after the animal's beheaded, and two big guys were in front of me when the workers beheaded the animals so I couldn't really see how much blood came out of it. Which was a good thing in a way, since it sort of helped me to "ease the transition". But the blood was so much more redder... much more vivid red color than anything I've seen, like in a horror film... especially when you look at the worker's arms and they are just covered with blood, holding sharp knife. The skinning part was actually not bad at all (no blood there), and the guts were pretty yucky looking(and extremely HUGE; are they really that big inside or did they expand after opening due to difference in air pressure?) but not too bad either. And the cow being electricuted (after being killed of course) wasn't as violent as I imagiend, so sight wasn't my top concern surprisingly. I actually thought the head of the goat looked sort of cute, with docile, ignorant look on the face... except the small blood draining down from it's neck of course. Oh but the sound...! Some of the machines and equipments they use make really loud and harsh noises, and that bothered me a lot. I was the only one in the class who requested ear plugs, and I frankly cannot believe that othere people in my class didn't want any. I mean, the workers wore them obviously. Also, I could hear a cow mooing before it got stunned, which was real sad... And the pig was literally screaming, so much that at first I didn't know what the high pitched husky noise was until I realized that workers were prepping the pig for stunning. I didn't get to see the stunning procedure (which I didn't really want to see anyway), but I did see the lamb right after they stunned it, and as much as I was afraid that the stunning didn't work and the lamb would wake up jerking, it didn't. After that beheading was so quick and blood drained so quickly that I was sure that the animal felt the minimum amount of pain, if any. The guys in my class seemed pretty casual about the whole thing (or they were just trying to be "macho" about it), and most of the girls were pretty all right too. One of the girls went as far as going "yes!" with her fist when she found out that they were going to harvest animals, which was not the reaction I was expecting... 0_0


And observing the whole thing sort of made me think in a way. What I got out of the observation was the realization that human body is really fragile (and yeah, the whole inspection standards and etc that we were supposed to learn from it... sure). I realized this after seeing the workers working on the goat, cow, and the pig, seeing how they easily beheaded them with small sharp knife, and breaking their joints. Oh I'm sure it looked easy enough for me but it actually requires years of skill to do things that easily, but still. And how easy it was for the animal to be dead. It was so quick. I never really knew it would be so easy. One minute they were living, and next minute they were dead. It's hard to comprehend, since I used think that it's a constant struggle to keep away from dying for all organisms. I mean, it was a good thing that it was so quick for the animals that got slaughtered today, but my point is that living and dying wasn't too far from each other. Also, I never used to think much about it, but I never knew just how easy it would be to damage and break the body too. Really, all there is is just flesh and bone, and they are not that tough as people might think they are. And believe it or not, it was rather surprising to see that all there was to the body was literally flesh, bone, and organs. That was it; nothing more. It's weird seeing all the body parts separate out... head cut, skin skinned, legs broken off at the joints, organs took out, and all that's left is muscle and bone. Just a hollow trunk. It's hard to believe that that's all there is, at least for me, because I used to think there would be something more to it. I dunno, "life" is the word I'm looking for I guess. You know, animals like dogs, cats, humans, they all can express when they are happy, sad, excited, sick... etc. It's just weird to realize that behind all of that is just some muscles, bone, and gut working together... which is also amazing that all of those stuffs actually works together. Kind of funny how people try to hold on to things with greed, because you know, the body's fragile and it's not gonna last forever, and all you really are is just a big clump of organic mass. I sort of felt the same way looking at the head of an actual person in my physio class, but today again I realize it once again. How fragile a life really is, and how hollow the body seems.

it sucks to be an international student

Yeah. It does. It really does. Isn't it enough that we have to pay twice or even more tuition than those people with citizenship or green card? Or just for a fact that someone like me, who changed his/her visa in states, cannot go outside US and come back in again, not being able to see friends, families, and the world?? Having to worry about my visa expring, my driver's license expiring, and may be not getting the visa at all?

So why the sudden burst about how much it sucks to be an international student? Well here's why. First of all, the pharmacy school. It's tough for internationals, a hundred more times tougher for us to get in. May be one or two people would get in depending on school, but when the application pool exceeds over 400 students, that basically means I don't have much chance. I'm not quite sure about my school, but I don't think I heard of any international students actually attending the UA pharm school now. If I hear something like that, that would at least give me a slightest hope that may be I have a chance. But frankly, I don't think so. Which is kind of weird, when I think about it; since international students have to pay twice or more of the tuition than the "residents" pay, wouldn't the school want at least few more of us even just for the money's sake?? But no, the truth and the fact is, I don't think many US public pharm schools hardly want any internationals students, when they won't even take that many out-of-state kids. And I thought I really had good chance of getting in last time. I had competitive GPA, relatively fair PCAT scores, the interviewer seemed to like me alot. And I had reason. A real reason of actually wanting to go into pharmacy based on my faith and experience, not like bunch of other kids who just wants to have a job that makes a lot of money. I had worked hard for it too. I don't think I've ever cared so much about GPAs, must-get-A-in-class mentality, volunteering, get involved in outside activities, and work to build up my "resume" until I decided that this is truly what I want to do with my life. God it's like a repeat of high school, except I didn't really care about those that much back than. All this hard work and days when I couldn't remember what I did yesterday or what day it was today cuz I was dead tired from studying and working and volunteering and getting all the application materials ready.... all this work was all just for the moment when I would get accepted to the pharm school. Instead I got a letter of rejection, and my counselor telling me that my impromtu essay on the interview day was "unsatisfactory". Oh COME ON! Unless I wrote like a 3rd grader's essay, I don't see a reason to be rejected for a 30 minute impromptu essay. I mean of all things! That was actually the one thing that I was least worried about! I got A's in all my english courses taken at the university and I don't have problem expressing my thoughts with words even though I know I'm not much of a good writer. Of course I do realize that I can't really write a good essay in less than 30 minutes, but I also know that I didn't write a real bad one either. I wrote a lot more decent one than I wrote for the PCAT which I got 3(out of 5) for. So unless all the other kids who got accepted or "alternated" wrote super good 30 min. essays, which I don't believe there is a big difference among all of us, I don't think it's fair to drop me off like that because of some one page essay. I thought I would at least get on the "alternative lists", just so that people who supported me and wrote amazing recommendations for me wouldn't have to see that their efforts to help me got just plain wasted. That was the only thing that really upsetted me, nothing else. I deserved at least that, even if I know that the alternatives won't have much chance either.

But then today, when I was trying to figure out other schools to apply to, I found out that Pharm CAS require social security numbers to verify and send my PCAT scores to the schools. It says it's a must since it's the only way that they can confirm it. My problem is that I don't have a social number. Before I coudln't get one because I was a dependent of my parent's visa, and now that I've switched to the "oh so inconvienient" student F1 visa, I can. But only in one condition; I must work to be able to get a social number, and I can't even work anywhere of my choice, but on campus only. WTF???? Do you know how far the campus is from my house? And how busy my schedule is, even during the summer? I need to bring every will power that I have just to get myself to go to school when I don't have a class to take. It's about 30 minute drive, one hour a day drive to and back. And I don't think I want to drive that long to just go to school and work for $6 per hour or something. The point is, I don't want to work! I just need the stupid 9 digit numbers so I can apply to the damn schools, and I don't have time or will to work on campus. Do you know how inconvinient it is to go around without a social number? It's a real pain, starting with bank accounts and credit cards and so on! Ugh. I don't think I have enough time for a work in addition to attending summer school, volunteering at 2 different places, tutoring, studying for the PCAT, looking for schools to apply to, and possibly hang out with my friends. It's summer time all right, and I want to just relax a bit. Get a life or something. I've been sick with studying all the time, and I want to have time just to do nothing. Is that asking too much? It's the damn social number coming back to torment me again, and I seriously don't want to deal with it but I'll have to. Why does everything get so complicated? I solve on thing out, and the next thing comes into place right away. Really, those people who do not have a problem like this, should be very very thankful. I know there are people with worse problems than I am, but right now I'm just too pissed and stressed. Man I do wish I was my dog, carefree with no worries... nobody cares if he has a citizenship or not!