Today is going to be extremely nervewracking…I have an oral exam for my PhD program that you have to pass in order to move forward in the program. The examiners don’t know me or my work and I don’t know them, so there is no way to prepare for the kind of questions they might ask. I’ve obviously had mock sessions with my supervisors and such, but even they can’t predict what the examiners might want because every examiner is different and wants to see you prove your knowledge in different ways. I’m a little stressed. Yesterdays hard interval session helped a ton (and I slept like a baby despite the nerves!) so the plan is to give you a light little post (what better day for a Fact Friday!?) and take a nice relaxing easy pace run before I shower and head to campus. Hoping 8 miles will do the trick because I’m not sure I have time for longer 😉
Without further ado, some facts you probably didn’t know about me!
1. I ice skated competitively for a few years when I was a kid/tween. You will eventually learn that I’m just a weirdly athletic person and I did pretty much every sport for at least a few years but the Olympics always have me thinking about when I was a figure skater. I was also not nearly girly enough for a lot of it and hated spangly costumes. And perennially annoyed that girls wear white/tan figure skates and the boys get to wear black. I wanted black. My last competition was in early 1998, aka 3 months after Titanic came out. Every single girl in my category wanted to dance to My Heart Will Go On but you can’t share the same music. I changed mine to Southampton from the Titanic soundtrack (what a switch, I know…) and it turns out everyone else had the same plan. It was a bunch of 12-15 year old girls and every single one of us picked a different song from Titanic. If you hadn’t seen the movie, at least you caught the whole soundtrack at our competition. I won gold, and that was more than enough for me so I never skated again after that day. I probably would have kept going a few more years until I won gold in a major event if it hadn’t happened that day because I’m a competitive weirdo.
2. During my master’s program, I lived in university apartment housing. I had 2 completely awesome girls from Thailand who lived in the same hallway as me and they cooked every.single.day. Lunch and dinner. Amazing, elaborate, home cooked Thai food. And they were the sweetest girls in the world and always invited me to dinner so I have been royally spoiled for great Thai food and love it so much. I have learned that the local place does not make it half as well as those girls and I’m also super excited to go to Thailand one day and eat all the yumminess. One of the girls gave me a list of things to order or not order if I see them on menus when I go to Thailand someday so I don’t accidentally order live squid (which is a thing). Further proof she’s the best? She went to London on a layover to fly home to Bangkok and brought me back a cupcake from their best cupcake bakery so I could compare it to Georgetown Cupcake.
3. I was a very competitive soccer player for a looooooooong time. College long. When I met Joe, he had played one season at age 8 or something and hated it. You’ll be pleased to know I’ve converted him to a lover of watching and playing fantastic soccer but not without some issues. In what was probably a bid to impress me, we had been together for all of 2 weeks when he asked me to take him to the fields and teach him to play goalie. Well, he very quickly learned the concept of a “brave save.” I charged the goal, he came out to defend and brave save grab the ball, which I wasn’t expecting from someone who had played for a grand total of 10 minutes, I go to jump over him and underestimate his size compared to the girls I had always gone up against. My knee goes through his head. Actually. You could see skull. I have to give him my shirt to staunch the bleeding and drive him to the hospital to get stitches, which had to be done in 2 layers because they went so deep. I saw my now husband’s skull within 2 weeks of dating him. And I had to take him home and explain to his parents that I had never met that I had broken their son. Whoops. He still has a scar.
4. I have a freakish love for Sour Patch Kids. Not only are they awesome, they also aren’t chocolate like every other freaking candy. I hate chocolate. But, I can’t eat sour patch kids like a normal human being. The green ones HAVE to be eaten last, all at once. I can eat the other 3 colors in any combination but no greens until the end. Picture 8 year old me in a movie theater, holding each one up in the air to discern the color in a dark movie theater because I was so against eating a green early. Obviously, it accidentally happened a time or two in the movies when it is easy to mistake a green for a yellow. Irrationally upset. The best roommate ever (hi, Mallory!) I lived with in Philly, once gave me a gift of Sour Patch Kids. She had taken multiple bags, dumped them all out, and pre-sorted them for me into Green/Not-Green. She underestimated how much it meant to me 🙂 You know someone really gets you when…
5. As a former English major, now English literature PhD student, I obviously have some pet peeves with the way people use and abuse the English language. I’m actually entirely okay with colloquial language (well, to an extent anyway) and don’t get finicky about perfect grammar and I write differently on my blog or personal emails or whatnot from how I write professionally but there are some things I REALLY cannot get past. If you say “intensive purposes” I am sorry but we cannot be friends. How does that even make sense to people? Intents and purposes. Not that hard. I almost cried when I was searching something on google and this came up:
Please see result #3. There are people out there who think it’s “lack toast and tolerant.” I don’t judge people for not having perfect grammar but this kind of stuff is just ridiculous. No.
You just learned far more than you ever wanted to know about me, huh?
Random fact about you!
Are there any sports you wish you had tried and never did?
Favorite candy?