Procrastination // by Emily

Right now I am supposed to be doing homework, but instead I am listening to one of mah fav playlists, "the gangs all here," -- with songs like Suspicious Minds-Elvis Presley, Thunder Road-Bruce Springsteen, and Lookin' Out My Back Door-Creedence Clearwater Revival -- and stumbling; stumbleupon.com is literally what keeps me sane, and keeps my mouth watering...zomgg I love the fall

(click here for the recipe!)

and hellllooo desserts! #getmeouttahere.

(click here for more!)

I am super stoked that Halloween is tomorrow because that means DRESS UP WEIGHTS holla holla (aka just another opportunity for our awesome trainers to judge me). But like I am not even kidding I am so excited.

Its been real, over and out.

My Pseudo-80s Playlist // by Kelsey

I’m pretty sure I was born in the wrong decade. Big hair and bright, neon clothes? Sign me up. I used to tease my parents relentlessly about their horrific taste in music and couldn’t possibly imagine how they grew up with that as their main means of entertainment. But as always, Momma Suggs knows best. And now the 80’s are BACK! Cassie and I even attempted to learn a jazzercise work out video over the summer… it wasn’t pretty. If you want to try it out yourself, click here!

Now I know nothing will ever truly live up to the real 80’s, so here are a few songs with a little modern twist. I’ll even throw in a cover of my favorite 80’s classic (:

The Island (Madeon Remix) - Pendulum

Dancing On My Own - Robyn

Enjoy the Silence (Cover) - Anberlin

Spiralling - Keane

An Honest Mistake - The Bravery

Seventeen Forever - Metro Station

Bulletproof - La Roux

A Day in the Life of a HumBio Major // by Alyssa

Today was a great day on Stanford’s campus! It was a beautiful fall day without a cloud in the sky and it was a day where I was able to share all of the hard work I have put into my Human Biology Internship this past year. Human Biology is the biggest major on campus and it is one of the most flexible. You are able to design your own focus within the major and pick and choose classes you want to take. My area of concentration is Health and Human Performance. This means I take a lot of classes having to do with human performance, sports medicine, human physiology and health courses. The health courses are more broad and allow me to explore chronic disease prevention across the life course and health disparities in the United States. For my internship I was able to work with an Emergency Room doctor at Kaiser Permanente in my hometown. It was a Clinical Research Internship and it spanned from shadowing in the ED to writing a hypothetical research proposal and researching different health topics. In the ED I was able to see a lot of different cases and learn a lot about emergency medicine. I took an online course that taught me how to protect human research participants. After this online course I wrote a hypothetical study proposal that was to explore if the use of intrauterine devices for longer than five years caused an increase in breast and ovarian cancer rates. Intrauterine devices are a form of birth control that is gaining popularity in the United States. The doctor I worked with also writes a health interest column every other week for my local newspaper. I was able to do the background research for his topics and help him edit the column. The topics ranged from exploring the efficacy of fish oil pills to how to perform CPR and the productivity of multi-tasking. After participating in this internship for a little over a year I was finally able to put together a poster and present it at the Humbio Internship Fair held from 12-1pm today (October 13, 2011). It was a great experience to be able to walk around and see what fellow students have been working on and to share with others what I have been doing with my internship. The other internships ranged from sports medicine to burning man and how babies learn a language. Every Human Biology major is required to do an internship, but the topic has to relate to their area of concentration in some way. Other than those requirements, you are basically able to do whatever you wish. All in all it was a great day, and I was finally able to show off all of my hard work! :)

Summer Highlights // by Pallavi

This summer was definitely one to remember! I spent the first part working at the Stanford Center for Innovation and Global Health and playing my 11th and final summer season with the Stanford Club! Two weeks after Senior Nationals I was off to Shenzhen, China (with Alyssa and Amber!) for the World University Games!! It was one of the most memorable and exciting experiences I have had. It was so much fun to finally have the chance to play with girls that are usually hot competitors during our NCAA season! A few days after we returned from China my mum and I headed to Hawaii for a little R&R (: It's been a sweet, sweet summer...

Summer Highlights // by Alyssa

This has been the busiest summer I have ever had in my life. The summer started off like a normal summer for me. I started playing summer polo for Stanford Club with the majority of my teammates and I took Physics 21 and 22 at Stanford. I lived on campus with my teammate Monica and I discovered a love for Boba Tea. I managed to survive the physics final on the road at Nationals and our team won a bronze medal in the tournament. After summer polo was over it was time for Pallavi and me to train for the World University Games in Shenzhen, China. The World University Games (WUGs) is like a mini-olympics for college-aged athletes. There were over 140 different countries represented and about 30 different sports competed. I was fortunate enough to experience this celebration of sport alongside former teammates (Amber Oland) and rivals from different schools (including USC, UCLA, and CAL). I am not going to lie, I would have been happy if we just won one game. It was invigorating to not know your opponents and not know what to expect. We seemed to defy everyone’s expectations when we started to win and once we started to win we couldn’t stop! We made it all the way to the championship game where we played China. We ended up losing to China but we still won a silver medal! The trip had far exceeded my own expectations and I made friends that I would have never had the opportunity to meet. After China I moved back home to Marin and turned 21! I felt like I was the last of my friends to finally turn 21! And I am now writing to you all sitting on a lanai in Kauai gazing out at a beautiful beach with my family…. Life couldn’t get any better.