10 February 23, 2011 + Over the Edge New Moms and Facebook Epidemic A generation raised online doesn’t know when enough is enough VERONIKA KOLLBRAD FEATURES EDITOR Almost every Facebook friend | have had that has given birth | have mercilessly deleted. In fact, while they counted the weeks left in their pregnancies, | counted the weeks they had privileges as my Facebook friend. Why? First, I’m completely heartless and lack any nurturing strands of DNA. Second, because | just don’t care about babies on Facebook, and here are the reasons: Boring status updates When your Facebook becomes a daily log of your child’s life, you need to start re-evaluating things. Not all of your 364 friends are too concerned that you switched your baby from formula to “homo” milk today and he seems to be doing ok with it. Thousands of random photos First, the obligatory ultrasound and baby bump photos, which sometimes evolve into an entire 60-photo baby bump album. No, you don’t get to see the baby develop. However, you DO get to see the mom put on more and more weight, which is interesting. It’s all kind of like a reverse The Biggest Loser phenomena. Then of course we have the actual birth experience album where we get to see the newborn looking like a naked mole rat and the mom looking like she’s been rode hard and put away wet. Cue a new album every other day of the newborn doing what it does best — absolutely nothing — until it gets old enough to have “cute expressions” which will be narrated by friends and relatives. Honestly, | am surprised that photos of the conception never merit their own album. Isn’t that the best part anyway? Disregard for natural laws of the universe | find this point is best explained with an example: Status update #1: “ugh, can’t seem to lose all this baby weight!” Status update #2 (usually posted less than 12 hours after #1): “yum! | love eating 2L of Heavenly Hash in one sitting!” | know you think that your ability to bring a life into this world is a miracle, but while you were doing all that hard work (eating, sleeping, bitching at your man) the laws of weight loss have remained the same. If you’re upset that you’re now overweight, stop eating and go exercise like the rest of us have to! Also, a baby doesn’t weigh 60 pounds, so | have no idea how things got that out of control in the first place. Just saying. Blatant disrespect of privacy legislation Now that your mom can record your entire existence on the internet, your date never actually has to be left alone with her for any length of time to see embarrassing baby pictures. He or she just has to add your mom to Facebook! A study by AVG found that 82 percent of children in 10 Western countries have a digital footprint before the age of 2. | don’t even want to think about the implications of this, but I’m sure we'll find out once all of these “Facebook babies” So You Wanna be a Doctor? How to fake your medical school application VERONIKA KOLLBRAD FEATURES EDITOR write the MCAT. If you want to score reach their teens and can form opinions about it. The super secret motherhood club Young moms (who may have hated each other before pregnancy) will suddenly join forces with all the other new moms as if motherhood is some exclusive club that they’ve been given access to by some beautiful and divine miracle. Excuse me? You had unprotected sex. Get over yourselves. Duration disorientation Suddenly they seem physically unable to refer to any length of time in anything other than months. Example: “Justin is 36 % months old today! They grow up sooo fast!” Just say he’s 3 years old for the love of everything that is good in the world.. I'd like to leave us all with some advice from Mr. Griffith in the movie Easy A: “| don’t know what your generation’s fascination is with documenting your every thought... but | can assure you, they’re not all diamonds.” If you just had a kid, please think before you update your status. in the top gooduseandgoswimming. Bam! Instanttriathelete in training. 4 a ONLINE SOURCE How did he become a Doctor? First of all, if you're thinking about med school to begin with | have to assume you have the GPA and the MCAT score to go along with it. However, | do still have a few words of advice regarding those as well: MCAT: Take practice tests while you’re hung-over. If you can’t write the MCAT hung-over, you can’t percentile, | would also attempt it belligerently drunk. GPA: Make friends in the same program that are in the year ahead of you, or hook up with their younger siblings. Why? Access to old exams. We all know that most of the professors are too busy fulfilling their research quotas to bother writing new exams every year and not having to study so much gives you more time to work on your application. Nowwecangetdowntotheimportantstuff, yourapplication. Most schools include sections for clinical and research experience, extracurricular activities and hobbies/other interests. Med school is competitive, which means that no matter what you did or how early in your life you started preparing you're still just average because the real keeners started preparing in the womb. Don’t get discouraged, because being well rounded and interesting is probably the easiest thing in the world to fake. Follow these simple steps and you'll drastically increase your chances of an interview, or at the very least give the admissions committee a good laugh. 1. Pick an instrument to “learn.” By learn, | don’t mean actually practice. That takes time and effort. What | mean is, find the most obscure and random instrument ever and learn a few notes on it. Examples: sitar, didgeridoo. If your first thought was piano, please consider a less intellectually demanding field. 2. Go for a run around the block. Then go for a bike ride. If you don’t own a bicycle or forgot how to ride one (hopefully not, because then the expression would be kind of pointless wouldn't it?), borrow one and atleast push itaround fora while. Then, put your pass atthe aquatic centre to 3. Donate blood. It shows you’re down with saving lives, and gets you a little lack-of-blood high at the same time, which works out well for everyone. Plus who can pass up free cookies and juice? 4. Travel. Maximize your summer vacation by looking — into volunteering with a local community during your trip. You can still experience the blackout drunk that only foreign countries can inspire, and seeking a cause on your own rather than joining the generic volunteer bandwagons shows leadership and_ philanthropic independence. 5. Actually be interesting. Don’t over think _ this. Universities want to accept people that have interests and _ hobbies. Get some of those. Be _ passionate about life. Now, since most med _ schools use verifiers to ensure that you’re not completely making your extracurricular activities up out of nowhere, you're going to have to get creative and obscure with this. Register for a triathalon and name the organizer of the race as a verifier. It doesn’t matter if you place or not, just that you seem to have aninterestin something other than a perfect 4.33 GPA. People with a perfect academic record and no trace of social life are not usually the type that are good at “interacting” with and “caring” about others, aka not the type that should become a doctor in the first place.