December 2025 Wrap-Up: Finals, Snow Days and Hibernation

The first half of December was dominated by finals, but, as I realized, it’s the last December of my life (most likely) that I will be in that situation. I’m graduating college this May.

So I spent most of the beginning of the month studying for biochemistry and trying desperately to fight off burnout. My relationship with chemistry is strained. I have a kind of delusional belief that I will like every new chemistry or chemistry-adjacent class on my schedule, despite the fact that I have never ever been good at or enjoyed the actual act of taking any of those classes. It happened with biochemistry, it happened with organic chemistry, hell it even happened in high school with AP chem.

I chose to change my major to cell biology back in 2024 because I wanted to understand how life as we know it emerged from a bunch of atoms and found the prospect of understanding that inherently interesting. In the same way that particle physics and quantum physics are interesting because they focus on the very foundation of matter, I found the idea of studying cell and molecular biology to be interesting because in a way it’s the same thing except for biological matter, and arguably, living things are even more interesting due to the metaphysical questions their existence brings up. So I was excited to take biochemistry, since I would finally get to learn about how all of these molecules work together to form like, my body.

And it’s definitely absolutely fascinating in theory. What I failed to account for is my lack of aptitude in chemistry and the fact that when you actually have to memorize what Ser195 does in the chymotrypsin enzyme, while having a very vague and abstract understanding of the mechanism itself due to your poor grasp of chemistry and terrible spatial reasoning, the amazingness gets diluted into tedium…

The second half of December was some weird winter-break purgatory. It always is. The gym was closed, it was too cold to go outside, and I spent most of the day on my couch, or slouched in front of my monitor trying to get my life together. It’s in this state I am typing this post.

Reading:

I finished several books during December:

The Stand by Stephen King — 4/5. A mammoth of a novel, but dragged a bit and had terrible female characters. My review

Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties Rebellion by Martin A. Lee — 5/5. fittingly, I had picked up this book at City Lights Books in San Francisco a few months ago. It is an engaging overview of the stranger-than-fiction milieu of the 60s and how LSD influenced it

Lab Dog: A Beagle and His Human Investigate the Surprising World of Animal Research by Melanie D. G. Kaplan — 5/5 I will be reviewing this one soon. It is a sobering and thorough investigation of animal use in biomedical research

Homeland (Little Brother #2) by Cory Doctorow — 3/5 a decent YA read that delights in being techy but is very situated in its era

Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet — 3/5 a book about a strange woman and an even stranger psychiatrist

Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte — 5/5. A collection of short stories following the bizarre and self-sabotaging struggles of a bunch of millenials that are “the one friend that’s too woke” and not in a cool way

The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther by Jeffrey Haas — 4/5. covers the government plot to murder Fred Hampton and the 12 year long court battle to expose it

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher — 3/5. an essay about the widespread acceptance 0f capitalism as our default. It was a bit too jargon-y for me.

Movies, Music and Other Miscellany That’s Not Reading

Movies / TV

So this month I finally watched True Detective Season 1 and WOW the algorithm was right in suggesting that show so relentlessly to me because I loved it. Got me through finals. I’ve yet to decide if I want to bother with the other seasons because in my opinion Matthew McConaughey carries the show as Rust Cohle. I was going to review Season 1 on my blog, but now I want to re-watch it before I do that (and so I have the opportunity to read up on some more of the lore and other works it was inspired by)

I also found the time to watch The Animal People, a really great documentary about the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) campaign and how animal rights campaigns can go wrong (and how we can make them go right in the future).

Music

Some songs that have been on repeat this month:

Toby, Take a Bow by Casiotone for the Painfully Alone

I found this song by chance and immediately connected to the lyrics:

I’ve never seen you so awful
I found you at the bottom of a Russian novel
Gold medal and a crown
A cardigan and a frown
All maladjusted and clever
The greatest Smiths fan ever
Your picture in the papers
The captions shout
“There is a boy and he never goes out”

I have been struggling with depression this month and I love the Smiths (and Russian novels and cardigans too!)

I also came back to putting some old favorites on repeat:

Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan — it was mentioned in the book I read about the 60s and also happens to be my favorite Bob Dylan song. I am always on the pavement thinking about the government.

A History of Bad Men by Melvins — this song is in S1E4 of True Detective but I knew it before then thanks to my very good friend who is a superfan of Melvins. It’s such a banger and the scene it’s in now only adds to the badassery.

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