Alice in Wonderland
The paragon of a Hopkins Medical student. Smart, witty, driven, and extreme upper body flexibility. Meet Alice Yao.
Physician… love thyself – Alice giving herself a big birthday hug.
When I first came to Johns Hopkins for medical school, I was expecting a very particular type of person to be my classmate. Small, asian, female, neurotic, and socially awkward. I guess four out of five ain’t bad… She turned out to be the most chill, fun, and refreshingly honest person I have had the privilege to meet. She makes sure that I never take myself or anything else too seriously and was the reason I was as involved as I was last year in extra-curricular activities. She inspired me to be more than just a medical student, and I have loved every minute of it. Even if it meant getting yelled at by the Dean of Admissions…
She is my partying friend, the one I call if I don’t understand something, and the one I go to when I need a ride anywhere. She has an unusual obsession with driving. But I have no room to complain when she voluntarily leaves a party to come pick me up 25 miles away because I didn’t know that the trains stop running. Or when I needed to score a ride to the airport. Or when she had to drive out of her way to pick my no-car having- butt up so I could go out with everyone (like 3x’s a week).
She’s also been one of my closest confidants and I know I can trust her with anything. And I’m sure she’ll tell you that at times, I may have even trusted her with way more information than she ever wanted to know… and vice versa.
Now every picture of Alice tends to have a great story attached to it, and these are no exception.
Alice in all her glory. On the last day of our first year of medical school.
This is a picture of Alice cutting our “Congrats Med ’08″ on the last day of first year classes. This was also the last day of our finals where we took 3 different course final exams. She showed up to the exam dressed like this, in the shirt that she, our other classmate Heidi and I and shopped for the previous week. It was a great shirt and Heidi and I told her how good she looked in it (as you can see, she really did). Unbeknownst to us, would she show up for our final exam in it! When she walked into the room, there was a 10ft. radius of guys who just stopped studying, and stared. It was hillarious. She got crap for it the rest of the day. They do look lovely though.
Alice and I at our combined birthday parties. Alice being sexy, and I think I’m doing “Blue Steel”. Alice and I had a joint birthday party since our birthday’s were so close together. I’m sure we had fun.
Alice and Matt’s head. At another party. I swear we study… we do. This was at “Red Maple” one of our old favorite places to go to unwind after exams (which during first year was every other week/ or every week). Matt and Alice are getting their boogie on.
Alice really likes her ice cream. No great story behind this one, except that I LOVE this picture of Alice. It was on her friendster account and for some reason, it made me laugh for like five minutes non-stop.
Alice and I as “Turtle jockies”. Or as we liked to say, the swedish and italian flags…
What are Turtle Jockeys you might ask? Exactly what it sounds like, we rounded up the turtles and got them ready for the next race. There is an event that Hopkins puts on every year called “Turtle derby” where all the medical students go and sell bets on all the turtle races and then the races are held and televised on a local channel, even into the hospital. All of the money goes to the Children’s fund, which aids research in various pediatric diseases. It happened to be raining like crazy that day, so Alice and I sucked it up and went out and rangled those turtles like champs. The best part was clearly the costume (and the whip thing).
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