jessicalum.com/blog

Friends, family, extended friends and family,

Most of us have a bit of your own renewable resource to give this holiday season — blood. A little prick and a few minutes of your time may save a life, or help lives like mine.

Several news sources have highlighted the depleted blood supply (especially rare blood types) from November through January, since there are fewer or no blood drives going on. [Source: Chicago Tribune and the Sacramento Bee]

So if you’ve got the time or inclination, your blood donations could save lives!

Also, if you’re interested, you can donate to BloodSource under my name, which is where I get blood units from if/when I need transfusions. It’d be a nice gesture for BloodSource to know people support them in appreciation for them supporting me. And it doesn’t matter what kind of blood type you’ve got! Anything is appreciated.

Though I fortunately haven’t needed any transfusions since April (my vampire days are over, for now), but I may need them soon in the coming months to combat the side effects of radiation–my red blood cells and platelets might drop below what’s normal and safe.

Also, registering for the National Marrow Donor Program can dramatically change and tangibly save someone’s life. Leukemia, more so than even my own condition, has a good chance of going into remission from a bone marrow transplant.

Right before my last treatment, I had the awesome opportunity to meet Janet Liang, a fellow Bruin in a similar predicament as myself — at 22 she was diagnosed with leukemia, just this past August.  Here’s her site: HelpingJanet.com

People of Asian and mixed descent have an especially difficult time finding people who are a bone marrow match. From what I understand, this statistic is largely due to the fact that marrow matches tend to be in the same ethnicity, and there just aren’t that many Asian or Asian American donors. Here’s the Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches site.

Finding a match for Janet, or any patient with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and marrow-related diseases, will give them an even greater fighting chance — and a hero to thank!

So please, PLEASE, consider helping out! You could be helping us all kick cancer in the butt.

Sincerely, and with tons of love,

Jessica

Dear UCLA,

I feel like once upon a time, you promised me great things. And even without those promises, I’ve loved you dearly, and treasured every second with you.

But I now realize that, very unfortunately, you didn’t tell me how hard it would be in the world out there. The cold, narrow, and unfriendly job market of 2009. The market that tells me that it has no place for me, even with this lovely piece of paper that says that your faculty has conferred upon me a great degree.

UCLA, you should have told it to me straight: that employers don’t care what you majored in, or what grades you got, but they care about the unpaid slave labor internships and job experience in lieu of entry level jobs.

If you told me that, I would have worried less about my Milton midterm, my Shakespeare paper, and that stupid presentation poster on Monterey Bay, and tried to get more soulsucking internships that would be more rewarding in the future. And perhaps I would have considered a more tangibly useful major. Sure, English majors can write, but I have to somehow prove and propose that I can do more than just write about dusty literature.

Also, clearly, working for the Daily Bruin wasn’t enough. UCLA, you weren’t enough.

Not even for a state job.

I guess we say goodbye on that sad and bitter note.

Love,

Jessica

P.S. Congratulations, class of 2009.