1. The “I’m Different” Pre-Med

These are the pre-meds who major in things like professional baking or being a tennis celebrity. They complete their required science courses and then get out as fast as possible so they can take courses like “Bad Boyz and Bad Gurlz in Contemporary Half-Asian Culture” and create independent studies for things like “Comparative Knitting.” They write their theses on topics like “The Post-Marxist Construction of the Bisexual Transvestite,” and, “The Imaginary Art of Giving Organic Surrealist Manicures.” These people are totally random but they get into every single medical school you applied to and more. Love them, hate them, fear them.

Go-To Conversation Topics: NGOs/ Street Style/ Alpalca Socks/ Anything, Really

Future Specialization: Being Heidi Montag’s Replacement Plastic Surgeon because they forgot to RSVP “yes pls” to their invitation to be US Surgeon General while they were out rock climbing/ being astronaut/ feeding kale to disabled porpoises.

2. The Excessively Self-Absorbed Pre-Med

These are the pre-meds who love talking about how they are pre-med more than actually being pre-med. Never mind that the person convulsing on the floor next to them is choking to death, let’s just talk about whether this stethoscope makes me look fat or not instead! And yes, we all get it: Jockeying for a seat at medical school is just really competitive or something. But you know what else is competitive? Being a contestant on Top Chef. Being a contestant on Top Chef is very competitive.

It’s like these people wake up every morning with one thought on their minds. “Must be the center of attention at all times, must complain constantly and make everyone else feel as stressed out as I pretend to be.” On one hand, I can kind of understand the craziness of it all. I can kind of see how taking really hard lab courses might justify living in a state of being constantly Le Tired and then feeling the need to corner all of your terrified friends and bitch to them about it. I can kind of see how studying for the MCAT for three months straight might force someone to share public itunes playlists in the library with titles like “so sad orgo,” “fuck me softly physics,” and “~*H8 PrE-mEd LyFe*~.” On the other hand, it sort of just seems like an excuse to have a pre-God Complex. ZZZ.

Being this type of pre-med also requires a particular eye for fashion. These pre-meds want to look the part so they go all out. This can be done by making a concerted effort to look perpetually cracked out on Red Bull and Kombucha or to just look totally and completely out of it at all times. If too many other pre-meds are working this look, the spotlight can be stolen back simply by not showering for a few weeks and wearing sweatpants every day instead.

Go-To Conversation Topics: Just Me, Myself and My Stress Blackouts/ Panicking A Lot But Not Really/ 2 BUSY 2 FUNCTION

Future Specialization: The one that got Octomom pregnant. Medical license: Revoked.

3. The Self-Loathing Pre-Med

This is a melting pot category for all kinds of crazies who come together in their simple hatred of the “pre-med” label and lifestyle. There are many reasons aspiring doctors hate being “pre-med.” Example # 1: The Excessively Self-Absorbed Pre-med.

I mean, I guess it’s not really a secret that everyone sort of hates pre-meds. Professors hate pre-meds, humanities majors hate pre-meds, other pre-meds don’t even like pre-meds. Clearly, this is logically expected given that pre-meds love grade grubbing and knowing only how to emote either petulance or hyper-caffeinated competitiveness. And yes, obviously not everyone who wants to be a doctor is like this, but shit happens.

I think that pre-med self-loathing can also come from being in a constant state of sleep deprived fear: Fear of setting yourself on fire in lab or getting cancer, fear of eventually becoming hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt before you ever get the chance to tell someone “you have gonorrhea” in a professional environment (which makes it socially acceptable), and fear of not having enough time to date like a normal person. How can you possibly find your happy place with all that going on up there?

One of my personal favorites behind the silent song of pre-med self-hate is based on having an aversion to being stereotyped. Occasionally, I avoided telling people I was pre-med in college because I didn’t like the getting the “ohh, of course you are” look in response — because in this progressive day and age, sometimes being Asian and wanting to be a doctor just doesn’t cut it. Not even if you’re genuinely interested in studying things like sperm washing and wanting to help people. Like, I’m sorry that my life is too Crouching Tiger Mother, Hidden Cliché for you to handle. I’m sorry that I’m not Asian and interested in becoming a professional transvestite pole dancer instead. I’M SORRY FOR NOT BEING SHOCKING/CRAZY ENOUGH FOR YOU!

But in all seriousness, if you think I’m making it up, here’s a little gem to beat the dead horse just a little longer. A friend who I love dearly once asked me, “so was that, like, your choice or your parents’ choice?” Haha, wait. What? Her question wasn’t even a question really; it was more like a re-statement of some basic fact of life. “Sorry, but my parents actually wanted me to go to an art school that had no mandatory math classes and had athletics teams named after genitalia!” Crisis averted.

Go-To Conversation Topics: Avoidance/ You Think You Know, But You Have Know Idea/ Is This What Denial Tastes Like?

Future Specialization: Psychiatry — anything that screams Issues.

4. The Closeted Cut-Throat Pre-Med

To be honest, I’ve never actually met anyone like this. In college, my lab partners were always really friendly, supportive and funny. One of them would do things like accidentally throw away our mass spec results and be like, “Oh Matt, what shall we do now!” We would both laugh and secretly cry on the inside. But with many things in life we can’t see that definitely exist, like carbon monoxide, I am convinced that the Closeted Cut-Throat Pre-med is out there somewhere, somehow, doing something bad. I imagine that if I ever met one of these people in the present, they would tell me I had kind eyes, and then proceed to pour acid down my backpack while I thanked them. These elusive and potentially imaginary pre-meds are totally psychotic and love every second of it.

Go-To Conversation Topics: I Once Was Lost, But Now I Just Want To Kill You/ Study Drugz/ I Sold My Soul To AMCAS.

Future Specialization: Family Medicine or Pediatrics — because the crazy ones always look the most normal on the outside.

5. The Normal Pre-Med

These are the people that don’t let pre-professional labels define who they are. They’re down to earth, intelligent and truly inspired by what they study — whatever that is. These are the people who, when your departmental graduation speaker announces that so-and-so “will be attending medical school next fall at…,” you’re like “Excuse me?” You didn’t even know they were pre-med! They got by just doing their own original and fiercely independent thing without causing drama making a big deal about wanting to save lives and stuff. Thank god for people like this.

Go-To Conversation Topics: My Dog/ I’m Happy and Content with Life/ How to be Zen All the Time

Future Specialization: Neurosurgery — because they will still have enough brain cells left over from not being a hot pre-med freakshow mess like everyone else on this planet.

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Xiu Xiu have said and done some horrifying things over the years. Their new music video “Dear God, I Hate Myself” is no exception. The lo-fi video, which debuted earlier this month on Stereogum, features Xiu Xiu’s newest member, Angela Seo, making herself vomit while the band’s original brainchild Jamie Stewart sits close by dancing, eating a chocolate bar. It’s pretty offensive. Some people love it. Some people hate it. (And most people, rightfully, don’t care.) I haven’t really watched the video in its entirety but I still consider myself a member of the first camp. This is a good video. Well… Only if you interpret it in a specific, sympathetic context.

Dexter Morgan is marketed as “America’s favorite serial killer.” The reason we venerate him stems, I suppose, from how well Dexter deals with his curse. There are, more pointedly, two major forces justifying our attraction. (1) Dexter does not want to murder people. But he has very little control over his actions. He has to murder because when he was a toddler he watched his mother get cut up into little pieces with a chainsaw and was left for hours to bathe in her blood. (2) He makes the best of his nature vindicating himself with a utilitarian argument. His killing, the logic goes, saves more lives than it destroys.

Do you see where I am going with this?

Xiu Xiu, perhaps, operate under a similar code and can be justified by a similar strain of thought. Jamie Stewart does not necessarily want to write songs about how much he hates himself. Angela Seo doesn’t really want to make videos about self-destructive behavior. But Jamie has to write this song, Angela has to make this video, Xiu Xiu has to do this:

This is who they are. That is how they deal and cope with their “dark passenger.” Now, it’s easy to see how Dexter turns his darkness into something ostensibly much brighter, but how do Xiu Xiu do that with this video?

I guess the “Dear God,…” video does so, as much of Xiu Xiu’s discography does, by making an incisive and cathartic comment on our culture of concealment. Think about the stuff of our world: highly edited political speeches, Tiger Woods’ manicured persona, airbrushed photo spreads, gay men married with children, Dexter’s bourgeois façade, your own makeup. So much of our culture is designed to mask imperfection and gloss vulnerability.

Enter Xiu Xiu: Promoted as America’s most honest and brutal ensemble. Test that claim out for yourself, watch the video (if you can). This presents someone at their worst. It exposes a very vulnerable moment. It unveils what the mainstream constantly tries to veil. It’s kind of like the art-school version of David Letterman’s extramarital confession. Or Lady Gaga for real monsters.

I don’t personally have anything against a culture of cover ups and plastic constructions. Masquerading is fun and often beautiful. Being a phony has its benefits. (Salinger can suck it. The Dove Campaign for True Beauty missed the mark.) Even so, as Dexter recently learned when he found his wife murdered, concealment has its price. And I find it refreshing to see people with the courage to go so intensely against the grain.

This is an album of strange pain. The cover artwork says so itself, just gaze into it: a blurry image of a naked woman tied up on a bed.    Are you telling me this is a woman as a lover?  Who is this girl?  Is this punishment?  Some kind of  sadomasochism?  What is happening?

What we (seem) to have here is a collection of love songs gone astray due to unfathomable violence, identity confusion, and self-loathing. They are racy, militant recordings mostly about hellish experiences. The lyrics are dirty and suck like black holes. Often, the titles speak for themselves:

• “In Lust You Can Hear the Axe Fall”
• “Guantanamo Canto”
• “You’re Pregnant, You’re Dead”

Even when names appear harmless they merely disguise the perverting and machinating minds behind them; take for example, track #7 “Black Keyboard”:

A child is nothing without hate.
Be certain he feels his love is trash.

All of this is sonically complemented by energetic, manic contrasts. These sounds are appropriately beautiful, as well as disturbing; the range is alarming, the blending fantastical ––

Like in the last song, “Gayle Lynn”, that operatically belches. Only to churn, then to talk; only to squall: lulling and laving thousands of emotions into one master, all-encompassing expression. Remorse, ebullience, curvaceously vexing ––

This is Xiu Xiu, this is Women as Lovers.  This is a fly recording, something worth purchasing and loving for years and years.