Oh, hypocrisy...

The following is a list of the school sponsored, approved events involving alcohol since I've been here *off the top of my head*, meaning I'm probably leaving out three, four, or fifteen:

-The Rhum Runner cruise to meet/carry your classmates. Rum was FREE. Water was not.
-Student Government sponsored party the night before the Dean's Convocation
-Stoplight party at Aquarium
-MONDAY night party for the upper termers to celebrate their genetics final. First termers, in an invitation extended at the beginning of lecture, were more than welcome.
-Party at De Big Fish for something that involved dressing like an animal, I think.
-Party at Aquarium by the Caribbean Students Association.

And I think there's actually been about two others, and then there's something coming up where "responsible drinking is encouraged". Monday begins our third week of classes.

On top of this, they sell a good variety of spirits at the student store located in the student center, including Carib, Piton, Smirnoff Ice and a host of others.

Now... I like parties just fine. I like celebratory occasions, and as you know even like to get some variety of hammered on occasion (though not with Jager!). I don't mind the large variety of parties offered because it means I never have to make the decision "ooh, I really should study, but I don't want to miss that party" because there's a party virtually every night, thus I can catch the next one.

All of that is *fine*.

What is NOT fine is a TWO HOUR MANDATORY drug seminar again brought to you, I believe, by the Clinical Skills department, in which we were treated as squalling idiots with a *particular* focus on alcohol abuse, including a sermon by a speaker that I can only describe as yelling at us for forty minutes not only about alcohol, and quite laughably, the environments and cofactors that *create* alcoholics, but inexplicably about premarital sex and his political views that *we* should force all the smokers to the black sand beach and nowhere else on campus and *we* should vote for legislation when we're doctors imposing higher taxes and greater bans on tobacco and alcohol.

Yeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhh... screw you hypocritical self-righteous assclowns... that was my general impression.

Also fun was that it was also mandatory for vet students who were primarily ignored except for one speaker who apparently was defensive about such a thing and mentioned that the vet students had to learn all the same stuff but on multiple species, something that I appreciate but do NOT enjoy having a Friday afternoon dedicated to listening about. Two hours guys. You know what else was two hours today? Biochemistry. This created a rather significant "importance" gap because I was torn between medical school level work and fifth grade "Dare to say 'No'" campaigns, though I can honestly say that in fifth grade, they treated us with a touch more respect. But what was notable about having the vet students is that the lecture hall doesn't seat that many people, so they got to spend their two hours (since the med students had just had lecture in Bell Hall and had seats reserved) sitting in the aisles. Poor vet students.

We get it. Doctors have a higher incidence of drug use, largely due to stress and availability. We get that many of these problems begin in medical school with the stressors, and they particularly emphasized how stressed med students never feel like they had enough time. I wish I'd had partaken in a beer before class because it would have made me feel more mellow so with those statements I wouldn't have felt compelled to run forward and strangle the speakers.

Yes, as a med student, I do feel pressed for time, which is why I resent having it encroached upon by this sort of self indulgent bullshit.

Plus, the naivity of thinking that somehow these doctors that are going to turn to drug abuse are going to be changed from this path by a two hour mandatory seminar is nearly unimaginable. But the hypocrisy of it, complete with questionaire with things like "Have you consumed enough alcohol to be intoxicated in the last 12 months?" Absolutely. At two of your parties. Do I have a problem, yet? Should I seek counseling? The mind boggles.

Oh, and apparently marajuana is illegal in Grenada. Who knew? Wait... everyone did.

Whew! Sorry, had to get that off my chest. Now, to emulate my biochem professor, to change thought trails, here's a picture of a pretty building:



Since Joie helped me so much with biochem and I needed the anatomy review because I'm kind of useless with the muscles of the forearm and hand, we studied a bit for anatomy and then headed off to wet lab for review. They have really great hours so that you can wander off to lab in scrubs at 8 at night to get some review in with the upper termers. I re-met Tommy, whom I didn't recognize at first (despite the fact that he is quite... well made) because I saw him totally out of context after running into him at the culmination of a SGU sponsored party after which I went to a semi-sponsored weird late night BBQ and met him, but to be fair, he was NOT wearing scrubs at the time. Great tutor though since my brain had the off switch activated and I couldn't differentiate the thenar muscles for anything.

On the way back (at 10), we had our first proper Caribbean downpour, and in the short run from lab to dorm, I looked like I'd been dunked in a swimming pool. BTW, in the Caribbean, there is the light pleasant "Why am I wet when the sky is blue?" gentle rain one tends to associate with the tropics, and then there is the torrential sideways howling wind rains that one from California, such as myself, tends to associate with a *hurricane*, though according to my Trini (Tobagan?) roommate, "Oh, this isn't a storm". Good gods.

There was apparently a party in the letter dorms (there are the superdorms (SD1 etc) and the letter dorms, which largely consists of married people and upper termers), which I didn't attend, but the party came back to SD1 because the letter dorms ran out of beer. Essentially, everyone was celebrating the end of the drug awareness seminar, including one chick who got a 7 out of 7 on the "Do you have a problem with alcohol?" test and got trashed to celebrate. Heh heh, I like her. I wish I remembered her name... I'm not sure she can remember her name. Considering one of the questions involved having a drug/alcohol related sex encounter you regretted, I do want to hear that story! I got 1/7, and felt disappointed. I hate failing tests. I would have gotten drunk to commemorate my lack of alcoholic tendencies, but I have an advisor meeting in the morning at the University Club, and I failed the question about missing responsibilities because I was getting wasted and continued said regrettably responsible behavior. Tsk. At Sandblast (huge drunken university sponsored bash after midterms), I intend to bump my score from 1 to 6. I don't want to go full 7 because I'd hate to show off.

In the interim, look! I finally found a native monkey!








You can tell he's a native because of the Grenadian flag earring. Yea, okay, but we don't have any monkeys on campus (damn school) and all the ones in Grand Etang seem to have bugged off, so there ya go.