Farewell Fun...

And I'd like to just take this moment to reflect on all the good times I had over third term and the first week of fourth term... the days without studying; the lounging around doing nothing, the multiple beach trips, the "catching up" 6 lectures in a weekend and still having time to do a grocery shopping, a hash, a winebar dinner, and 8 Skype conversations without breaking a sweat.

Those days are gone as of 10 am tomorrow morning, replaced by a looming 13 unit beast known to mere mortals as "pathology", and known to SGU students as "the reason why fourth term will take 17 years off your life and make you rue the day you ever decided to don the stethoscope".

Adding to the suffering will be microbiology, which, for the last week, has been our only class, which at 5 units, still makes it the equal to physio or neuro (but not both), but by itself, hasn't been too bad, and featured a lab that was not only fun but at a time of day where I was awake enough to not spill Gram's iodine and infectious Black Sand Beach nasties all over myself.

And adding to the suffering will be fourth term Clinical Skills, which in practice, is cool because you get to play doctor, and in reality may be grueling because, well, it's one more class in addition to path and micro.

And adding to the suffering will be nutrition, which is only 2 units thrown in after micro ends, but it's one more class in addition to path and micro and clinical skills.

Holy crap, right? That's a lot of units!

Path lab will be, I believe, a daily affair, where we split up into groups, present slides, and while the path tutors aren't looking, I'm guessing, hold group therapy sessions. Path lab also inexplicably includes a dress code despite the fact that we aren't working with any materials (unlike micro lab) and we all live in the Caribbean where even the professors wear sandals to class. No visible tattoos, no wacky hair or piercings, no shorts, no tank tops, no no no no. Ostensibly, this is to treat us as "doctors". The fact that the dress code is far more similar to a 1950s Catholic Junior High school than a hospital should probably be overlooked. Having carefully reviewed the dress code, I've determined that if they don't allow scrubs and trail runners, then I'm screwed, because beyond that, the next "nicest" is boot cut jeans and ventilated sneakers I use for hiking in mud.

For the time being, I'm trying to stay positive. It seems like fourth term will consist of stuff I like, and be real medicine, diagnosing and proper House type stuff rather than simply knowing the nitty gritty of how the human body works, since it is FAR more interesting when it doesn't.

I celebrated the send off by a nice romantic dinner/movie Friday night, a study sleep day on Saturday complete with a jog that ran me into Dr. Bob and his niece (Hi guys!), and a beach trip with a swim today.

Friday marked my first Grenadian movie theater experience, so I can comment on that...

Why are the seats so close together? There were 6 people in the theater, but the seats in front of you are so close that it's like being in coach class on an island hopper.

Earth to projectionist: Please put the movie in the correct aspect ratio, because otherwise you see the top and bottom parts of the movie that were supposed to be cut out, but the wide screen aspects are chopped off, thus while watching American Gangster, rather than seeing whatever it was Denzel Washington was looking at that was off screen, I figured he was looking at the boom mic that was following him around. That thing got more face time than Ruby Dee did. It was in no less than 20 scenes, so as Dave and are watching it, and unfamiliar with the "this is a projectionist screw up, not a directing screw up" rule, we're whispering to each other "This movie is directed by Ridley Scott, and has at least five really big name actors in it. There is no WAY it could have been edited this badly."

But it was still a good time, got back to Dave's place and he cooked incredibly good fish for me, which I matched with Bordeaux since it was the only thing I had around the house. Mmm... Bordeaux.

Today, I mixed up my exercise regiment, or so I told myself, by snorkeling sans snorkel but found a healthy section of reef off Grand Anse and spent a good bit of time chasing lobsters (no, not trying to catch them, tres illegal and all), bristleworms, flying gernards, and in the swim back, a snake eel whose tail I was able to touch (not grab), a fact he wasn't too happy about.

He also wasn't that fast though, so I didn't get a cool "snake eel" bite to tell all my friends about. D'oh.

Have I mentioned that you get progressively stupider as you go through medical school? Ah well, that's probably self-evident.

Here's another hash picture before bed: