My childhood!

What have you done?

Somewhere, in the middle of the crab races and karaoke at the owl, there was a WWF (or similar) smackdown on USA in the background.

During this, Santa Claus came out and started distributing presents to the kids near the front row, and since someone was decently belting out the tinned version of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" on the karaoke machine, I thought "Awww".

Then Santa climbs into the ring, and promptly gets beaten down, slammed into the ropes, kicked in the head, face-punched, which then ends with him getting beaten with his own beard.

Um... Merry Christmas?

Speaking of holiday smackdowns, I actually won a wrestling match! Granted, I did it by gaining the upper hand accidentally and then pushing the poor guy's face into the water, half drowning him, in an effort to get his shoulders onto the ground/sand/seafloor, but I'm counting it. And that's still not half as messed up as wailing on Saint Nick.

Wow... wow...

Nope, no updates again... too much stuff...

All grades are up except Clinical Skills, which has been screwing around with the breakdowns for a MONTH, still don't have anything entered, and having conflicting syllabi so no one knows what the case write ups are worth compared to the final exam because we have it written differently in two different places.

So other than that hiccup, WOOOT!!!!! So that means I'm officially done with sixth term since pharm offers no promises of anything, though it does offer a whopper of a curve plus the unique opportunity to relearn everything immediately for the step 1s since no one knows anything. Or at least, I don't.

Meanwhile, I've been on that long promised bender. Thursday night at Verandah, which was spectacular. Then no sleep and a day long island tour, consisting of going to Grenville, Gouyave, Sauteurs, the rum factory, a derivative chocolate factory, nutmeg factory, Concord waterfalls, Grand Etang rainforest (still no frigging monkeys!) Friday night was Sej's long-promised frigging AWESOME champagne party at Aquarium, which had class, a great playlist, great food, live music following the food; just fantastic. Then a very packed Bananas. Then a night swim at Grand Anse. Then, burned out, a LONG sleep, awakened to a hash. Then celebration of Dave's birthday at La Belle Creole, and hanging out with him while he packed to leave (wahhhh). Then sleep again. Then wake up to swimming and then a Fight Club night with bonus wine and nachos. Hopefully diving tomorrow.

I'm dying... and it feels so good!

It can't be over...

Last exam... it's over.

It's over!!

I'm done with basic sciences, OMG!!!!!!!!!!

It sunk!

OMG, this is my last exam and then I'm going home for good...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!


aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

I'm... I'm... COVERED IN BEES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh man, just an hour and a half until this thing goes down. All right...

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh....

Still not really sinking in

Pharm exam tomorrow. That's my last exam of basic sciences.

Then I go home to the USA, study for the biggest exam ever dreamed up in the nightmares of mankind, and then, go to Brooklyn to be a 'real' med student, in that I get to touch patients... like litigious US patients. Grenadian patients have been oddly unconcerned with the whole thing, and at most, seem amused by us. "Sure, go ahead, crowd of 8 frightened inexperienced students. Auscultate my scrotum even though you really obviously don't know what you're doing, and since there's a loop of bowel IN my scrotum, it's probably going to be uncomfortable. Not like I'm doing anything else."

But I digress...

Last exam of basic sciences. Then US. No more Grenada. No more Bananas. No more Grand Anse. No more "Hey beautiful!! Wanna take a ride?" No more sunset point. No more Carib. No more wandering onto campus and knowing half the people around with the view of the sea on both sides. No more "Hello Dear!!" from Mrs. Patel. No more gut-crushing guilt by cheating on Mrs. Patel by buying Indian food from the couple across the bus stop from her because they have meat dishes. No more any of that.

It's very very odd. People's reactions are weird. I keep getting congratulated for stuff... on 'getting out', on 'making it through', on 'going home', on getting Brooklyn. On taking the second to last exam, on finishing pathophys... and I keep feeling like "any second now, this is going to sink in".

But it isn't. I sold my crock pot and my blender. I can't go to Angel Falls right now because they can get me TO Venezuela, but not back, and while what I've seen of the country, I love, spending Christmas there instead of with my family isn't on my to-do list, so I'm slating it for next year (fingers crossed, no embargo!).

So I take the exam tomorrow, and then I have a week to pack everything up, take down the sheets and aluminum foil protecting my room from any form of UV radiation, and hang at the beach, and say goodbye, as about half the people I know leave the island forever, and I have to leave the other half behind. But then I go to New Bern, which is beautiful, and I get to see my family, and winter, and all that. No more administration for a while.

I get moments where the excitement starts to seep through. I went to the point with Lori yesterday because we were both procrastinating, and we were talking about places we were going to go in Brooklyn, and there was this rising excited fluttering. I started talking to her about google-earthing New Bern, and how the apartment is across from a bed and breakfast and down the street from a lobster deli, and you can see the river from the window, and it's in walking distance to the beautiful old city center, and I was talking faster and got excited again.

And then we lay on our backs at the point as the sun set and the stars came out (I know it's cheesy, but it's awesome in real life) and just chatted, and the occasional sailboat shadow would pass by. She and I talked about getting all our diving in after exams, the champagne sendoff Sej arranged and how excited we are about all of it, and I felt a fluttering of excitement about that too, of doing those things, not of leaving it.

Thus the utter ambivalence I've been facing this term, which has extended to almost every area (such as liking pathophys, hating how it's run, though to their credit after the whole showdown thing, everything improved dramatically, and hating pharm but liking how it's run), so arrrggghhhh.

Oh, speaking of pathophys. I was unable to work up a suitable amount of stress for the final exam, largely because this term and this week, I'm continuing the senioritis trend to an extreme, but while I can't comment on the fairness of the dermatology section since I did virtually *nothing* to prepare for it, including reading the lecture notes, it was actually a pretty fair exam.

More to the point, it went with a more "first order/second order question" approach. While I'm not saying 5th-10th order questions are unfair, and that'll certainly be the board questions, thinking through those sorts of questions also tend to break my brain pathways and leave me so exhausted for the remainder that I can't do much, which usually spells bad news for whatever exam is second.

Now granted, I've been using the spare brain cells allowed by the last exam to then subsequently kill them with television and facebook, but at least now I have no excuse for my utter ignorance of pharm.

So somewhere around a week and change before I'm gone...

Scary exciting...

Second to last exam of basic sciences tomorrow, namely pathophysiology exam.

Considering three days ago, I was three weeks behind, I'm feeling pretty decent right now sans dermatology, which I'm hoping to cram into the morning hour.

Still an odd surreality where I really don't feel like I'm leaving yet. Don't even really feel like I've got a massive final exam tomorrow, more like "Hmm, another day, another scantron."

Contrast that to what'll happen to me Wednesday night, as I realize that pharm is going to club me like a baby seal.

Tons of people going for exams tomorrow, so good luck to all of you and I wish you well.

Nighty night!

Looming

Having a pathophysiology exam tomorrow, which I still need to study for, by the way, is sort of analogous to having this dude sleep in bed with you for the duration:



Which sucks, because how I want to feel is like this:



So I'm trapped:



Where's Lancelot when you need the git?

The Germans really DO have a name for everything

Witzelsucht: excessive and inappropriate facetiousness.

In other news, I'm not obnoxious; I just have a brain tumor.

Start Spreading the News

New York New York!

Preliminary placements are out, and looks like I'm headed to Brooklyn.

Now... to attempt to get three weeks of work done in three days. Countdown!

Wanna wrassle?

That's the kind of thing you can only say yes to if it's tossed off at you suddenly.

So next thing I know, I'm spending the non-pharm group part of my birthday at the beach with two of the Prague professors, Dem, Grace, and Mo, and we are all going out WWF smackdown wrestling. Not only do I have a sand burn on my face, but I look like I got the top of my left arm caught in a press.

Two words for that: Awe-Some.

Highly recommend wrestling at sunset on a beach. Even if I did get my ass handed to me. More incentive to work out.

The pharm group was helped by last night's drunken revelries at Stuart's followed by Bananas. I ran into a bunch of awesome people, many of whom bought me drinks, and one of whom had them make an announcement over the loudspeaker in my honor.

This night of irresponsibility (contrasted to all the other nights) left me somewhat half impaired for pharm group, which I helped by coming in late due to the bus leaving me sitting on the curb for a solid half an hour as I tried to conserve the Red Bull flowing through my veins as the only thing keeping me upright.

Came in as Amanda sang happy birthday at me along with the group, and we settled into it as I speculated as to the physiological mechanism of peripheral neuropathy in diabetics while also absently drawing a flower on my ankle. Amanda had written in "Happy Birthday" above my name on the sign in sheet, so that was cool.

Then home and nap and wrestling. Then I get back, shower off the sand salt water, discover bruises, only to have Krash expectedly come over and unexpectedly bring a cheesecake and Dave (a beefcake; rowl).

So good times had by me, and this isn't even the beginning of the party, which is officially at Prickly Bay tomorrow evening.

In the meantime, I get to try to study for the OSCE that I have on Tuesday by studying checklists, and try to pretend the BSCE2 doesn't exist, since unbeknownst to me, it's an 8 hour exam. Lawdy, is that going to suck.

Last one up!

Man oh man... my last exam of fourth term is in 11 hours, and do I ever *not* have the impetus to study for it.

This week was started off by the last path exam, as mentioned, and in it being the last came one of the biggest feelings of relief of my natural class. The boogeyman of SGU is no more. Well, hopefully. It was pointed out to me that they're not going to post the grades until Friday at 4. Now, they usually don't post until the Friday afterward, ostensibly so you aren't distracted for your other exams.

So then why, 4 PM? Hmm... Friday before everyone leaves, post the scores at the end of the day, most people leaving this weekend, so there's no way anyone can contest anything. Clever, path department. And fairly typical of them.

I had my CPD lab exam on Wednesday and got the super duper nice examiner with the half-compliant, barely awake patient. And no, that wasn't his "condition"; that was actually the way he was. He also didn't have deep tendon reflexes, which is disheartening when you're trying to perform them for an examination, until the examiner informs you of this, and lets you beat on her with a reflex hammer.

But she was really sweet. Complimented me on my kit; asked me really fair questions, didn't do that "insane amount of pressure and criticizing your every move" thing which some of them do, and it really screws up people's mojo.

So that was good. But it still is hard to get up the effort to study for the written. Instead, I'm so overwhelmed by the fact that in a week I'm going to be in Berlin that it's hard to focus on anything else. I'm examed out. I'm tired of filling in scantrons, tired of my student ID number, tired of standard issue #2 mechanical pencils, and wish to increase my etOH content.

On the plus side, the frequency of exams is starting to reduce the catastrophizing I did previously upon their arrival. It's easy to completely freak out when you're in your first term ever of medical school, each exam is worth roughly 50% of your grade, and you haven't figured out yet whether you're smart enough to be in med school. By the end of fourth term, it's almost an "Oh my god, I don't care anymore" sort of vibe. "Let me drop a letter grade because I can't focus for an hour. It's all the same."

More and more, people are planning less for the exam itself, and more for how they're going to schedule their packing around the festivities planned for ending 5 and a half months of pretty hard work.

The lack of nutrition is probably also contributing. After discovering my milk had gone bad, I had dry frosted flakes for breakfast and then at dinner, discovered a packet of chicken flavored top ramen hiding behind my IGA shopping bags, so didn't have to go hungry. And I can't go to the store because there's too little time, yet I somehow have a ton of food that I don't have the base ingredients for. I could have an 8 course fine dining dinner if only I had that cup of milk, or that one egg or those two tablespoons of butter.

Pretty collegey, eh? Now... to endocrine or not to endocrine. That is the question...

No more path!!!

Wahhooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

Well, barring some horrid mishap, but no more path!!!!!! Test over! Now, to attempt to focus on CPD for the next week, which is no easy feat, and then no more fourth term!!!

As for the third path exam... not as bad as it could have been considering a lot of the rumors surrounding it. It's not typically considered as horrid as the second exam, but a lot of people have said it tends to be just as hard, or the like.

Though renal. Holy holy crap was there ever a lot of renal. Epic renal. Renal renal renal renal and again with the renal! You wouldn't see more renal if you shoved your head inside a kidney.

A visual metaphor

Or one hopes, at any rate. We're scrappy, we're tired, but we're still flying.

The end of fourth term is basically an exercise in stamina. Everyone's left, the island kind of forgets about us, places are closed early or have limited selections, our friends regale us with tales of their summers, and all the while, we go "Just four more exams. Just three more exams. Just 9 more days. Just x more hours." Most people have forgone the thought of an "A" for a hope of getting out alive; everyone has a grim look about them, and this term has explained to me just why, in first term, all the upper termers always looked so much older. Not by way of wrinkles or physical age, but just kind of a weariness that doesn't necessarily bely unhappiness (though sometimes it does), but utter exhaustion.

In the meantime, I'm trying to maintain the impetus to study, while what I *really* want to do varies back and forth between wanting to lie on my bed tucked under the comforter with the A/C on and the lights off and plan for the fact that I'm going to be in Berlin in less than two weeks, focus on hostels, plan my day trips, and pretty much do everything *except* study path and physical diagnosis. I'm in that period where I want an extra week to offset my laziness, but know I wouldn't do anything with it anyway, while at the same time, want it all to be over now, hell to the consequences so I can go get my Boston and Europe on.

The list of things I have to do before leaving grows longer as well. Clean, empty the fridge, pack, arrange my rent and stuff for while I'm gone, get the taxi, order the Eurail pass, clean more of my clothes, wonder if I've got enough and the right kind of food to make it until the end game. Tip my housekeeper. Plan plan plan. But that gets in the way of study study.

Yesterday, after determining yet again, that I don't have TB (woo hoo! They got the tests in!), I managed to rebirth the renal packet so that I feel pretty confident in it. Today's task is endocrine. Tomorrow and Sunday will be male, bone, and CNS, and forensics will be part 'attended lecture' and part 'spent four years in a morgue'.

It's been raining since last night, so the sky is gray, which I love. It's kind of a hard mix between wet and dry season. During dry season, it's hot all the time, the weather never changes, everything gets dusty, and all that lush jungle foliage surrounding you dies. There's no crabs around, the lizard populations wane, and it's just not as fun. On the other hand, during wet season, you can easily get drenched by unpredictable torrential downpours and while you get the crabs and lizards back, they bring with them the roaches and ants. What to do; what to do? But I welcome back wet season so long as it doesn't delay my plane.

Hang in there comrades; we're almost out.

My steam runneth outeth

And such-eth.

Arrrrrgggghhhh, the final stretch is the worst. On the plus side, the last CNS lecture closer was not only by a prof I like, but was 16 minutes long just to tie stuff up, which meant when I saw the length on Sonic I did my little happy dance.

Not really sure why seeing the length on Sonic affects my mood as if I'm tied in for each one until the bitter end, yet when I see 42 minute lectures, I cheer, and when I see 58 minute lecture ones, I groan, as if this somehow affects the amount of information I need to get or decreases my study time. I think, because the conclusion of each feels like progress, and that progress gets closer, as I tally down my "how many lectures I'm behind" count.

Now, I'm determining if the forensic path lectures next week will be the first time I've regularly attended lecture since midway through second term.

In my struggle to continue my streak of procrastination to increase panic mode as we close in, I did some laundry today, though it may have been a good thing, since my normal pre-exam mode thing is to leave it all until I am COMPLETELY out of clothes a day or two before the exam, which of course means I can't do laundry, and of course DOES mean having to sit the exams in my least gnarly pair of scrubs. Coming back from laundry, I saw two guys from my complex taking pictures of what I initially thought, was the pick up truck parked on our lawn. Turns out it was the bull NEXT to the pick up truck, who had wandered into our front yard to munch on the bushes and grass, so to prolong my attempts to not study, I tried to feed him a branch and he licked my hand, but rejected my offering. Picky bulls.

If I ever do get near one of those Looney Tunes style mean scary bulls, I am going to get killed to an extent that will make the coroner vomit. I just don't have the sense to be scared of the things because they look like... well... cows. And cows just don't look scary. Or fast. I'm sure those will be my final thoughts when one outruns me and sticks its horn into my skull.

Speaking of random violence, I saw the last half of 300. It was educational. First, I learned that while it's awesome to watch guys in leather speedos fight, it doesn't make for wildly effective battle protection. Second, I learned that Persians are easier to kill than stormtroopers, and a fair number of them that actually planned ahead and donned armor still managed to get slashed to bits with minimal effort by guys in leather speedos. I'm not sure who to be more embarrassed for. The Persian faction *did* demonstrate some poor planning by piercing everything though. As anyone with hoops or a belly ring that's been to a rock concert knows, this is extremely hazardous, and grows more so when your enemy likes to fight in close combat.

Meesa goin' home

I know; I know, I hate Jar Jar too, but I couldn't think of another title.

I'm a second year med student. I can't even believe it, nor does it feel real, nor does it feel real that I'm going to see snow and America and all that, nor does it feel like Christmas even though the reggae buses have been ceaselessly playing something that involves a soca beat with "Christmas!" thrown in a lot. That and the "Top up my phone and leave me alone" song. And the "Beautiful girls, you're making me suicidal" song. Those are pretty much the only three I've heard for the last... oh, month when my ipod isn't on. Current students, back me up.

Exams... I already mentioned neuro. Physio killed me, but I passed it, which is good because I really really really didn't want to take it again.

Pretty much, in the endgame, I realized that I had no CLUE about pulmonary physiology despite spending a really good portion of my time desperately trying to understand it from the sped-through lectures. So I decided to ignore it, and considering I think I got precisely none of those questions right on the final exam, was probably the best decision, since that is a VERY low study for question ratio, compared to endocrine and reproductive which was the opposite. So I focused on that. My main regret was not going over renal, which I initially understood but hadn't looked at in 6 weeks, and the funny thing was despite not getting a chance to review it, I think I got more of those questions right than pulmonary, even though pulmonary was an entire week by itself with hours a day about two weeks before the final for it. Shrug.

Oh, and get West's 7th edition Respiratory Physiology book. It's short and paperbacky but it is inexplicably not on the required booklist; it's the only section we weren't given notes on (versus the others which had long, detailed notes); and they don't tell you need it until you're on the island, and it's not on the required booklist. Blech. Should be cheap though; it's pretty short.

The BSCE, though I don't know how I did on it yet, wasn't too bad, though it could be because physio questions on it requiring math I sort of skimmed because I knew I wasn't going to get them right anyway, but I remembered a lot more biochem and anatomy than I thought. Plus, it's nice to have an exam where there aren't significantly immediate consequences for tanking it.

But decisions decisions... should I report on Dave's birthday celebration on Thursday (his b-day was on Tuesday but mid-finals, so we rescheduled it), Fish Friday, and yet again, jumping off the Seven Sisters? Or should I be responsible, continue getting my stuff together to leave on Tuesday? Decisions decisions.

Stress? Who me?

So we technically have one more exam that most people (myself included) are more interesting in planning their activities AROUND it than how they actually do on it, so more later after the persistent celebration of *hopefully* not having to do neuro or physio again until the USMLE.

BSCE is at 1 PM, which is a cumulative exam for all of first term. If you fail it, and fail the BSCE 2, and get below a 2.5 GPA, they won't let you sit the USMLE without extra help. Which means people should take it as important, prolly, but a day and a half AFTER respiratory physiology in which you get to relearn anatomy, embryology, biochem, and histology? Right. I didn't even learn embryo the first time around.

So reports more after that because no reason to be tired for it.

Oh, word to the wise... if you're going shopping and use your credit card while forgetting you don't actually have a valid photo ID on your person, when you present the ONLY photo ID you have on your person in place of a driver's license, and it's a PADI rescue diver certification card, TRY to keep a straight face when the cashier copies down the cert number.

In my defense, the giant shark on the front of the card should have been a giveaway.

Goodbye Neuro!

One hopes, at any rate.

I feel cautiously optimistic about the exam, despite the fact that it was freaking hard and I didn't sleep well (surprise surprise). BUT I also didn't have complete panic attacks before and after. Of course, that could be a bad sign. Or it could be a sign that my stress levels this term have been residually high enough that I don't notice significant changes in them. Let's go with that. I'm also getting used to the fact that I'm absolutely useless at determining how I did on multiple choice exams (boy, did I pick the wrong profession, eh?), so I need to just not bother with it until the shiny day that academic warning comes in the SGUMail.

Though, age of sexual differentiation in rats? Why? I mean, yes, reading off a chart, but why? Maybe I watch too much TLC (okay, I lie, I mean House and Scrubs), but I have never seen a doctor run in and have someone scream "QUICK! Read this chart and tell me if castrating a rat on it's 7th day of postnatal life will cause it to differentiate into a phenotypic female! The patient is coding!!! Dammit, doctor, if rodent gonads aren't important, then what is? NOOOOO, he's dead!!! KHAN!!!!!!"

My celebration of having one (technically two, to count immuno) exam done with consists of studying endocrine physiology and determining whether I'm going to even attempt to go back over respiratory phys tomorrow or just accept that I'm never going to understand it and focus on renal to make up the points. Decisions decisions.

It's finals... you know what this means.

I figured you'd seen the watered down version of what midterms are, but it's time you knew!

Ugh, no mas

Man oh MAN am I burned out! I've been on the island less than a year and I find myself running after airplanes screaming "take me with you!!!!"

The latent stress seems to be finding this sort of stomach-pit apathy where part of me is working my gosh darned hardest to be the best overall medical student I can be, so I can be on all the "Become a doctor" commercial giving a toothy grin and a big thumbs up, but most of me is like "Just let me get the 57% I need to pass these classes so I can get out of this term and set my notes on fire."

And we won't even talk about physio. What physio? Hence my policy of only putting my best effort into my first exam, no matter what it is, and then merely hoping to ride through the second. Plus, I spent so long doing respiratory physiology and understood so little of it, that I finally abandoned panic and settled into a state of "if it's gonna be that hard, screw it; I'm never going to understand it". Tres healthy, no?

So instead, all I can think is that next Tuesday I'll be on a plane to see snow, family, and a blissful but brief period where I don't have to study or feel guilty about not studying.

This term's been a rough one for almost everyone, as the spike of incidences on the crime reports would suggest. A fight in the library? Geeze!

I'm also beginning to be able to differentiate people by term. The first termers still seem a bit wide-eyed at the island/school itself, and their stress seems to be a lot more acute, like a slightly less pathological version of what I was last term, but still a very hyper anxiety.

My fellow second termers seem to be in a wide, glassy, humorless fog of underlying depression and anxiety with a grim determination to just get this term over with. At least that's the emotion I'm projecting onto them. I've met a couple people that are like "I like this term so much more than last one", but not most of them. About half, like me, rarely leave their apartments, including to go to lecture, and instead sit watching Sonic Foundry, occasionally cursing. Island stuff has gotten far more normalized (like no longer looking up when you here a reggae bus burn off its tires on the roundabouts), but may still be distracted by larger things. They trade ideas on professions to pursue when they fail out of medical school. Mine is "Alaskan crab fisherman(woman)".

Fourth termers seem to have a more stressed second term vibe, but it seems to be overlaid with a sort of 'coping' humor of "wow, I thought things couldn't possibly get worse, but now it's fourth term." A lot of them seem to smoke. Or started smoking. Or are trying to kill themselves in an incredibly passive aggressive way. Generally unphased by everything on the island, possibly because they don't notice with their heads buried in the Robbins book.

Sixth termers seem in half disgust with the island, remain unphased by everything, but may "fsst!" cows out of their ways and into the streets because why go around the thing. They seem to primarily be focused on getting the stuff they've collected over the last two years out of their apartments and marking days off on their "DAYS UNTIL I LEAVE THE ROCK" countdown.

Back to muscle spindles. They're about as fascinating as they sound.

Incentive to study

One of our instructors came up with a good way to motivate students to do well on a section of the physiology exam:

Is it... the threat of decelling? Of having to explain things to an academic committee? Of compromising your career? Of disappointing yourself and your loved ones? Of having to stay here for an extra six months in a different class with strangers and get a summer break that knocks you out of your scheduled plans?

No.

If you miss the acid/base questions, he will HUNT YOU DOWN IN YOUR HOME.

Dayam. That's some hardcore professoring, right there.

On a completely different note, ya know what's incredibly not sexy at all and makes girls cry about how much they hate a place that's normally quite beautiful while wanting to break the legs of all creatures with a "Y" chromosome? (Knee jerk reaction guys; advanced apologies)

Seeing a girl that's minding her own business, wearing an ipod and sunglasses (which is the global universal language for "please fuck off") while she's jogging in an oversized t-shirt, gathering with all your low life friends while you're supposed to be working your job, and hooting and hollering and making lewd suggestions at her. Better yet, do it right before her exams.

Yeah, thanks for that, assholes.

There's been a conversation on VMD lately about the appropriateness of a school sending out a memo because apparently a LOT of girls (I wouldn't know since I never go to class) were getting regularly sexually harassed by construction workers on campus, complained, and the school is implementing a policy where grabbing your crotch and yelling at women when they walk from their dorms to the anatomy lab is considered to be unacceptable. Go fig, right? And go school!

I got my own taste of this, when stressed out for studying finals, I went on a run yesterday off my normal route because one closer to my home just opened up, and it's a shortcut to Lance Aux Epines, which is a nice place to jog where there are lots of people around.

Somehow, my easily-misdirected butt ended up in Mont Tout, and en route, got yelled at by no fewer than 20 guys at separate construction sites, who really seemed to thrive on the fact that they were intimidating me (couldn't go back the way I came, since it would involve passing the FIRST group of jackasses) while I was maintaining an "eyes forward and down, music cranked high enough to cause sensoryneural hearing loss" policy.

So I *finally* found my way back to the Maurice Bishop highway (that Texaco station has never looked so sweet), went back past home, and went my NORMAL way which has given me few to no problems, so I could sit out on a point, with the school way off to my left and the sunset off to my right, (which is a scene out of a postcard) and had a good cry because I wished I could get the hell out of here and never come back.

Fun, right? And yes, my bad for going off in an area where I apparently shouldn't have been, but didn't know I shouldn't be, and being somewhat lost. Hopefully no tourists ever venture that way, because they'd never come back.

Well, back to studying. That little experience proved an even stronger incentive to get done and get out than the "professor might kick my ass if I get a question wrong" thing. At least he's probably man enough to do it by himself.

Fortunately, this is not all or most of the men here, nor all construction workers, since the ones in front of my apartments seemed more concerned with helping me through so I wouldn't stab myself on rebar while they were paving. But when guys are obnoxious to girls, they tend to be in packs, which REALLY sucks because there's little you can do about it, it's intimidating, and is something that even obnoxious kids are supposed to have grown out of by the age of 14, probably because they realize that no one will ever willingly have sex with them so long as they continue that activity. Honestly... anyone here ever met their wives, girlfriends, or one night stands by standing in protective flocks with five of your friends while all of you scream? Anyone? No?