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!

Gila Monster Spit

So I started studying again tonight after essentially taking a two week bender minus the OSCE and the BSCE2, which are two exams that matter but don't matter but the first one matters more but is still Clinical Skills but the second one is 7 hours and makes you feel like a complete moron that has wasted the last two years, so blah.

But tonight I finally broke down and dug into the antidiabetes lectures for pharm, since that class requires three times the study of pathophys while being half the units because words I'm unfamiliar with (like thiazolidinediones, and no, I didn't make that one up) go straight in one ear and out the other.

But what did stick, and will probably be the *only* thing that sticks from pharm before I'm forced to cram it all back in for the USMLE, is that there's a diabetes drug made from the salivary gland of Gila monsters, which is one of the most random things I can imagine other than that whole "don't freeze your polar bear meat" from parasit.

It also leaves a number of questions... such as... what on earth was the scientist smoking when he decided to try that one out? How many other lizards got screened. Did he go straight to lizards or was there a whole move up the phylogenetic tree before he honed in on that *specific lizard*.

Also... if I get bitten by a Gila monster, and I'm diabetic, will I be half-okay?

Also... this kind of makes a weird conservation argument. Never drive anything to extinction that might treat a disease with some improbable part of its anatomy. Next up... wombat gonads cure struma ovarii. You heard it here first.

Oh yeah, those test things and the whole birthday thing...

Pathophys, despite woefully understudying it this time around, turned out well. That nice busty curve helps a lot.

Pharm would be discouraging in studying twice as hard for this exam as I did for the last one and only boosting my grade by four points until I realized that they threw out 15 questions on the last exam, so I actually boosted my grade by 19 points... that makes me feel better at night.

OSCE: No results, and I suck at reading chest X-rays that don't have anything glaringly obviously wrong with them. I'm also bad at reporting EKGs when the diagnosis seems to be "Patient's heart exploded". "Oh good, ST elevation in 6 leads, ST depression in two leads, one lead is inexplicably missing from this read out, dicrotic R waves, spiking T waves, sawtooth P waves... I mean, did this guy's thorax crack open and an alien spewed out of there? WTF? And 10 minutes to read it and report it."

This is when the more practical types ask me what I'd do when I'm a real doctor, and this is when I even MORE practically answer "panic and page the attending".

The OSCE was well run though, I have to admit. The patients were also super nice. You get feedback from them after 7 minutes (during which I ran out of time on... oh, all of them), and while the clinical tutors were more "Um, you completely neglected to do X" (appropriately), the patients were like "I would feel very comfortable with you as my doctor, and I really felt like you empathized with what I was telling you" etc, so wahoo to fake patients.

Actually, most of the fake patients (and real ones) we've gotten since first term have been really cool. The OSCE chick that was doing rotator cuff syndrome actually locked her muscles when you hit a certain point on the rotation, such that I could feel it tense, so she's not only kind, but a decent actor.

We also had a really good actor last term that had aches and pains related to her husband's recent death, and she was recalling the story well enough, that it half choked me up.

Prior, as mentioned, was the BSCE2. Whoda thought the Carnitine transporter was so important? Not me! I have *no* idea how I did on that one. I needed a 52 to pass, and don't really need to pass, so the fact that I was actually pushing to know the answers rather than bailing after half an hour out of 8 is a testament to just how anal retentive I am. Huzzah.

So we had the whole "drag ishie out to Stuart's Wednesday night as the clock hits midnight on when her birthday starts" that I mentioned (and loved) and the wrestling ON my birthday that still has my arms covered in bruises.

Friday was my birthday at Prickly Bay and it was absolutely spectacular. All hail the Barbie Cake!



Christine found the candle at IGA and built the rest of the cake around it to create me an absolute Anti-Ishie cake that was not only delicious in taste but delicious in irony. A bunch of people showed at Prickly Bay, we had pizza, the band came on and they were great, I have awesome friends, and I got to dance in the rain. Dave's coming to visit me in the US next term, which is my (very awesome) birthday poster, and Krash made me a big poster that she got a bunch of people in the BSFCR class to sign, so it's all been good. People have still been wishing me a happy birthday a week later, which is highly cool, and I've been getting well wishes from my Annex Peeps rolling in, so I feel very and completely loved.

Then it was Banana's, then, I believe, a night swim at the beach, because I don't learn. And plus night time shark jokes never get old.

Next morning was the Sauteurs hash! Woot! And total mudhash it was, and more cuts and bruises to add to my wrestling injuries. I've been wanting to go to Sauteurs forever, and I finally got to see that beautiful beach. Hung out with Grace and Dem for it and managed to score some cheap and great BBQ chicken, nutmeg ice cream, and beer before booking it back onto the bus... for the Unity Ball, which I was needed for pouring wine and champagne, which I pictured as occurring behind some sort of a bar with a shelf behind me. Ha.

I got home, climbed into the shower with my clothes on (again) to avoid carnage, and quickly realized I would not be able to wear a skirt because my legs and arms were torn up, so I figured, nice long sleeved shirt and slacks, no worries, just working.

Whoa. Not only was everyone dressed up like senior prom, but everyone was getting drunk and fast. While there were a ton of nice people who were giving me no problem, and Grace was dropping me homemade gingerbread over the tops of people's heads like she was feeding a fish, there were also a ton of people YELLING that we're too slow, that we're out of the wrong wines, that we generally suck, one great guy grabbing me and squawking "Don't you wish your boyfriend was a freak like me!!!" approximately 6 feet away from my *actual* boyfriend, and then barring that, they just ran into the back to grab our dwindling wine bottles.

Oh, and someone threw a beer bottle down the stairs, and the bar areas were so soaked in alcohol it was hard to walk. I dunno, I wasn't up for the mood of it and was underdressed, so I felt the majority feeling irritated, a little embarrassed, and toward the end where it started turning ugly, like I wanted to chew my arm off to get out of there. But I saw some of my friends and they all looked great.

So it's *definitely* studying time. Or sleeping time, as the case may be. Night!

Ambivalence

in the flesh.

This term has me on an emotional roller coaster that's hard to adequately express because my mood towards it is changing so rapidly as are my approaches to attempt to stave off a bad attitude.

While my nature is generally sarcastic and cynical (as is anyone who read over a hundred issues of the Babysitter's Club as a child), my overall attitude is one I try to generally be happy (being sarcastic makes me happy), try not to let little things get to me beyond the surface irritation, thus I enjoy making fun of things without being too hard-hit by them, with a few notable exceptions that are pretty dramatically splashed onto this blog.

I've also let myself get cases of the deep-blue-funks which made the overall decently-run second term a complete misery for me while I enjoyed the "rabid monkeys made my schedule" fourth term largely by avoiding anything that wasn't mandatory and keeping chipper that this would be the hardest term in basic sciences and I was enjoying most of the material.

Flash forward to my current state of affairs where I am desperately seeking a positive attitude so that I do not waste my last couple months on this tropical island wallowing around feeling sorry for myself. This is difficult because there are a number of negative factors that are making the term a bit of a hell, while not allowing me to sink too deeply because there are a bunch of goods, and the goods are frequently rather spectacular goods, which just gives me that whole unstable bipolar feeling that I never know if I'm going to cry or dance around.

This is all being exacerbated by my having an absolutely *galloping* case of senioritis, thus I don't feel like doing anything, go for long periods of doing absolutely nothing but procrastinating, then followed by marathon study sessions, all the while kind of resenting that they're making me do this whole med school thing when I'm supposed to be relaxing on the beach, doing hashes, going scuba diving, playing guitar, seeing monkeys, island hopping, and all the other impossible goals I hoped to get in before leaving for good. Like it's third term or something.

Oh, to get onto the good... I've been chronicling this little battle with the pathophys department for a while, which was constituting a lot of the "bad". Long story short: chancellor letter, huge and surprising response, big open forum where we got listened to by all the department heads and the deans, some initial changes made that were promising, and continue to look promising, but cautious optimism.

This took a slight down-swing with hearing the reports to the fourth termers, though their 5/6th might be worse than ours, in that they were told a couple of times that they'd need to bring back all their books and notes (unrealistic and sucktastic, but at least announced), but that the current term (ours) had a bunch of complaints because no one told us we would have to think critically so they should be prepared for that for the next term.

So that was kind of pissy. "Well, we can't tell the 5/6th termers this because they'd completely destroy us in a debate over it by citing our lack of organization and preparation while citing the past pathology course as requiring integration and the BSCE1 as being a test of our recall from other classes, but we just wanted to let you fourthies know that unlike your special-ed upperclassmen, who have made it to the near-end of their second year of medical school without being able to arrive at any conclusion that wasn't drawn out in capital letters on something shiny for them, you're actually going to have to use your brains next term, so be prepared."

BUT

Lest I withhold credit where credit is due, they are reinstituting a curve based on the actual class averages and standard deviations, per an announcement on Angel! Woo hoo!!!! And though NONE of the renal Sonic Foundry lectures have been posted, the notes for heme, GI and renal were on time, and they changed up the way the BSFCR was run, as they indicated they would while getting the objectives up in advance, as they also said they would, so while I have no idea how this is going to play out on the upcoming exam, I'm going to go ahead and give the administration credit for following through on this one, and make it generally known that if you do feel like your education is taking an inexcusable hit, politely express that, and you never know what can happen. While I'm not wildly appreciative of the announcement to fourth term, it was made to fourth term, and so long as they're fixing the problems that are plaguing this term and are aware of the problem, I'm going to go ahead and give them a pass on saying anything they like. I mean, I'm going to completely make fun of it, but that's all part of the "not a deep hurt" part of above.

In Clinical Skills, they continue to demonstrate that though there is a ton of disorganization, you generally don't have to go any higher than the department heads (or sometimes the tutors) to get a response, and the disorganization seems regretted and inadvertent. And as I've said all along, attitude goes a *long* way with me. If you point out a problem and someones says "I'm really sorry for the inconvenience and we're working to do _________ to fix it.", I will readily let a whole lot of stuff go. Today, during our morning session, one of the students in my group pointed out that our patient write up grades hadn't been posted yet, which is important so we know what we can fix for the next ones, and they were up by this afternoon, and the reception of the request was apologetic and active rather than defensive. Pretty impressive.

The department is also fairly accommodating to students in situations that are directly the student's fault (totally guilty), and I haven't really seen any of their instructors or directors be overtly nasty, gripey, or unprofessional. Usually they're extremely friendly, helpful, and eager to add on stuff that'll benefit us. I'm not giving a pass on the organization, because it is a problem, but knowing you can actually talk to them and they'll respond nicely is honestly one of the high points of my experience with the school. I'm not sure what that says about me or the school, but there you go.

Pharm. Pharm is the definition of ambivalence for me, as I've mentioned before because I maintain that it is well run, but I hate this class probably more than any other and it is taking up a huge portion of my time, which means I'm spending a huge amount of time focusing on a subject that is difficult, heavy, high yield, and mindnumbing. So it's a lot like being forced to spend 2-8 hours of your day eating liver. It's good for you; it may be made well by champion chefs and butchers, but it's still going to ruin your day.

Clinic. The clinic is driving me nuts. 90 minutes minimum to renew prescriptions, only to have it dragged on for a week or two weeks or whatever the on-duty feels like giving me and having the pharmacy frequently out of what I need, while the mail from home isn't reliably making it. Not a great use of time. Also an added stress I don't need hitting right at the end.

Social... another big source of ambivalence. I'm finding more and more that I like a huge number of the students at this school, and have established close friendships with a number of them and I'm deeply enjoying being around them. My boyfriend is being completely awesome, per usual, and since we're both incarcerated in the study hall a lot, it means I get to spend more time with him.

BUT... (there's always a but)... I am becoming more and more acutely aware that though I'm extremely excited to get done with basic sciences and begin the next stage of my life, I am also going to lose the close contact with my fellow convicts and we're all going to get scattered to the wind. Many of us will likely end up at the same hospitals, and there's internet connections, but it's not the same, and I'm going to miss that. Some of my closest friendships have been made on this island, and I'm going to be abandoning that to have a close relationship with my step 1 videos. I'm going to miss running into a ton of people I know and like on campus, at the beach, at the market, and the whole closeness of the campus. Yes, this also creates a fishbowl here, but it can be a pretty comforting one, and soon, it's going to be back to the scary real world, having lost the ability to hold conversations with people that aren't Caribbean medical students. "Hey, how are you doing? So... who's running for president? Did you catch the last season of that show that ended three years ago? Don't you hate it when you're trying to watch an episode of House, but the channel feed keeps switching between the Colorado and New York feed so you can't tell when it's on? It's about as reliable as the egg supply at IGA. Wanna go get a Carib? How many EC do they go for at that bar on the corner? As long as they're not blasting soca, know what I mean? No?"

Also, there's the scenery. I love the scenery in the states too, don't get me wrong, but even after nearly two years, I frequently look around and am taken in by the surreality of essentially living in a Windows screensaver. Though I probably go to the beach and dive way less frequently than I did in California (and no, I didn't live near the beach), the fact that it is so close is something I'm always aware of.

So it's a whole weird thing. I'm having to do "next stage of life" things like register for the USMLE, which was always this huge looming someday off in the distance thing and now it's a 700$ charge on my credit card and I'm having to choose date periods and get photos made for my ID. I'm having to figure out what I'm doing for rotations, when I'm starting them, and how I'm handling the period in between rather than just continuing on the island, paying my rent. I'm dealing with what I'm going to do with all my stuff, people are touring my apartment, and it's a huge change.

I'm going to get to see my family again. I'm going to get to have seasons again. My clothes are going to last longer and can be varied. I'm going to get to have fast food and cheap meat and ethnic cuisine, and trips to the grocery store, and quick pick ups of anything I need as close as the local love/hate Walmart. I'll be able to drive. I won't need to book a boat or a plane to anywhere outside of an 11X22 mile radius.

So it's all... blah, mixed up inside me. And making it hard to study. As is the suddenly rescheduled meeting at 5 tonight.

To change gears abruptly (much like my moods at any given second), I guess I'll Sandblast-talk, since that's an actual event rather than some diary description of my overall feelings.

Since I wasn't behind in school enough, I chose to hit the last Sandblast for me (hopefully), which had a Halloween theme, making it particularly appealing because I love Autumn and Halloween, and they don't really do either here. I had to grab and orange AND black t-shirt since they not only had the whole Halloween thing going for them, but chose to mesh it with a Dark Knight Heath-Ledger-as-Joker pumpkin "Why so serious" motto that just upped the awesome. Well done, designers.

For a change, I actually got there close to when it opened rather than sleeping late and not getting there until they were half out of beer thing that I normally do. I also chose to maintain a steady state of alcohol in my bloodstream rather than gorging myself on it first thing, falling over, and being done for the evening by 5 PM. Muchhhh smarter. Makes for rougher mornings though.

I had promised Ashley a beer pong partner, so we first cruised the area a bit, grabbed our mugs, a well-made cocktail from the bar, hit the food tent and relaxed on the beach for a bit. Refilled a bit later on inexplicably pink beer. We attempted to figure this one out for a while, but it turns out, pink was supposed to be red for *blood* beer. While it ended up looking like we were drinking the run off from an eviscerated Care Bear, it's probably better off that there was not a sufficient amount of red food coloring to turn the beer *really* red or the clinic probably would have had a run on it the next morning the likes of which has never been seen.

So beer pong started up and we wandered over, and promptly watched a couple vet students run the table to a degree that it was surprising they were still standing.

To our credit, we got them down to the last cup to sudden death, and that is *quite* an accomplishment, but sadly, they got it in for the win. Much shame. Ran into Jay and Jordan, hung out with them for a while, and got a full thing of beer dumped over me by two guys who were "fighting or are they wrestling, I'm not sure, let's just move". Fortunately, you wear disposable clothes to Sandblast.

Ran into Grace and Dem and headed down to the Owl to watch the game. Good chicken wings there but unfortunately, only crab racing on Monday nights, which I still haven't seen. Some pool, some jeopardy, a good night swim, then home to preen for Bananas, which I ended up leaving with Grace and Dem at around 5 in the morning. Gods.

If this seems excessive, this is pretty much "just another Sandblast". One thing about medical school is that it destroys your sanity *and* your liver.

So now I'm paying the price and attempting to catch up pharm... which will leave me catching up renal in pathophys, which inexplicably puts me in the same place as everyone who either studied for the entirety of last weekend OR spent the entire weekend drinking. It's like the entire class procrastinates together and always seems the same number of lectures behind. See why I love these guys?

Geeze where do I begin?

I went from having really nothing to say but "camped at Taylor Hall; made doe-eyes at boyfriend; tried to find source of study for pathophys; periodically mimed the First Aid book eating my head. Highlighted every line of pulmonary physiology in the BRS Physio since it all seemed important. Thought I was doing well at studying pharm but totally wasn't. Watched Red Dwarf. Slept." to having a ton going on where I don't know where to start. As frequently seems to occur.

Midterms! Aiiiiieeeeeeeeeeee.... oh, was that ever an exercise in humility. Weirdly, the exam I had the most problem with at a philosophical level is the one I'm pretty sure I did the best on with all the added hoopla (not that it justifies anything), while I'm thinking I didn't do half as well in Clinical Skills as I thought (damn you, Hashimoto's thyroiditis!), and I have no idea what I got in pharm, but I'm kind of hoping it's in the double digits. Gods.

Taking the pharm exam made me realize two things:
1: I'm VERY bad at drugs. I knew this from biochem when I was going through my flashcards while my dad was visiting, and he was reading me off the answer for the mechanism of neomycin without looking at the card because I'd missed it so many times.
2: When I learn drugs, it's kind of like I have this new deck of playing cards in my head where each suite represents a drug class and I know what order they're in. Taking a pharm exam is kind of like taking that deck of cards and playing 52 card pickup. And I just look at the fluttering mess on the floor and go "Uh oh." So... new study approach for me, I think.

In the wake of midterms, I pretty much spent the rest of Friday in full on bender-mode, starting with George's party, featuring great company, great rum punch, great food, great pinata. Then the Beauty and the Geek party which had some really innovative costumes by my colleagues. Then Banana's, largely to steal Dem's french fries.

Then spent the rest of the weekend recovering from Friday by lounging on various beaches and making a two and a half week overdue trip to Spiceland Mall to buy food, since my on campus studies have caused me to subsist off food from Pearl's, which means I've hit my upper limit for intestinal parasites.

Saturday, La Sagesse was characteristically gorgeous and the weather went from looking like it was going to rain us out to being really nice. We had a wonderful lunch at the restaurant there, went for a long swim, and got eaten by ants on the beach. Oh, though word of advice since this applied to all of us, myself included... don't go out for a long night of drinking and reveling, get four to five hours of sleep and then jump into a cab for a lengthy ride along fast tight curves. Glurgh.

Sunday, initially dive planned, but still recovering, so lounged at Grand Anse. The beach was nice, but apparently the storm that missed us hit it, and the water was kind of eerie. There was a dead eel washed up on the beach which some brave girl, as everyone watched her in awe, picked it up by its rotting dead tail and hauled it over to the garbage can so people wouldn't have to deal with it. REALLY nice of her.

The seascape though, save for a couple flying gernards (woo hoo!) seemed oddly dead. The coral was pretty brown, and then Lori and I swam through a patch where there were bubbles on the surface and we couldn't see anything, but then started feeling itchy and then actively stingy and we were like "okay, time to go", so I have no idea what that was about and it's never happened before. I'm wondering if we swam through the remains of a boat propeller-hit jellyfish. I had some spots when we got out, but quickly faded, and drying off to a diminishing sun made it all worthwhile. As did not having to study.

Last night was Dark Knight night, since Lori and I seem to be the last people on earth who haven't seen it, so we made a night of it with Dave. Awww, RIP Heath Ledger. Much as I love Batman, I've always thought most of its villains weren't half as scary as Batman himself, but that is the kind of Joker that makes you want to sleep with the lights on. Sorry Jack Nicholson; you'll always have the Shining.

In the meantime, the surge of response to the whole pathophys thing has been awesome and you guys are absolutely fantastic!! It looks like we may get some changes too: Our note packet was printed and there for lecture (Yes, I went; stop the presses, though three buses passing me made it a thirty minutes late for first lecture thing), they seem to be shifting the setup of the Friday classes AND have already posted the objectives, they're having a meeting, and stuff's happening. Wahoo!

We just started the hematology unit which so far seems to be recycling path. Hematology is one of the nastiest parts of path due to having to be able to read a CBC in 75 seconds and pull a diagnosis out of it, but so far it's review, which is good, because eventually if I study myeloid derivations enough, it may stick in my head like the frigging female menstrual cycle finally did. You'd think, that being female, it would not take me FIVE SEPARATE medical school classes to learn when the progesterone rises, but I'm slow like that. Some stuff goes in once and stays there until I'm dead and other stuff that other people have gotten a year ago, when they're reviewing it in class, I'm going "dammit. Still don't know it." And I go back to my original source or the internet (Wiggers Diagram, I'm looking in your direction) and I redraw it, and I read all the parts of it out loud, and I see if I can redraw it from memory, and state all the parts, and feel secure, and know it on the exam, and promptly forget it entirely until it comes up again.

To backtrack a bit, I had my anesthesia rotation this morning, which I thought would be really boring (ewww, pulmonary phys), but was really interesting, particularly when first the Bovie died, and then the entire power shut off three times until the OR was running on the backup generator. The doctors were great, let us close in on a hernia operation, and showed us everything. They're also a very calm lot, moving effectively and deliberately, but not panicky as the anesthesia cart is screaming over its sudden power cut, the lights have gone out (hooray for windows), and the patient is open. Noooo problem. Continue putting hernia back in, no reason for alarm, sewn up, with awesome response to being put under.

They let us in pretty close without screwing up the sterile field, and were very willing and ready to answer our questions. So far all the docs have been like that, so I've been impressed, as I've mentioned, with the rotations, and find them to be a really cool experience that's giving us not only a taste of a lot of different areas of medicine, but also of the whole "medical experience in another country". Some stuff is utterly the same, while other stuff is mystifyingly different.

Got home from the selective to wash up since I knew I had a nice dinner after lecture, but found I had no water. I haven't found that this happens to me all that frequently, but when it does, it tends to hit at inconvenient times. Same with internet access. I'll have NO problems with internet access for weeks when I'm screwing around watching youtube videos while trying not to study, but the second I try to download some small group assignment that's due the next day? Total connection meltdown.

In other news, FANTASTIC dinner with Dave tonight where he was, per usual, being a perfect gentleman, and is gradually breaking me into Merlot, which is usually up with Cab on the "List of the only two wines I have trouble choking down", but I've been really enjoying it lately. What can I say; I'm a wino!

There was the play, then the work...

Easter Weekend, so Thursday and Saturday were my "enjoy the last fun you'll ever have" days, and now, with a week to go until my first path exam, the heat's on.

Saturday was Sandblast. Or more accurately, Sandblast, rejection of Karma for the Snooty Principle, Creole Shack, and Banana's. Hardcore, eh?

Sandblast was fun, though I got there late because I'm too lazy to even party on time.





But there were a ton of people all having fun, so that was great. Lost at a little beer pong, took some pictures, crawled into the opening to the security dog cages so I could get a picture on my hands and knees barking... You know, the usual stuff...



BUNCH of cruise ships out too. I was thinking of the poor people on board and how they probably just wanted to relax on a relatively secluded beach, only to stumble into the middle of Spring Break at a medical school they probably didn't even know was here.

Waves were crazy high too, almost up to the edge of the ladies, and a friend said there was a bunch of coral and rock debris thrown up the next day. Wonder what was up with the tides.

There was an afterparty at Club Karma, but I was with my friend Jay. We'd thought there was no dress code that night because everyone said there wasn't, but instead this one was very pointedly looked at him, said he couldn't go in and that by "Dressing down", it meant he didn't have to wear a nice shirt like the guy was wearing (wasn't that nice, dude), but no long shorts or whatever, and THEN there were student ID issues, and altogether, way too much "We're a New York nightclub" image-obsessed feeling, so wasn't worth it, and was glad to save the 20 bucks.

It's some people's thing, but I'm rarely dressed up anywhere, so I don't like clubs where the goal is to "be seen". So not a fan of Karma, I'm afraid. I'll take Victory Bar anyday.

Headed down to Creole Shack instead, because I wanted to stay on the Carenage for a while, since I really like it. Great place! I've been meaning to go there for about a year, but the people were really nice, they had some karaoke going on and the food was great and cheap. We started to walk back, and saw a youth basketball game going on where everyone was having a lot of fun and getting rowdy, and cheering their teams. We got invested, and even though they lost, GO BLACK AND YELLOW! Southern Pros!!

Afterparty, as always, at Banana's, but they'd converted their new awesome game room back into the "Club Banana's", which sucked because I really wanted to play darts. Ahh well. Still found good company and a good time, and everyone was out.



But now, path and micro own me for the foreseeable future. On the plus side, I like the classes. On the minus side, there's SO much studying. I know it sounds like all I do is go out, but honestly, the rest of the time it's just STUDY. Study for group, do the quizzes, do my slide presentations, do my concept maps, do the lectures, review the slides, review the staining techniques, check the book, go running with the Goljan lectures so that no time is wasted. Exhausting!!!

Let's just hope it pays off.

Life Lesson No. 14

Never say "surprise me" to a bartender.

Also, never say "I want a LOTTA vodka and a LITTLE Ting to guy doin' it for charity because you will get would you ask for.

In other news, I think I'm gonna die...,

On! On!

And in other news, third term grades are in, and my half-lidded truancy and steady diet of Old El Paso tortilla pizzas has paid off! Woo hoo! I suspect fourth term will not be so kind.

I've done a hash! And not the illegal kind! A hash is a sort of fun-walk/jog/run/hike that here seems to be somewhere between 4-6 miles long, and involves a lot of yelling (Are you? On! On!), and a lot of beer. I have an official "Certificate of Loss of Virginity", which I'm tempted to frame as a substitute for my degree to instill that extra vote of confidence in my patients.



For those quick to judge, all this was AFTER hiking pretty strenuous trails for five miles and sprinting through a gamut of non-virgin hashers coating us in beer. This also meant I smelled like a three-day dead hobo. Perfect for getting back onto the bus with others who were similarly qualified, or as the certificate put it "exhausted, sweaty, and smelling like a ram goat".

Oddly enough, this certificate was awarded by the head of the library, who turns out to be incredibly awesome AND a seasoned hasher. I am humbled.

Not knowing there was a bus directly to the hash, I decided to make things more difficult for myself by attempting to "meet up" on the Carenage down in St. George's, not finding anyone, wandering around sufficiently to further my face burn (by the way, THREE cruise ships in port? Good lord!), and finally just saying "Balthazar?" to people at the bus terminal until someone stuffed me, and I do mean STUFFED me, into a van.

Probably made it in record time though. The reggae bus driver was burning off the tires on the turns.

But got there without a problem in time to watch the SGU buses pull up. Sigh. Incidentally, *they're* free.

I'm completely new to the hash, though I've read up on it a bit. Here's the website for the Grenada Hash House Harriers.

If I could recommend nothing else, if you have one of those camelback integrated water systems, by all means take it. If you're slow, take a flashlight. They do them at 4 PM, I believe to intensify the penalty for lollygagging by having you blunder through the rainforest at night looking desperately for shredded bits of paper to mark the trail. Fortunately, I was hiking towards the front! Which is a first!

The hash:



The beginning, with us having no idea what's about to be in store for us.



Suggestions for not dying (standing on a 2X4 on a barrel not being one of them) as given by our excellent hare (the hounds chase the trail the "hare" leaves), the one, the only, River Rat!

And speaking of rivers:



We were periodically crossing the Balthazar River, usually only mid-thigh deep (though I got to clean my running shoes), but in a couple people's cases, mid-head. Having fifty some-odd people try and hurry across slippery rocks in a river is pretty interesting.





These seem pretty (and were) until you realize how much slippery uphill river crossing, mud grappling you have to do to GET to these views, and it was far prettier in person.



If only they'd had rotis... the hash would have ended right there...



The hashers seemed to be the event of the month to some local kids, one of whom was amusing himself by making an *incredibly* convincing impression of a doberman growling and then jumping out with an equally convincing bark. I'm not even afraid of dogs, and this circa 6 year old made me jump about five feet.

These kids said "take our picture!" "Take our picture!"

If you ever want to be ambassador to the children of another country, own a digital camera. That is hours of entertainment right there, and netted me the following picture when I was in the Philippines:



And the more shots you take, the better they get, since the more they see the pictures of them, the rowdier they get. I'm sure their parents just love it.

Anyway,



Mmmm... chocolate...

Some pictures from the hash aren't present because the trail got nasty (and wet) enough that my camera was half-safely tucked into a plastic bag tucked into my bathing suit top, and I was *still* worried about falling in the river and destroying it.

So we made it to the sweet sweet end of the trail, where beer and goodies are typically served at whichever bar they've crashed. We did our initiation, climbed into the SGU bus reeking of beer, Grenada, and our natural juices, and someone said "we want ice cream".

For the most part, SGU buses, even special events ones, have a certain hypothetical course that they tend to follow without side trips. Reggae buses, not so much. This was not one of those buses. So we were off to St. George's, to the strangest little local ice cream/bar we could find. Went in, ordered beer and ice cream (mmm nutmeg), and somehow, someone whipped out from behind the counter these Rossi wine jugs that someone had made rum in, and had filled said rum with things like nutmeg, sticks, bay leaves, and... we'll just get to the "and" in a minute.

Being already a bit inebriated from the beer and with a free one in hand, it struck me that it would be a good idea to try a shot from the nutmeg infused one figuring I like nutmeg and I like rum, and the best rum is usually served out of a bulk wine jug at a bar where even the locals won't touch the stuff you're drinking, so what the hell, right?

OMG, I think I now know what antifreeze tastes like. Though it's supposed to be sweet. I used to think tequila and whiskey were bad but this was a complex feast of bad in the mouth that had staying power. Gods.

Then, the bartender/executioner whips out a jug that has the bottom full of Grenadian centipedes, or as Jay calls them "deathipedes" because they tend to be between 6 and 14 inches long, and yes, they're venomous. In said jug, there is a brownish pond scum looking murky liquid that smells a bit like scotch tape and gasoline.



Oh, you thought I was kidding?

Something to know about me is that as an idiot, a former anthropology major, someone who worked at a science museum, and someone who's been camping a lot, there is virtually nothing I won't eat or drink, and even that barrier is usually broken by alcohol (I can tell you exactly what squid eyes, mealworms, earwax flavored jelly bellies, and wood moths taste like, for instance).

This was not one of those times. I'm not TOUCHING that stuff. In fact, after a shot of the nutmeg moonshine and a shot of the bay leaf moonshine, I considered myself lucky to still have my eyesight.

Two of the manly men in our party were not similarly dissuaded, and swung back two shots of this vile muck to the sounds of gasps and groans as camera flashes (and regret) exploded in their faces.

Then came the process of getting one of the local patrons to try the stuff who had not witnessed the initial shot, so in a friendly game of "America vs Grenada", the only way the two guys could convince the third guy to take a shot of the worm venom was to do *another* shot of it with him.

The fact that the last time I saw these guys, they were still alive (though had inexplicably bought four baby chicks off a woman making oildown, or as they said "chickens, the ultimate impulse buy") is a testament to their characters. It's similarly impressive that the guy they were pitted against ran outside immediately after, I believe, to throw up. I had a similar urge just by watching the process.

Somehow, in a lack of timely oildown, we all ended up at the wine bar with 8-10 people and four chickens fifteen minutes before they stopped serving food(poor wine bar), to put panini on top of, in one guy's case, about five beers, two shots of regular rotgut moonshine, two shots of centipede moonshine, and a piece of uncooked callaloo (don't do that either, by the way) he'd eaten during the hash. Glurgh.

And then I "hashed" home. The bus was taking a while.

I think it's a testament to *my* character that I was able to drag my aching butt out of bed today to go to La Sagesse and sunset point. You know you've had a rough day when going to the beach the next day takes initiative, but it was well worth it:







And now, having lived it up for an entire weekend where I had absolutely *no* responsibilities, Monday starts the beginning of fourth term, thus the end of life as I know it. Ciao!

Gin fizz and sangria

Gotta keep the "trying something new" trend going. It generally involves EtOH since the wine bar is my favorite local hangout spot since the only think you usually get to try at parties are Carib because that's the only thing you have a chance of hell of getting in a timely fashion.

Plus, when you're not studying and there's not much to do, you don't need to drive because you have these little babies:



When full up with partygoers (though didn't go out to Old Skool tonight), they look like so:



Caribbean buses (including reggae buses) have pull down seats in the middle. This is nice to putting tons of people on a bus, particularly when you're on the way to a test and need the room, plus answers the question of "when bus crashes happen in other countries, how does it kill *that* many people?", but can not be so nice when you're trying to get back from the store and each person has a different stop, since it requires half emptying the bus every time someone needs to get up. But you get used to butts in face and bags in side.

The night was supposed to have the school-supplied entertainment/Behavioral Science video "Requiem for a Dream" (gods, I love third term), which had the distinction of being the only class movie this term I've made any effort to see because I've actually wanted to see that movie for about five years.

Unfortunately the AV people never showed, which not only left a lot of people wandering around Bell Hall wondering what happened, but sent me on a quest to the PD lab to see if we had the wrong venue, where the SO's were preparing for their showing of Ratatouille (presumably not associated with a class curriculum), which the AV people also didn't show for. No heroin date movies for the grown-ups, no problem, but no French-cuisine oriented rats for the kiddies? Harsh.

So that left an early night at the wine bar, which is always fun, though probably drinking sangria while watching Requiem for a Dream would be a better story. At least in my head.

But still, I've had a nice, if lazy week. Our final exam of third term is next Friday, so I suppose it's time to get my butt in gear for that.

ADIOS!!!!!!!!!

Well, in a couple hours, but the howling outside is awakening, to say the least... The "Shhhhs" are already starting down the hall. My my, sound does carry through the dorms, as does the voice of the person who got the requisite role of 'bad guy' by asking people to keep it down. Heh heh.

I'm leaving for Venezuela today, which means I'll see you lovely people on Easter Sunday, just in time to uncelebrate Hugo Chavez's impromptu ban on alcohol over most of Easter weekend and hope the bartenders take pity on me. If not, hey, it's all good, right? And I can get trashed Sunday night here.

So, I won the on campus waitlist housing lottery. Heh. I actually got notice on the day (Wednesday) that I signed the lease with my new apartment for next term. I think I'll be happier there anyway, quite frankly. More space, better sitting area, and honestly, the noise in the halls every night does start to wear, as does having to share any part of my domicile with other human beings.

Well, back to bed to bed, but happy token spring holiday to you all and Wahoo!!! Margarita!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bad Blogger; No Cookie!

Yeah yeah, it's been a few days since I blogged, for a number of reasons... drunkenness, laziness, stress...ness... it's a word now, and not simply because of my traditional overuse of ellipses. I'm in therapy for it. It's not going well.

So where was I? Playing rugby. Great. That was Thursday, so we'll flip through Friday.

On Friday, I grumbled as I awoke just in time to be quite late to my new clinical skills weekly lab starting at 8:30 in the morning, with a bonus histo lab right after since they're changing schedules around, thus ensuring I'll miss EVERYTHING.

At the time, I was quite pissed off by losing what had been one of my last free mornings. In retrospect, I discovered that this would earn me my Tuesdays and Mondays, which, considering their proximity to the weekend, is MUCH better, so wahoo school.

Still, the beginning of patient interviews didn't thrill me because to date, with the exception of nailing a differential diagnosis of an ectopic pregnancy, I've found clinical skills to be the bane of my existence, filling hours with things that turn out to be common sense or flat wrong.

But an exception!!! The patient interview lab was not only entertaining, but, wait for it, potentially useful!!! We talked for a bit about taking a patient history, which fortunately I got as an EMT since I missed part of it, but then an actress came in and we all took turns interviewing her for her ailment. I felt good about diagnosing her with gallbladder disease (mentally) the second she said "greasy food", but my group seems to consist of smart cookies because they got it too.

It's funny to go back and review interviewing though, and since our group leader was good, making sure to avoid leading questions, particularly when covering personal or difficult questions: "do you drink? Well how much? Is it like once a day or once a week? Like a glass?" No. No. No.

The actress said we did a good job and made her feel comfortable too, and our group was quite supportive of each other. A couple of my friends said they did theirs and people in their groups were really critical, but either we're all awesome or all kind, and I'm happy either way.

But you want to hear about Sandblast, don't you? Ahhh Sandblast.

Sandblast is the drunken fervor that follows midterms, I believe for both med and vet students. Everyone is welcome, and best yet, it's on Grand Anse Beach.

In advance, I'd had a light plan of drinking sufficiently (which I've been good about not doing lately) to have people say "Whoa, is she all right?" Mission accomplished! A preface to all of this is: Kids, don't try this at home.

Sandblast, not so coincidentally, fell on St. Paddy's Day. Wahoo! So Ishie had her first green beer, which makes me sad to say, but I only started tolerating beer recently, so there you go.

I headed out there a little late (around 2 PM), because, I'm embarrassed to say, I was up really late the night before... STUDYING. Oh, the shame.

Got to Sandblast and after getting my cup on a string (everyone needs a cup on a string), immediately stripped down to bathing suit in an ATTEMPT to give the illusion that I live in the Caribbean and have seen the sun in recent months. Once you paid for the wristband (which I had in advance), the alcohol was "free", and I took full advantage of that fact. Hooked up with some friends (not like that) and just generally was drunk and rowdy. We also found a business professor named Carlos who was very cool, so we dragged him around with us for a while, took pictures, and then he eventually wandered off, probably to talk to people that had a blood alcohol level that put them somewhere near coherent.

Good music; good drinks; good friends; and inexplicably, good food, which is a rare commodity unless you either make the food yourself or buy the cheese fries at Glovers. I even had a hamburger! And it didn't suck! Or make me sick! They were also passing out full Magnum bars which made for a happy Ishie.

Then it was playing in the water with David, including a swim out to Shadowfax to net a free Carib which one of the crew (Shadowfax is a pretty boat that does cruises around the island) opened and passed down to us as other students (who had money inexplicably on their persons, despite being quite a distance off the beach) climbed aboard. I didn't see the boat leave, and I'm not sure where it left to or if we got those students back, but hopefully they had fun. We had plenty of fun playing "swim back to shore with open bottle of Carib while sipping off the top and NOT getting ocean in it".

There were also guys with boats pulling either banana boats or innertubes for money. David, Emily Kate and I opted for the latter and climbed aboard our respective rubber vessels, drunkenly barreling along at full speed (again, kids don't try this at home). Unfortunately, the tubes hit the wake of a different boat and I did a full flip upside-down, still clinging onto the handles on the innertube. David also took a dive, though Emily Kate miraculously kept her innertube upright.

The horsecollar flotation device that had been carefully attached to me came straight off so the floaty part was on the surface and I was under it with the strap tangled around my neck. Gee, thank heavens for safety measures. Without that lifejacket, saving myself would have been MUCH easier. Fortunately, I swim well. Even more fortunately, I swim well when a bit intoxicated, which is a key thing to know.

Hitting the water actually hurt quite a bit at that speed, and I jacked my knee up to a degree that it still smarts, though no swelling, but it kept me out of rugby Sunday. Dammit! When I hit the water, I opened my eyes in time to realize my sunglasses were lost to the briny deep and that I was still underwater with a not great idea of where "up" was. I did a brief mental check of my systems to make sure no serious injuries, oriented myself, detangled the stupid strap around my neck, and broke surface, apparently a little later than the boat captain would have liked because I came up to "Sweetie???? Sweetie???? You all right, sweetie???" Heh. My freediving abilities must be getting better. I didn't even feel particularly desperate for air. But then it was back rocketing along at full speed with hearty "woos!" by all, which, by the way, absolutely rocks, even if you do substantially increase your chances of drowning.

Back to drinking and dancing and doing so in front of my first foam cannon. Those are fun!!! Sandblast is a serious party... the kind of party I didn't know actually existed but thought they staged on MTV to make me feel like a loser in high school, but they're real!!!! You just need a tropical beach to make them work.

Following all this of course came the inevitable result of drinking all day, thus I decided to take a much deserved nap in the sand, causing concerned amusement on behalf of my friends, and alarm on behalf of the locals who kept trying to get me up and squeeze oranges in my mouth. I'm not sure what oranges are supposed to do for drunken idiots, but they tasted good. So good in fact that as David and Nina got me to my feet, I managed to clasp an orange in my hand, which I apparently didn't drop until I got back to my dorm room, confusing the heck out of me when I found it under my desk in the morning... "What the??? I haven't even bought oranges!!! Wait a minute..."

David thankfully got my bag, ensuring that I have my camera, wallet, and histo book for posterity (Yes, I brought a book to Sandblast, but don't judge me; it's not like I read it), though my sandals and towel (along with sunglasses) have been sacrificed to Bacchus.

Apparently I was staggery enough that Sej, concerned, gave some advice on drinking water and taking Tylenol and made sure I was all right, thus fulfilling my "Is she okay?" prophecy from earlier. Bwa ha!

NOT a fun bus ride. One thing about me is that I will NOT vomit 'where I am' if you will, or in inappropriate places. Outside is fine; a toilet is fine. Otherwise, no way. It upsets me. I mind less when other people do it as I'm used to it, but I have a mental block against doing it myself, largely because it means either drunkenly trying to clean up a mess myself or having to look someone in the eye later that had to do it for me. So that bus ride was "Don't throw up. Don't throw up. Don't throw up."

So I kept my dignity, only throwing up once I was on the lawn of the Superdorms, like any self-respecting future doctor would do.

Nina and David patiently helped me out and then got me up to the dorm and into bed to pour some Gatorade down my throat while my roommate tried to scrape sand out of my eyes to what was apparently hilarious drunken commentary from me.

I felt a little better later so we went out for some of those magnificent cheese fries from Glover's. Ahhhh mercy. By this point unfortunately, I started not feeling great and my knee hurt so to bed, to awaken somewhat confused because my sheets were FULL of sand, as was the floor... as were my ears... and my hair... blech. Note to self: do NOT lie down on the beach when drunk (or sober, probably). you will get sand places you didn't think sand could get. And I'm still regularly sweeping the floor.

Sunday I actually got studying done, but still wasn't feeling great and was a bit moody, not to mention bummed by skipping rugby because my knee hurt... no problem, I figure hangover, right?

So MONDAY, I wake up, STILL feeling kind of yucky, but mostly REALLY moody, like "I want to go home; this sucks" kind of moody. Hmmm... hangovers do not last that long, particularly when one has vomited up a good portion of her alcohol and isn't that prone to hangovers anyway.

Temperature? 101. Damn. Not a hangover.

But I'm feeling better now, thus have been alternating between being a lazy bum while watching Futurama, and being a productive bum while studying biochem.

But remember kids, drugs are bad, mmmkay? To those ready to chide me for my drunken debauchery, just remember, it can't be bad.. it's school sponsored! I wonder if those drug seminar people will make us retake that "are you an alcoholic" test now. I'm guessing after a couple months of medical school, those class averages would be WAY up!

Deep Breaths

All right... better now.

Yesterday, I was in a bad place, mentally, and it was a bad day to blog, or apparently, do much of anything.

My ire remains to a degree, even though some of the 'offenders' are good people and friends of mine, but there is a level of courtesy that was just fully disregarded, and I want to insincerely thank all those people for fucking up my Saturday so thoroughly that I didn't get a damn thing done. I'm going to have to become a defensive alcoholic because had I gone out Friday night and gotten hammered, I'd have staggered home at 2 am, fallen into sweet ethanol induced slumber and NOTHING would have gotten me up, thus I'd have spent the first few hours of Saturday with a bit of a headache and otherwise had a productive day.

Instead, I was pretty much up all night, thus screwing Saturday for me, since the powder puff football game in the quad also had music (and alcohol; thanks again, school) thus couldn't sleep then, and every time I started trying to focus on studying, I started crying. Wahoo.

To warn incoming students or first term students who haven't gotten to this point, yesterday commemorated my first celebratory "screw this; I want to go home" moments. No matter how much you love it here (and I actually do), I suspect most people will reach this point, probably many times, during their stay because you just reach a place where you feel negative, down, and you want things back the way they were, even if the way they were sucked (like being stuck in a dead end, temporary, cubicle enclosed technical writing hell, though I liked the other aspects of my life). I think this is more med school than Caribbean, but the far from home aspect (unless you're from here, of course), can make things worse. And different stimuli sparks it. I have a very high tolerance for slow service and such, but I've seen that drive some people to a similar state where things snowball.

So be advised. But I'm back to liking it here. Sleep deprivation combined with anger does strange things to me.

On the downside, my father's been in the hospital recently, and I've been worried about him, not due at ALL to the fact that he's been smoking since Sir Walter Raleigh discovered tobacco in the States (right, history people?) (just kidding, dad!!), and at first they thought it was TB (which meant I was going to have to get tested) and then it wasn't, etc etc, but now it turns out, some form of necrotic pneumonia so he's been getting to cough up ACTUAL pieces of his lung. Yummy. But he got out of the hospital, so that's really cool, and I chewed his ear for a while after he got out, because after a stint in the hospital, I find that people love hearing all about *my* problems being stuck in a tropical paradise to pursue a medical degree but baby didn't get enough sleep, causing her to be a mite manic depressive.

Ah well.

I'd also like to thank these bitches for drastically improving my day yesterday. You see, I couldn't focus on studying AT ALL because I was so tired, and couldn't sleep, so I ended up reading this website called "Smart bitches who love trashy novels" in which they make so much fun of horrid romance novel covers in such a creative way that they had me shaking with non manic laughter every time I gave up the books and went to their website. So high level recommendations for that website, particularly for those of you who are so stressed you can't see straight. And no, you don't have to like romance novels. To me, it's funnier if you don't (which I don't).

Yesterday evening, I secured some surprisingly good chicken tenders and spicy fries from Glover's and ran into Lori, Emma, and Emma's sister (whose name I don't remember, but she's awesome) who were busy trying to secure a pizza from Evil Glover's Lady whose efforts to reduce them to stone with her... uh... stony glare were fortunately unsuccessful. They helped pick up my spirits with some pick up basketball in which we all discovered that we suck painfully at it. Being women, this luckily did NOT lead to being teased off the court because the boys make allowances for women to be bad at sports. Hooray for gender typing!

After my chat with dad, I crashed and burned, earplugs in, and woke up after about 11 hours. Ahhh, bliss. Yes, it put me a bit late in the day, but sweet Random Chance, did I ever need it. So I've been getting my biochem study on like mad today, and damned if I am not so down with glycolysis and the TCA cycle now (yes, I went BACK to review it, lest any first termers remind me that being down with the TCA cycle puts me a week and a half behind). Thanks again, Lippincott. I'm planning on wet lab tonight, since my knowledge of the viscera could use some work.

I passed!!!! Wahoo!!!!!

Okay, in case anyone's been wondering where I've been, I dived into my books and haven't resurfaced in some time due to a little thing called the "First Unified Quiz". Which makes me feel all responsible and such. The Unified is not a very significant portion of your grade. I think between 3 and 5 percent generally. The thing about Unifieds is that they tell you HOW you've been studying. If you crash and burn on them, essentially that's a wake up call that says "Hey buddy, you need to reevaluate your study methods and start over" and I SO didn't want that. Basically, I was terrified that if I failed biochem, it would mean NO social life for Ishie because I've been dedicating SO much time to it over the weeks. Histo... er... well, it's my lowest unit class. I'm sure I glanced at some of the lectures!

I hadn't left the dorm since Friday night, really, and prior to that was pretty study oriented. On Saturday, it was ALL DAY. I was literally in my dorm room from wake until sleep with the exception of doing my laundry which involved walking 15 feet down the hall. Gah.

Sunday, I studied at the library, requiring a change of scenery, and on the way back, ran into the bazaar for the people running clinical rotations. I feel so WANTED!!! Well, not by California; I saw none of my peeps, but apparently, I'm catnip to New York and England.

I'm not the primary target since I'm only a first termer, but even in the midst of studying, it's not a bad idea to make connections early. These people will own you in your third and fourth year so good impressions are important as are "ins" with people.

So then it was back to the dorm for even MORE studying. Gah. Then, with a brief interruption for some high school shit I'm not sure why I was a part of, it was MORE studying, followed by sleep (I'm getting too darned old to pull study-all nighters), followed by another FOUR HOURS of morning study in the library, punctuated by that realization that I don't know anything! Eek!

As a great omen, it began POURING at about 1:35, just as we were making our way to the lecture halls for seating at 1:45. They check ids at the door and the wind here falls horizontally, and I was in the back of the line, so let me tell you how much fun *that* was.

By the time I got into Bell Hall, I was DRIPPING wet. I had to dry my hands and arms so I could take the test. Water was running down my face. What's also notable is that Bell Hall is wonderfully air conditioned. What wasn't so wonderful is that now, for the first time since I've been in the Caribbean, I have been COLD. Shivering freezing COLD, as one is when you drench them from tip to tails and put them under an air conditioner for two hours.

But anyway... did all the official test stuff with my heart leaping in my throat, opened the test booklet andddddddd.....

Hmm... not so bad. I know most of this stuff!

So I went through and felt pretty good, but it's a multiple choice test with 25 questions in each subject (Histology, Developmental Anatomy {composed of gross anatomy and embryology for a whopping 8 units of your grade}, and BIOCHEMISTRY, my white whale), which means even if you think you did well, one blip in subject matter, and you've got a 60. I prefer more choices on a test.

The results! I knew I hadn't done all that well in Histo because I'd skipped a bunch of middle guy (The one that woefully is NOT Dr. Paparo) lectures, and then hadn't read them through enough because... uh... it wasn't biochemistry.

72 in Histology. Which is passing!!
88 in Anatomy. Which is .5 points from an A!
80 in Biochem. I gotta B in biochem! I gotta B in biochem! Happy day!!!!!

Apparently the trick in biochem is to not attend half the lectures and dedicate 80 percent (a coincidence?) of your study time to it. Who knew?

Naturally, the culmination of our first test meant.... excuse for a party! I got out of the test at 3:40, and ran into some friends, so we made the mutual decision of going to Pearl's/Glover's to grab beers. Hey, as long as it's after 5 somewhere, right? Apparently, we weren't the sole people failing our clinical skills seminar, because we ran into, probably half the class, most of whom were already well on their way to intoxication. I felt so behind. David bought me a couple of beers, and I introduced him to Piton. Ah, Piton...

We all made plans to meet at Banana's for dinner, did so, and enjoyed some painfully bad service, but good food. Ah, Caribbean life. Joie didn't come though. Come with us next time, Joie!

So we walked back from Banana's (as a group this time!) and I had EVERY intention of going to my dorm, maybe putting in a LEETLE bit of study time, and then going to bed, since I had a lab this morning...

Toga parties are fun... right? I've now been to my first toga party, though I regrettably wasn't wearing a toga.

Sej, on the other hand, takes toga parties VERY seriously and had someone run into town to get her special toga and rope material, which combined with her bitchin' sandals to make one hell of an outfit. I felt so unhip in my cargo pants, despite the fact that the models dancing in the Gap commercials assured me that they were Crazy! Sexy! Cool!

We grabbed an airport shuttle (shrug) to Stuart's, which is a beautiful resort bar, but damn, bring your own alcohol! I was leaning over the counter for FORTY-FIVE MINUTES, TRYING to get a vodka lime! Yeesh, I got half sober! Fortunately that was amended, so did a little dancing. Togas do nice things for men, by the way, and my eyes were popping out my head at the number of eligible Caesers. Rowl.

The bad thing about Stuart's (Stewart's?) is since they're attached to a resort, they kick you out at 1, so it was back to Banana's with Lane and Mel (Sej disappeared, which should have been difficult to do in a flaming red toga, but...), with Ryan in tow, an MPH student we adopted at the student store since he'd just gotten off the plane about an hour before meeting him. Welcome to SGU, Ryan! After securing more beer, Ryan escorted me home for the stretch from Banana's. Awww.

And so now I'm waking up and getting ready for class. But I passed, right!? Wahoo! As the title says.

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.