AA Strikes Again!

That's American Airlines, not Alcoholics Anonymous... not until 4th term, at least.

I thought Liat was going to get the distinct pleasure of losing my luggage this time, but American Airlines once again stole the honor by leaving my bag in Miami due to a tight turnover caused by their first leg being late. They're at 5/5! They are the contenders!

On the plus side, since I'm trying to look for silver linings this year and stop being *quite* as whiny all the damn time (which will last around five minutes), it does mean that I'm getting to sit in Royal Castle in the Trinidad airport with some chicken and wi fi surfing rather than trying to drag my bag through the unairconditioned part of the airport and then wrassling it past Grenadian customs and into a taxi with my unreasonable amount of carry-on (since I anticipated this problem and packed everything I couldn't reasonably never see again into it). Instead, AA is helpfully shipping it to the airport later when they get around to it. Ahhhh, competence.

And Liat-willing, I'll be tucking into my apartment tonight and end the airport run for a while, which is always fantastic, and I haven't gotten any grief so far at the Trinidad airport (not that I did last time), and this particularly corner of it is air conditioned, so all is well. All is well. All is well.

Snow!!!!!!

No, not in Grenada, though that would be something.

I'm home! To a place I hadn't been before. But it still feels like home. I flew from Grenada to Trinidad (Liat) to JFK (Caribbean Airlines) to Boston (American Eagle).

Unfortunately, I spoke too soon and marveled that I'd made it to Boston with no delays or mishaps on behalf of the airlines, just in time for American (why are you after me AGAIN, American?) to lose my bag, and better, claim they never had it since apparently claiming it and dragging it through customs in both Trinidad and New York was just a figment of my imagination. Though I got my passport stamped by both, and the homeland security guy in NYC said "welcome home" while doing it, which was nice. He also didn't strip search me, which was even nicer.

Miraculously, they found my bag in New York (no doubt with their ticket agent), after having a couple new pieces chewed out of a particularly apathetic baggage claim girl, and shipped it to me in Vermont, where I am now. Phew. Traveling sucks. Though the journey was surprisingly good. Liat managed to screw about half the people in the airport by claiming their original flight time was at 6 am, canceling that flight and merging it with mine (at 7:20), which was fine for me, but not fine for their original connections. D'oh. Sorry guys. Enjoy Trinidad. Nice people.

Caribbean Airlines is awesome. Not to be confused with CaribStar, Caribbean Airlines is the official airline of Trinidad, has excellent service, allegedly has a 90% on time rate (my flight was on-time/early), tell you everything that's going on right down to geography and temperature, got my luggage through and in a crowning moment, when I dozed for about ten minutes, I started awake to realize a blanket had been placed over me. Dayam. Caribbean Airlines... so attentive, we'll freaking tuck you in. Unfortunately, they fly like four places. From Trinidad. I'm thinking it's worth the swim. They're looking for investors though, so if you have a boatload of money, please invest in them to reward them for not sucking? I want these guys to take over the airlines for the *world*.

So no problems with them, and had a pretty good treat considering the horror stories I've heard about Liat and my own joyous experiences with Air Jamaica (they lose your luggage for five days, but at least they don't claim not to have it) and American Airlines, who is rapidly going from my favorite airline to my least favorite airline because they're not even screwing up in ways that are easy to predict. Liat will screw with your flight times (so you schedule long layovers) and AJ will lose your luggage (so you pack all your essentials in your carryon). That's what they do. AA is dabbling in everything.

Anyway, arrived in Boston to be met by my mom, who was carrying seventeen different layers of clothes, since the warmest things I could get together were jeans, vented running shoes, and a hoodie. I was a little concerned about trying to run that ensemble through the New York layover, but it turned out not to be bad at all. I forgot that the monorail between terminals had indoor stations so spent the majority of my time browsing shops in my shiny new "Trinidad and Tobago" t-shirt, since I'd sweated through the old one in, you guessed it, Trinidad and Tobago. Nothing like trying to dress appropriately for a 60 degree temperature change.

But when I got to Vermont, there was already two feet of snow on the ground and it started snowing almost instantly when I got here. WINTER!!! I have to put on hat, gloves, jacket, long pants, and scarf just to walk the dog (my baby!), and I love all of it. Everything looks Christmasy, everyone is nice and they're playing real holiday music. Ahhhhhh... Not to mention I can watch Comedy Central again.

Ouch.

First exam: Physio.

Having heard this was a notoriously difficult exam, I devoted a pretty disproportionate amount of my study time to this so that I would feel REALLY confident when I took the test, understand the concepts, be able to extrapolate, and all that.

Yeah... that exam was so bloody difficult, it made the MCAT seem like an "Is he that into you?" Teen Beat magazine quizlet. And the weird thing is that except for the like 20 minutes of yesterday I spent reviewing heart sounds and EKGs (you know you're in trouble when calculating the mean electrical axis of the heart is the EASY part of the exam), I have no idea how I could have studied differently or better for it. The seven HOURS of yesterday I spent dedicated to understanding all the relationships didn't seem to help, but it's also not like the quiz was full of minutia. I don't even know how to categorize it. 17th order type questions that required a form of logic I'm not sure I have... can you just let me be a doctor yet? I promise I won't be a heart doctor!

What also didn't help was that the test was exhausting. Halfway into it I wanted to be done, and not like "Gee, I wish I weren't taking a test" kind of done, but a "My brain is overloaded and I'm getting to the point where I don't even CARE what the answers are anymore." For every question, I ended up feeling like I knew about 85% of what the question was talking about, and understood what it was, and what it related to, but when it came to that final "So then, what color are the bus driver's eyes?" endgame, that bridging connection just wasn't there. So I dunno. I would have preferred the Histo approach with "Hmmm... had time to cover that lecture. Know the answers. Hmm... did not even LOOK at that lecture once, thus am completely justified and comfortable with getting every one of those questions wrong... because I didn't earn it."

This one, it was more like going to work for a couple weeks, doing your best, and then they just decide not to give you a paycheck this time around. You earned it, but too bad. Unfortunately, neither medical school, nor likely the USMLEs, let you by on what you EARNED. Instead, it's on what you KNOW. Whether that takes 20 minutes or 20 years.

What's weird is that tests with 150 questions, while grueling, were much less so. Know it or don't. Next question. Not "I know most of this, so let me spend 10 minutes working out three perfectly logical conclusions to this problem, and have all three of them be answer choices." I also kept having those moments Dr. Curry joked about with us last term where you read the question with the answers covered, feel confident in an answer, and then realize that the "right" answer isn't there. Awesome.

And two more exams to go! On the plus side, if I don't fail physio completely (as in the final), I don't have to LOOK at cardiovascular again until the USMLE. Hallelujah.

Results are in!

And I did well! And that should mean that I stop complaining and feel all chided, because aw shucks, I did well, and that forgives the two weeks of my life lost to this class, right?

WRONG! If anything, doing well now gives me license to say what I like because it can't be construed as sour grapes because I failed CPH or something.

I will modify this by saying again that the guy forced to organize the course at the last minute and a couple of the revolving profs really did try to present the information, but the course was tossed together in 2 seconds with less finesse than an Oxygen reality television show, and it showed; oh man did it ever show.

With the exception of about half the instructors in CPH, I'm noticing more in second term that when I think about *problems* with SGU, or when I think "Gah! Caribbean medical school!", in the end, it is very rarely the actual caliber of the instruction or the quality of the facilities that has me feeling the No-Go-American-School-blues. It's the administrative runaround last minute never ending busy work, with the creation of this class being the perfect example. The real, planned courses, while they may have a dud professor here or there, or an unfair test question here or there, from what I've seen from feedback from American medical schools, the quality of education here is pretty damn good.

And really, that's what's important since last minute administration woes (aka, my first week back in Grenada) are incredibly annoying, scream-inducing, and sometimes tear-inducing, but so long as I get a good quality of education, that's the most important thing.

But back to bitching about this class, because holy shit, ya'all. And I'm from California. It takes a LOT to get me to say "ya'll/ya'all".

Administrative: Clinical Skills got disappeared like a mob stoolie despite it being on the master schedule and despite us doing a unit (or half unit, I can never remember) worth of work last term, that often encroached on things like study time, sleep time, or oh yeah, histology lab in another stunning moment of administrative planning, and though I got a nasty email last term about missing a couple patient interviews (which granted, are useful), Saint Paparo (Histo head) just gave us all 100% attendance points and tried to work it so that people could be in other labs so there wasn't a completely unnecessary conflict between labs.

Brilliant. So all for nothing though, because goodbye Clinical Skills! So we get the modified lecture schedule with the new class, CPH on it, with a professor introducing its inception (oh, and we had scheduled classes for clinical skills before any announcements, so we found out we didn't have to come back for class or workshops because a student went to the clinical skills office to find out what was going on with whether there was a lecture) with obvious irritation at having to do this with no warning.

Apparently those two week classes, like again, parasitology and genetics, actually take time and energy to prepare. Who knew? Oh wait... anyone. We swiped some of the MPH professors along with some rotating (grad students?) which causes me to now feel a degree of overwhelming sympathy for the MPH students that I never felt before.

Bye bye clinical skills point with your P/F-ness. Hello, suddenly graded class that's inexplicably worth as much as parasitology and genetics, thus if you do fail it, you get to explain to a residency board someday why you can pass hard classes but love smokers and hate minorities so much you can't pull off community health.

But you know all this.

About half the lectures were absolute racist, one-sided, unscientific garbage. The clinical case was a joke that featured a character so stereotypical that if she'd appeared in a movie, people would be howling that the director was a racist, and she was supposed to be indicative of the problems with addressing racial issues in the MEDICAL profession, yet they picked a case where the medical response had absolutely nothing to do with the prologue or the epilogue and was solely based on the patient's panoply of awful choices. Somehow this was relevant yet "Guy keeps eating ho hos despite warning until you have to cut his foot off" is not an issue about the horrors of the medical profession's discrimination against heavy people. Shrug.

And the smoking... I know now TWO people who had quit smoking who started smoking AGAIN during this class because it was hashed on so damn much that it revved up their cravings. So it's official... Studying community health gives you cancer. I can make up statistics and everything. (BTW, though I hate smoking, despite not wanting to be told what I SHOULD vote for concerning people's freedom to hurt themselves with impunity, a bunch of those smoking statistics did not add up and I suspect are not well supported, plus if half the people who smoke are going to die eventually from tobacco use, all that tells me is that you have a pretty good life expectancy if you smoke since something else didn't get you first)

The exam had to give back 4 questions, which seems like not that many (biochem gave back 5), until you realize the exam had 40 questions. Yup, 10 percent of the exam unfit... and these were not histology throwback points with "Well, you should have known it, but you all didn't do well on this question and I'm incredibly awesome" points... no, these were "excuse me, but this question doesn't actually have a correct answer" points because you screwed the math on two of the most important measuring criteria for population screening, which actually is an incredibly relevant concept. And why do I know that? Because I learned it in parasitology. Parasitology is actually the best community health education you'll ever get.

So I challenged 4 questions, which I suppose was nice that I knew the material well enough to know that they weren't right. The guy next to me challenged 6; a friend challenged 5, and there had been a couple I'd considered challenging but didn't want to raise my hand again for another slip of paper.

Speaking of skewed math, the syllabus had us required to bring a calculator to the final exam... which we subsequently were not allowed to take in, thus sparking a "and next time leave them" (also cell phones, which I think some people were trying to use for calculators)... which I would have if I hadn't been told to bring them in the first place?

So yeah, that's the last verbose bitch on CPH I'll post, but if anyone's wondering why the unnatural level of anger, it's sort of like... you know when you pay to see a movie so bad that you no longer want your money back, but you want that two hours of your life back (*cough* WICKER MAN *cough*)? This was a two week long Wicker Man... except Nicholas Cage has never screamed at me for an hour about smoking... and I'm pretty sure if he did, I'd be allowed to hit him in the face, which is discouraged here.

Gee-tar!

Si, toco la guitarra.

I left my Takamine Jasmine guitar in the Caribbean for two reasons; one because of American Eagle's horrific luggage restrictions (70 lbs is IT), which caused numerous students to wind up leaving the overweight limits of their belongings on the counter at American Airlines only to have it later thrown away; and two, because with what various baggage apes have already done to my hard case, I figured it was only a matter of time before they smashed it, and my guitar, into splinters.

So the Jasmine sits in storage, destrung, and hopefully to survive so that I can play it in August.

But this left me the promise of a summer sans guitar, which was unacceptable, and since I got the Jasmine over 10 years ago, and while it has impressive sound quality for a very beginning guitar, it's still a very beginning guitar.

Dad and I buzzed over to Greensboro to the nearest Guitar Center and grabbed an upgraded Takamine, and who the hell would have thought I could get a guitar with a solid cedar top for under 300 bucks? And I managed to ambivalent my way (yeah, it's all right; not bad sound quality as my heart is racing with love for this instrument) down to 350 for guitar, hard case, silk/steel strings, and 9V batteries (for my tuner) and that includes the tax. Booyah.

Ah, how I love my guitar... and then it was dinner at Outback. REAL BEEF!!!! The return of the "I got beef that DOESN'T poison me" dance. For some reason, a good deal of the Caribbean beef is the relative consistency of pate, which can't be right, despite the fact that I know for a fact they have cows because I have seen them by the side of the road, and in Lance aux Epines, Dave and I nearly got run over by them.

I've still been having some trouble sleeping. I swear, it's like medical school has traumatized me in some way. I have trouble getting to sleep, trouble sleeping through the night, and in that state of susceptibility between sleep and waking, manage to convince myself of things like "Shit, I have to study the perineum and learn it well in the next week." Upon waking? "No I don't... I'm done with anatomy. I don't have to study the perineum until I'm prepping for the USMLEs, brain."

And last night it was something about learning or teaching biochem while living on a big grounded ship in Grenada. Why? Who knows...

So this isn't too restful, as you might imagine, which is why I'm writing this approximately 50 minutes after awakening at 2 PM. Sigh.

But I'll tackle it. I apparently still just need some wind down, and what better way to get than then playing guitar.

American Airlines sent me an email promising me 10K frequent flier miles for the inconvenience they put me through, though they were only referring to the delay in Grenada and not the delay in San Juan, the two breakfast vouchers (the second of which I couldn't even use) and having to potentially PAY for a pillow and blanket, not to mention having to argue over whether I'd have to be charged for their incompetence, so I'm probably going to still write them a little love note expressing my satisfaction.

What's funny is that on Thursday, I'm flying up to New Hampshire to hang out with my mom, a fact that I *did not even consider* when buying my guitar. Damn that 70 lb weight requirement! So, I looked up the Southwest airlines website to see what kind of finagling I was going to have to do...

None. I can check THREE pieces of luggage without paying anything, for a grand total of 150 lbs. Southwest... commonly known as America's most ghetto airline... allows you over TWICE the luggage allowance that American Eagle's commuters give you. Make a note of it. Now, while I can't fly Southwest to Grenada, I sure as HELL can fly it on the commuter flights around the US, which I certainly will from now on, frequent flier miles or no.

Dear American Airlines...

Please let me see my family again.

I swear, these people aren't going to let me to see my father unless I leave two million under the phone booth at the corner of Lincoln and Maine.

Except there aren't any phone booths anymore, so I suppose I have to leave it under the hobo with a cell phone at the corner of Lincoln and Maine. Where are Lincoln and Maine? Besides "dead" and "New England".

I'm a little loopy from sleep deprivation (who me?). I didn't sleep the night before the flight figuring I'd grab a nappy nap from Grenada to San Juan, go out an enjoy the old town for the 6 hour layover I had (past tense), and then sleep the rest of the way to Miami, then Raleigh. No problem, right?

First, the flight was overbooked. This is particularly funny since the flight consisted either entirely or nearly entirely of students and faculty, so when they were like "Hey, we'll pay for your accommodations in paradise!", you could TASTE the bitterness of the "screw you" vibe that arose from all of us.

But that turned out to be moot, because though I got to the airport at five in the morning with my flight out at 7:20, around the latter time they announced "whoops, broken plane".

Fine. I have a six and a half hour layover and you can get planes from Trinidad, Barbados, or San Juan. Whatevs.

"Whoops. Flight canceled." Apparently, they didn't have a battery and either Liat wouldn't jump them or they couldn't find jumper cables big enough.

Now... as you can probably tell from the above, I don't know much about airplane mechanics, but shouldn't spare airplane batteries be the sort of thing you keep around airports? And if not, isn't San Juan only 2 hours away and you can send a replacement?

No... so we hung out at the airport... in the cafeteria, using our GENEROUS 18 EC voucher to buy rehydrated eggs, and inexplicably, chicken wings for breakfast, as I watched Fight Club, Jesse tried to sleep on the floor and a number of students played cards or chain smoked outside.

Translation? We're all tired and wanna go home. Fix the plane or get us a boat.

Also, to "gold card members". Fortunately this didn't happen to me or I'd be in a Grenadian prison right now, but when you have a huge line of students who've been bumped, instead of going to your own agent, jumping in front of all of them and responding to a protest by wagging your gold card DIRECTLY in their faces runs you the serious risk of spitting up pieces of said gold card after it is shoved forcibly into your nether regions by an angry mob. You may be a gold card member, but we're brass knuckles members. BACK OF THE LINE! When they have a separate ticket agent for the illuminati, I have no issue with you, but don't butt in front of everyone because you assume some uber status and if you do, do so by pulling aside someone who works there *quietly*.

And the idiot turned out to be in line for the wrong airline since she was trying to rebook to Barbados. That's Liat, stupid. And they don't have gold cards, so I'm going to wait anxiously as you try to butt in front of a bunch of angry Trinis because you're an entitlement bitch. Enjoy that.

They called us all down around 11, at which point, having already been called down with high hopes only to receive a breakfast vouchers, there were whispering threats of violence among the disenfranchised students (myself included) about what was going to happen if we all got called back for a lunch voucher.

Fortunately, this was not to be... but everyone missed their flights... even I did... 6.5 hour layover... couldn't make it.

They said I might have a chance of getting to Charlotte if I could do a fast turn around in Miami, but would book me for the night in Hartford, Connecticut, which is like Raleigh, North Carolina except for the part where it's a thousand miles north and in another state.

This flight to Charlotte *might* have worked if the now fixed plane... (chewing gum and duct tape?) left at 2, like the said it would. It left at three. This caused a whole lot of students to miss their NEWLY ARRANGED flights which meant they got to start over in San Juan after having to uncheck all our bags and drag them through customs.

I would have missed my flight even to Connecticut except THAT flight was ALSO late... by two hours, meaning I didn't get in until midnight, didn't get to the hotel until midnight-thirty and was due back at the airport at 5:30 am.

Oh that was a restful night's sleep guys; thank you. And sleep on the plane to Connecticut? Oh no... completely parched only to have the call light go unattended for so long that I finally just walked back and got a class of water myself... asked for a pillow only to be informed there are no pillows on their flights (terror risk? the airline pillows and Spiceland Mall?) and she said she'd find me a blanket and disappeared forever, which is a difficult task when you're in a micro metal aluminum dildo of death at 40 thousand feet, but what do I know?

So I suppose I could have eaten, which American Airlines would have been MORE than happy to provide me for a fee. No meals or snacks on the four hour flight, but they were generous enough to offer sandwiches for five bucks or M&Ms for 3 (!!!!!).

TEMPTING as that offer was (not), I refrained because at that stage, I'd have rather given money to "Mothers Against Feeding Orphans" than them.

This morning, upon blearily checking into the airport, the woman informed me that I would have to pay a 25$ overlimit requirement on my 69 lb luggage, and I laughed in her face. Since my bags had been checked through to Raleigh YESTERDAY with no extra fees and no requirements other than the customs transfer to Puerto Rico, I'm not particularly inclined to give you bastards MORE money for being incompetent.

Moral of the story? Ishie did NOT pay that $25 dollars. Damn right. Oh, and it's pronounced "Gre-nay-da", lady. I was not in Spain.

For clarity, I usually fly airlines like Southwest that are so ghetto they keep their planes up on blocks, and I have NEVER had this degree of difficulty with anything. They WILL get you there. They may get you there with the wing on fire, but you'll frigging get there.

American? Well, you'll get to spend four hours in a lovely hotel.

Now, let's see if I can FINALLY make it to Raleigh without involving stops in Europe.