Tales of a Brown-Haired Freak

Defunct

2009-05-29T12:36:20Z

The livejournal is dead. Long live the Blogger!

All the cool kids are doing it, so I will too. The story of my life continues...at http://brownhairedfreak.blogspot.com/

(but don't delete me from your friends list - I'll still be visiting to see what you're up to, and you'll still be able to get ahold of me from here if you need to. I just won't be updating this journal any more)

Renal II: Rise of the Nephron

2009-05-25T22:57:55Z

It's been 2 semesters since the kidney was last spotted and the students had finally begun to return to their lives. Sure, there were the memories - the sleepless nights and the tears when physiology seemed all to close and the morning too distant. But it was in the past now, and they were learning to move on, if not forget. They would never forget.

That, of course, it when it chose to strike. It had been waiting, patiently biding its time in the shadows, getting to know its enemies. That had been it's mistake last time, but it wouldn't make it again. Never coming close enough to be spotted, the kidney watched, and waited, and plotted. Now, the time was right.

With the students happy about defeating micro and their guards down in the wake of a week of short classes, the kidney knew the time had come to enact its revenge.

Stealthily, it infiltrated the path department and began to work its evil on the minds of the professors there, slowly bending their wills to its desires. When the department was fully subverted, it sent them out to find the students and defeat them, one by one.

It was only a matter of time.

exam week recap

2009-05-20T23:26:08Z

I suppose it's about time I mentioned exam week - I know you've all been breathlessly waiting to see how it went. Or something. How about I just tell you anyway?

Path was on monday and other that some technical difficulties during the slides and being late starting, it went as smoothly as things here ever do. For a test that's widely known as being THE hardest exam of basic sciences, it was...well, actually I didn't find it that bad. I felt like I knew all of the slides, even the ones that we hadn't directly seen before, and most of the questions seemed pretty straightforward. Sure, there were a bunch of cases where the patient was so non-typical that you pretty much had to throw out half of the symptoms they listed to come to a diagnosis before you could even think about answering the question, but that was expected and so didn't come as a great surprise. I finished my first run through with about an hour left and so managed to double check (and change! doh!) my answers afterward. A large number of people ended up finishing the exam right at the 3.5 hour wire, and of the people sitting closest to me, at least a few didn't finish at all - the rumors were definitely true about time being a factor on this one. Anyway, just finishing at all meant I did significantly better than the class average, and barring anything major I should manage to get my path A when all is said an done, which was my only real goal this term. Yay!

For some reason that I'm still not sure about, I was way more nervous about the CPD practical than any of the other exams. Me and J sent most of the day before practicing our stuff, but I'm not sure how much it helped - if neither of you know the proper way to do a test, does it really count as "practice?"

Anyway, my primary fear was of drawing eye (there's about 30 different things you have to check with eyes and the anatomy is kind of confusing), so I was pretty happy at getting the arterial system for my major exam (and lymph nodes and sinuses for my minors). Managed a decent showing with only a couple of hiccups and got out of there without totally humiliating myself, so I consider it a success.

On a different note - I suspect that the school gets our fake patients out of back allies or something - mine was pretty cool but E said that he ended up getting a guy with oral thrush, all of 3 teeth, and a mouth full of ulcers for his mouth exam. I'm all for empathy and helping others and stuff, but honestly - ew.

Friday afternoon was micro. What can I really say about it? It was my most hated class so far of basic sciences (yes, even more than immuno) - it's really disheartening to study for an exam when you know that what you're studying has only the vaguest resemblance to what will be on the exam. It's even worse when you have an inkling that the material would be really interesting in a different, better-taught context.

The exam itself was every bit as bad as I'd expected (Q: Some diseases are emerging, while others have been eradicated. What does this statement refer too? A: (a choice of a bunch of emerging diseases and smallpox). Um, what?) Luckily, my awesome midterm score combined with a 4 point curve and dropped grade boundaries placed my final grade comfortably high enough to declaim my victory over the forces of evil (aka the micro department). Now I can forget that the class ever existed, at least until January.

Monday was the CPD written. It was horrible, but now it's over. I don't want to talk about it any more.

And then we went to the beach, got sunburned, and went home to preread and get our slides done for Tuesday (and watch House), when our workload returned with a vengeance.

38 days to go!

Ah, memories.

2009-05-17T21:08:39Z

I'm currently in the process of transfering this blog to a blogger account (all the cool kinds are doing it!), but it's slow work (there's an automated thingie that's doing it for me at a rate of 20 or 30 posts/day but there's about 4 years worth of posts to make it through). Anyway, I've been checking up on the transfer periodically to see how it's going, reading about my undergrad and construction days. From the latter, I discovered this:

http://brownhairedfreak.blogspot.com/2006/11/things-i-learn-at-work.html

The funny thing is that I remember almost exactly what I was doing when I wrote that as well as the long work day that triggered the need to do so. And yes, my knees *were* killing me by the time I made it home.

a letter

2009-05-16T16:04:31Z

Dear Terms 1, 2 and 6,

Congratulations on successfully (or not so successfully) completing your semester! I wish you safe travels home and hope that, while you're enjoying being amongst your friends and family once again, you spare a thought or two for us 4th termers still stuck on this island, slaving our way through 6 more weeks of path, nutrition, and CPD.

Love,
R

PS - I hate you all.

Maybe this will help.

2009-05-12T23:15:22Z

In the hope of some of this actually sticking this time, I present to you R's exciting list of things I can't remember in micro, no matter how many times I go over my flashcards (distinguished from things I can't remember because I haven't had *time* to go over them yet):

-you can't diagnose Lyme disease from a CSF smear (why would you want to?)
-hepatitis C blocks apoptosis and interferon
-clue cells are pathognomonic for vaginitis/vaginosis/vagineesis (Yes, I made that last one up).
-campylobacteria are catalase positive and don't eat sugar
-Typhus has a Brill-Zinnser carrier state (whatever that means)
-TTP occurs in the elderly and HUS in children with EHEC. Antibiotics will kill them! (the people, that is. Not the EHEC's. Though they do kills those as well. That's why the people die. Uh, nevermind.)
-cholera has a phage-coded toxin
-rabies is diagnosed with dFA. (so is everything else. Except the things that aren't)
-herpes blocks IFN, CTL, and IgG.
-EEE, VEE, and WEE are different, even though they're pretty much the same. (I refuse to learn anything more about them, entirely on principle)

Exit micro, stage left

2009-05-08T17:26:38Z

And so ends the much lamented medical micro, going out, as it were, with a bang.

No, really - today we discussed microbes as terrorism weapons (more specifically, how hard it is to use them effectively).

Planning on filling a box with dynamite and anthrax and setting it off in the subway? Don't bother - the shock wave will kill the spores. Going to stand on top of a japanese high rise and spray anthrax spores out over the crowds in the middle of the afternoon for 4 hours? Also not a good idea - UV from the sun will destroy the spores long before they come into contact with people. I suppose if you wanted to avoid that possibility, you could rig the exhaust pipe of a car to spray anthrax as you drove around downtown tokyo for a few days. But that too, would be doomed to failure - it's almost impossible to aerosolize the spores finely enough so that they'd make it deep enough into the lungs to cause damage. (That was also the Aum Shinrikyo, better known for the tokyo subway sarin attacks.). I suppose we're lucky that, as a whole, the world's doomsday cults aren't too bright.

That's the good news. The bad news is that, if someone ever actually managed to engineer an effective biological attack to, oh say influence local elections, we're all pretty much doomed. History tells us (as well as various simulations) that were say, smallpox to be release into an american shopping mall, society as a whole is pretty much doomed. Economic and social collapse of the world as we know it. We'd be lucky if the government even realized what was happening, let alone found the perpetrators. And there's been other simulations done since, none of which have predicted a much better outcome.

Oh, and since doctors are most likely to be the first to deal with any infected people that turn up, we're going to be the first to die. Sorry!

Happy thoughts to end a not-so-happy course.

if you know what I mean.

2009-05-06T01:07:51Z

This is kind of how I feel right now:

turtles in a half shell...

2009-05-04T12:31:34Z

So I studied, and then I called the taxi driver to double check our 8:00 meet time to head out to see the turtles.

"Uh, yes - didn't I tell you? We're going at 10 instead." "No, we're not. 10 is too late. In that case, we can't go." "Okay, then. My cousin will take you up at 8, and I'll take the rest of the group at 10."

Score! But I'm ahead of myself. You see, it happened like this:

S's fiance is in town for 2 weeks. She wanted to see turtles. I wanted to see turtles. S didn't really care one was or the other, but was willing to come with. I called up taxi man, and he said he had another group of 9 going at 8 and that we could join them. All good, until the mysterious 7pm notice of departure change (it's a 2 hour drive to the beach where the leatherbacks nest, and a friend of our had one last week and said it was better to go early. That combined with the need to meet people at 11am to practice CPD stuff meant that there was no way in christian afterword that we were leaving at 10).

We ended up driving in a car with L, another well-known taxi driver, who regaled us with stories and general info about the island until we got to the beach. The very large, long beach. The very large, long, empty beach. Where were all the people/turtles?

We decided to hike to the other end of the beach where, low and behold, we found a small group consisting of marine biologist, marine biologist trainee, and 2 vet students doing a turtle selective. They seemed confused that we were there (no one had told them we were coming), but pretty cool about the whole thing and patiently spent the next half hour teaching us everything they knew about leatherback turtles (not much, seeing as how they're ridiculously endangered and spend most of their time in deep ocean).

Every half hour or so, the biologists hike to the other end of the beach, checking for turtles laying and if they find any, checking flipper tags. If the turtle picks a bad place to lay (too close to the tide, too much water in the hole, etc), they'll catch the eggs as they're laid and relocate the nest somewhere safer. They also take extreme care not to bother the turtles, so no lights, cameras, or walking into the leatherback's line of sight on pain of being sent away. All in all, it's a pretty civilized event other than the millions of blood sucking insects.

The process itself is fascinating - the turtle will come up on land and wander around for awhile before eventually choosing a spot. She'll then hunker down and push the sand around for while before using her back flippers to dig a hole that's surprisingly narrow and deep considering that she only has flippers to work with. They actually use them like spoons, scooping up the sand and chucking it a distance away, alternating flippers and occasionally resting. It's certainly a better hole than I could dig, at least.

Around 1 - 1:30ish, the other group of people finally arrived, chattering, flashing lights, and being generally irritating to the turtle (not to mention, us) we were watching at the time until the biologist went to tell them to stop, They were also a bit miffed at us for not going with them (apparently it ended up costing them a bit more, but that was hardly our fault) I think they were just cranky about getting there so late. Did I mention that it started to rain within 15 minutes of their arrival?

The rain was the end of it for us - satisfied with the adventure and not wanting to get soaked or listen to inane chatter any longer, we headed back to the car and spent the ride home learning about the rampaging cocaine use on the island.

study?

2009-05-02T16:07:53Z

studystudystudystudystudystudy food.
studystudystudystudystudystudy facebook.
studystudystudystudystudystudy post this.
studystudystudystudystudystudy walk.
studystudystudystudystudystudy read the news.

rinse and repeat x 30.

studystudystudystudystudystudy turtle watching!

who says you can't just drop everything and head up island in the middle of pre-exam week? It's laying season!

(I'd originally planned on going right after exams, but S's fiance is visiting this week and it seemed like a good distraction on a long weekend when there won't be too many other students there with us).

rebecabythesea @ 2009-04-30T08:12:00

2009-04-30T12:23:04Z

All is well. The surgeon said the surgey was textbook normal and my mom made it down to the wards with nothing unusual happening. Now, as long as she can avoid anything nosocomial, she'll be home tomorrow or saturday!

And, I've been promised copies of the pathologist's report. I'm hoping for pictures, but I'll be happy just to find out what exactly she's got. (She told me it was a 4cm tumor and that it hadn't spread and that it was probably due to years of smoking in her misspent youth, but I want specifics.)

I appear to be getting sick. At least I'm in good company - half the campus seems to be coughing and popping drugs. Why does this always happen right before exams? (don't answer - I already know about stress and crowding in the study halls and all. I'm just complaining).

rebecabythesea @ 2009-04-29T08:22:00

2009-04-29T12:29:15Z

My mom heads to the hospital today to have a kidney removed. It's common but still major surgery so I'm worried, but not excessively so. However, I've been consciously avoiding looking up anything at all about what the surgery involves or the specifics of her particular condition because this seems to be one of the cases where ignorance really is bliss (or at least, closer to bliss than the alternative). I'm just glad we haven't gotten to renal in path yet or I'd probably be a bit of a mess right now.

another day of micro presentations

2009-04-23T12:43:31Z

And again I'm reading articles. From this article, (it's about classism, but you might as well read it yourself - it's a hoot) this has got to be the funniest paragraph I've read in awhile (if for no other reason than that it pretty adequately describes some people here):

"Meanwhile, tacking starboard then port around Graydon Carter’s fresh, startled horror over the latest outrages of the Bush administration (and I will miss those) are soft-focus ads pimping what appear to be blond, pink-argyle-sweater-clad, Ralph Lauren–fraternity Hitler Youth who look 30 seconds away from clubbing me (a light-mocha-hued person) over the head with an oar, or perhaps with a Nautica-logo polo mallet, sunglasses by Fendi."

In completely unrelated news, it's generally a bad idea to snort coffee out your nose in the middle of a talk about HIV.

mid week woes.

2009-04-21T21:08:56Z

Midterms are three weeks away and I'm already having to bribe myself with candy to get myself to study. I'm exhausted and doubting my abilities and I want to go home because then I wouldn't have to learn my lymphomas anymore. They raised the price of peanut M&M's at the D store. We had a quiz on the weekend and we had a quiz today and we have a quiz next week and there's been no time to prepare for any of them.

But at least I have candy (even if it means that now I have to study).

Patient education

2009-04-19T15:14:30Z

Medical school is proof that improved patient education is not the answer to society's health problems. Think on it:

Medical students are, as a whole, probably the best educated people there are when it comes to healthy behaviors. Barely a week goes by where we don't have the key points of healthy behavior drilled into our already over-stuffed heads, and we get it already: the best thing that a human can possibly do for their body is exercise. And the worst thing is drink alcohol (combined with smoking is actually even worse, but you knew that too). Every single bodily system is affected one way or another by these two behaviors. So we sit through lecture after lecture, dutifully taking notes on how alcohol causes these cancers, and smoking causes these problems, and how exercise improves memory and mental health and attracts unicorns. And then we go and study for 6 or 8 hours while munching on high fat/high carb snacks, breaking only occasionally to go outside for a smoke. And on weekends, we all head to the bar to engage in a good round of binge drinking-induced catharsis.

Really, if this is how med students behave, should we really be surprised that regular people continue to do things that are bad for them?

(caveat - yes, lots of us get regular exercise, and most of us don't smoke/don't drink heavily. Med students are probably healthier than the average population. But my points still stand!)

Fridays just aren't what they used to be.

2009-04-17T13:23:52Z

The nice thing about having entire mornings devoted to micro group presentations is that it means we don't have to learn anything new before the weekend starts. This is especially appreciated this week, when we have several dozen leukemias and lymphomas with identical presentations to memorize, hepatitis A through G to figure out, and a CDP quiz on Monday.

The not so nice thing about having entire mornings devoted to micro group presentations is that we have to sit through entire mornings of micro presentations. The topics aren't so bad, but listening to person after person liberally embellishing their powerpoint with "ums", "uhs" and "hmmms" can get a bit grating after awhile. But it's not all bad - as a whole, we appear to have dropped the "likes" of our undergrad years.

Interesting developments on campus this week. Apparently a first-term student suffered an MI a couple of days ago. I wasn't there, but sources state that he was chugging Redbulls all day and complained about chest pains in Taylor sometime late at night. Adderol, Ritalin, and cocaine are also debated, but less enthusiastically out of presumed respect for his family. He went to the clinic, they sent him to the hospital, and that was the end of things.

And well, him.

(This may be a somewhat gabled account of what really happened - the rumor mill isn't usually very accurate about things like continuity).

First of all - it sucks. I feel terrible for his family, his friends, and even the random strangers in his class who don't know what happened. It's pretty scary - there was absolutely nothing that the hospital here could have done. Could an american hospital have helped him? I'm not sure, but I think so. But there's no cardiac unit here, no specialists, no expensive life-saving medicines, and no way to quickly get him somewhere where there are. I never really thought about it before, but we're kind of taking our lives in our hands by coming here.

Of course there's stories - the guy who badly broke his arm and flew home on a bottle of extra-strength advil an ace bandage because there was nothing the hospital could do other than amputate. And then there's T, who's been stuck there for 3 weeks with pneumonia and who finally got over the infection but is now having weird complications that they can't identify. She's finally getting out today, but only because the university is freaked out about the whole death thing and doesn't want to be liable - they're essentially making her go home before something bad happens.

But really - what are our options? Most students here are americans and barely insured - they have to deal with insurance companies to get ANYTHING done, and even then they have huge deductibles to pay first. Who can afford to pay at home when care here is essentially free? Canadians are a little better off but it's a much longer flight to get home, especially if it's an emergency - there isn't really any choice but to go to the local hospital. Personally, having seen how poorly supplied the hospital here is (bring your own TP, shampoo, blankets, clothes, and food if you want anything other than salt fish and green bananas three times a day. Need morphine? Here's a prescription - the pharmacy's up the road. How about a specific antibiotic? The closest clinic that carries it is half an hour away. What? You're bedridden? That's just too bad, then.) I think I'll risk 12 hours of airplane time. Or maybe I'll just head to miami and figure out the finances later. At least then I'll get to see Disney World when I'm better.

(unofficial) good news

2009-04-14T23:22:40Z

Well, the SGA/IEA/Powers That Be meeting ended all of 5 minutes ago, so naturally, 3/4 of our class has already heard the good news. We're not going to have a retest (not like that was ever really an option, but it's still good to hear). Instead, they're dropping the 10 contested questions from the exam, adding 5 more to each of the next to tests, and calling it even.

Yes, it really took them 2 weeks to decide that. 2 weeks of stress and uncertainty, solved by a 30 minute meeting, and spread by 5 minutes of instant messaging. Turns out the rumor mill really IS the only thing faster than light.

me=fail

2009-04-13T21:12:21Z

You know what sucks?

When it's dinner time on Monday and you're only now discovering that you did the wrong slides for path, and you still have half a week's worth of lecture material to review.

doh!

non-denominational long weekend potluck

2009-04-12T19:15:50Z

2 weeks later and still no news on the path scandal. Dammit, I just want my grade already! It's really interesting to see how the story has spread - I caught a ride to campus today with the school ambulance driver, and even he knew about it! Most fascinating to see is how the different terms see it - terms 1 and 2 seem to see the chick who went to admin as some sort of hero, full of integrity and sunshine and unicorns. Terms 4 and 6 (who know what path is like and know how much stuff (mostly useless) gets passed around for it) see her as a self-righteous tantrum-throwing hypocrite who only did it to "show them. Show them all." Reality is probably somewhere in the middle.

Yesterday J and I threw our biannual non-denominational potluck. Our landlord leant us his bbq and some tables and chairs, and (after some issues with getting the charcoal lit and accidently setting our trash can on fire), we cooked up a bunch of tuna kabobs and corn and fried up some mahimahi, and everyone else brought the sides. I ate enough to have me sincerely envying bulemics (and B - I want your mac n'cheese recipe. I'll bother you about it later), and then added some of E's most-absolutely-incredibly-amazing flan (though I want to call it creme brulee - is there a regional difference in the naming?) and A's ice cream on top. Thanks to everyone who came out (and J, for coming by after!) - and we'll see you at thanksgiving!

Of course, the rest of the day was a bust, so I got to catch up on my fiction while I digested. Today, I'm paying for that with a lot of path and mocro catching up to do, but it was worth it.

Post exam controversy

2009-04-08T20:14:48Z

So I did great on the micro exam, but I attribute that mostly to luck (on an exam where a fifth of the class failed, statistics say at least a few people are going to get A's, even if only by guessing). The exam was horrible and at least moderately unfair, but now it's over and that's all there is to say about that. I'd like to say I did well on the path exam, but the truth is that I'm still not sure. Here's the deal:

We wrote the exam. Then we all celebrated. During celebrations, someone said something along the lines of "sure am glad I had that recording of last term's post-exam review! Those 5-10 questions really saved my butt." People nearby said various things to the effect of "There was a recording? Why didn't you share it with me? I wish I'd had it. Oh well - maybe next time."

But one person heard, and said, "OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!!!! THERE WAS A FILE? AND I DIDN'T GET IT? THOSE PEOPLE WERE CHEATING!!!!!11!ELEVEN!!! I'M TELLING!!!!" and went to the course director about it. The director said "Yeah, and?" and ignored her, as the recoding was common knowledge amongst the Powers That Be and no more cheating than using copies of old tests as practice questions. So she went to the dean. (keep in mind that she wasn't upset about people cheating - her outrage came solely from the fact that she didn't get the chance to do so herself. When similar items have been available in the past, she's quite happily used them without any complaints).

Of course, the dean has to do somehting - that's why he's the dean. So a few days later we get an email tellng us to sit tight, we'll get our grades this week after they "clear up some confusion."

Fast forward to today - no grades. Little Miss Tantrum's outburst is now common knowledge (with some alterations and exaggerations, in typical rumor-mill style) with all the expected disgust and resentment. A mass email gets sent out, that essentially says "Test has been compromised! Turn yourselves in and we'll be lenient! Failure to do so will result in expulsion! Free ice cream for anyone who rats out their friends! Fail to do so and you'll all have to retake the exam! This message will self-destruct in 24 hours!"

And that's that. I'm really hoping that the retaking the test idea is an empty threat and they'll just drop the contested questions, since there really isn't much time to study for it on top of everything else right now. And no, I didn't have the file - I tried to get my hands on it after I heard about the whole scandal, but oddly enough, I can't find anyone willing to admit to any knowledge of its existence prior to a few days ago. Go figure.

in interesting read I came across today

2009-04-08T12:46:52Z

http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/954/moyo/

Tests and, well, more tests.

2009-04-05T19:42:33Z

You know, fourth term is a strange one. Strangest of all is that for once, everyone you talk to gives you the same advice. Everyone! The people who got A's last term say exactly the same thing as the people who decelled - they say "Path is really interesting, be nice to your group, study hard, and never ever forget about micro." And then they say "No, really. Micro is the course everyone puts off till the last minute, but don't do it! Stay up to date on your micro!"

Of course, this is pretty obvious advice. Who in their right mind would put off a 5 credit course? 5 credits is a lot - that's the same as physio or neuro. And remembering how much work physio was, its only obvious that one would want to devote a pretty healthy amount of time to mastering the art of telling microbes apart - or whatever it is we're supposed to be learning in that class.

But then the term goes on, and 5 credits starts to look pretty small next to 13. Especially when we spend 4 hours in path for every one in micro. And then that insidious little voice starts to whisper. You only had an hour of micro today, it says. You can make that up tomorrow. Really, it's only a few pages - this weekend there'll be plenty of time. Go study Path - we did 30 pages today, and you still don't quite understand every aspect of tuberculosis. Maybe you should go back and look at the neoplasia slides, just in case you've forgotten something. And next week looks pretty complicated - you should check it out, maybe do some prereading to get ahead... And the next thing you know, it's 3 days before the midterm, you're 5 lectures behind, and oh - did I forget to mention that those 5 lectures are worth a quarter of the test?

So, long story short, the path test was surprisingly friendly. Long, yes. Incredibly irritating in an "oh, you're finished? Great! Feel free to sit there quietly for an hour until the time's up. What, we didn't mention that part? Well did you think we'd let you just leave when you finished the exam? What kind of crazy talk is that? Get back to your seat and review your exam a few more times. And don't blame us when you start changing your answers away from the correct ones - we're just following orders, and anyway, you know you're not supposed to do that" sort of way. (And don't even get me started about the part where they made us sit for an extra 15 minutes while they counted the pencils at the end. Yes -they made 500 students who had just finished one of the traditionally more anxiety-inducing tests of basic sciences (not to mention the first one of the week) sit silently in their seats while they counted the fucking pencils. But as I said, don't get me stared).

Micro, on the other hand, was 3 days of forced-memorization hell followed by 2 hours of random "did we even learn this?" what-the-fuck-style questions. But there's historically a big curve at the end of term, so I'll hold off comments until I see what happens.

We celebrated post-midterms in traditional fashion (Rick's, beach, hash, and House), and I'm correspondingly burned, sandy, sore, and entertained. Unfortunately, this term is planned so that we don't actually get the entire weekend off. Consequently, it's back to studying for a big upcoming week (pulmonary path AND GI micro?! Are they trying to punish us for something?). Well, that and watching tv. Because it's still the weekend, and I intend to get my money's worth, dammit.

studying woes

2009-03-29T21:27:37Z

First, the Taylor Hall alarm decides to spontaneously go off avery 10 minutes for over an hour. Then, we get mysterious thumps and scrapes from the CPR class upstairs. Later, I'm just bored and tired of rereading about the fifty-thousand oncogene examples and trying to remember which disease is associated with each, especially because I'm not even sure it's testable. And now there's a creepy guy hanging around the baasketball courts, harrassing innocent ladies who just want to sign up for an hour with a treadmill. I quit. How am I supposed to study in this sort of environment?

(And yes, of course I sicced the security guard on him. What did you expect?)

On sandblast

2009-03-21T20:23:50Z

Sandblast makes me ashamed to be an SGU student.

Sandblast is a once-a-term party thrown just after midterms on the beach by SGA. It's run almost entirely on donated funds and supplies and is generally a huge moneymaker for the club. Of course, most of the money ends up going to charity, but that's another story. I'll probably write about it one of these days, since it's a constant irritation to me.

What sandbalst really is, is an excuse to drink until you fall down (usually in a puddle of vomit that, if you're lucky, is your own). I imagine that the party originally started out as a safe way to deal with a thousand-odd students' worth of catharsis, but it's degenerated. Here's how it works:

You pay your 30ec and you get a cup. There's a bar and a bunch of beer tents, and you get as many free refills of whatever you want until all the alcohol runs out. The problem is that it usually runs out within a few hours, so people race to drink as much as possible, as fast as possible so that they "get their money's worth." See where this is going?

Add in a whole lot of locals who seem to rate sandblast somewhere between xmas and the second coming of Christ, and you have a bit of a problem (Experience tells me that while students drink and then go pass out somewhere quiet, locals drink and get belligerant and then go start fights and harass students). Last term they tried to make in Students-Only, but the sponsors got all upset and threatened to pull their donations so naturally it was as bad as ever. (I worked in one of the beer tents first term, and I'd say that 3/4 of the people coming for refills were locals, and they were also the least polite about the whole thing).

They usually try to organize games and activities for the event, but in the rush of downing as much liquor as you can hold they tend to get abandoned fairly early. Likewise, there's usually some sort of food available and vendors, but they generally get ignored. And for some reason, all of this takes place on less and a quarter of the available space at the Grand Anse campus, so everyone's all crowded together. I won't even bother talking about the mess.

Did I mention how much stuff gets stolen at sandblast? Let's just say it's a lot. Who'd have thought? Huge crowds of drunks leaving their stuff (read: money, ipods, and cameras) lying unattended - no, that's not attractive at all.

Of course, every Sandblast is followed up by an after party at some bar or other. I've never gone, but I'm told this IS students-only. However, since it happens within a few hours of the end of the beach party, there really isn't much time to sober up/recover from heatstroke before you're at it again.

Is this really a healthy way to act? I mean, I like drinking as much as the next person, but I got most of this type of behavior out of the way years ago, and I've always drunk to be social, not just to get drunk. I'm not even going to bother commenting on the unprofesionalism of it all - we're in a graduate program - shouldn't we be acting like it?

I do understand that some form of catharsis is necessary at the end of exams, but what's wrong with going on a trip or sailing or something? After several weeks of bad diet, high stress, and no sleep, I can't imagine that near-toxic amounts of alcohol and sunstroke could feel terribly good the next day or even the next week when classes start up again.

The worst bit is that SGU sponsors this - encourages it, even. What does it say for our school that the biggest event of the term (remember, this happens twice a year), is an event solely designed for drinking as much as possible? I could understand if it was put on by a bar or some other organisation, but the government of a school that's always harrassing us about professionalism?"

And that's why I killed him, you honor.

Oh, wait. Never mind that. Damn! I meant to say something profound and satisfyingly closure-inducing, but the moment's gone now. Sorry.

On holidays named for people who didn't exist

2009-03-17T12:28:17Z

And no, I'm not talking about xmas. That'll caome later. Today is Saint Patrick's Day and I, for one, am wearing green. Are you?

St Parick's day is named for St Patrick, who didn't actually exist. Except he did. How does this work? I'm not sure. But here's my best go at it:

The guy we call St Patrick was actually known as Pallidus, a bishop who lived in the early 5th century. And no, he wasn't actually irish - he was from Gaul. But really, he was Roman. Probably. He did, however, end up in Ireland - Pope Celestine I sent him to Ireland to administer the WORD OF GOD to the local heathens. And that's that.

Or maybe he was really named Patrick, and was born in Wales. And when he was 16, he was kidnapped and enslaved and brought to Ireland where, tending sheep and doing various pastoral slave-things, he discovered the WORD OF GOD for himself. Because he was so devout, god helped him escape, whereby he caught a ship and went back home. And there was much rejoicing. At some point, he went around converting and baptising his neighbours. He may or may not have done the war thing against the local druids at the time, too, but I'm not sure when he would have learned how to work a sword while he was busy tending his sheep. Maybe that was the other guy?

Today's St Patrick was somewhere in between, I suspect. He's credited with bansihing all the snakes from Ireland, but SCIENCE! tells us that Ireland never had any snakes, so it's probably a euphanism for witches, by which we mean druids, of which Ireland had a lot. The shamrock comes from him using it as a symbol for god - apparantly they didn't have crosses in Ireland. Or maybe peasants didn't understand them. Personally, I like shamrocks better.

Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, things related to snakes, engineers, excluded people, Nigeria, and ophidophobics (among other things).

(Also, CPD tells us not to take our patients out for drinks after their pap smears. Who knew?)