Hello again

For a while there, I think I was doing pretty good...posting at least every day, sometimes multiple times a day. So, sorry for the brief intermission. This past weekend was pretty busy though, between the Phi Chi pledge scavenger hunt and studying for the immuno quiz that we had earlier today.

First, Friday night was the 3rd semester date auction. It was a fund raiser for the 3rd semester (as the name implies), but dates from every semester were up for auction by anyone at AUC. I thought that dates were gonna go for like $50 max, considering the typical med student budget. But, the average was probably around $200, and one guy (Vik) even went for $1050!! I'm glad people have over a thousand dollars to waste on a dinner date which is not romantic or a guarantee of anything after, in any way. I heard that the class actually had a little pool going for that one, so maybe it wasn't so bad after all. Since I didn't have my flash charged up, I didn't take my camera, secretly hoping that I wouldn't become the official photographer. However, as soon as i showed up, Song came up to me, gave me her camera, and said, "here, you're good at this, take pictures." So, I did, but she's got all the pictures and I have no idea when she'll get around to putting them up.

Saturday morning was the Phi Chi pledge scavenger hunt - one of 3 events that the pledges are required to participate in before they can be initiated. I won't go into event details since it's sort of a secret (and events are often repeated from semester to semester), but I think it was a good time for everyone. We had the pledges do some pretty amusing things to watch (don't worry, nothing that anyone would be upset about doing) and had a good end to the day on Happy Bay beach. If you're not familiar with the island, Happy Bay is a very nice and mostly private beach on the French Side. The reason it is so private though is that they only way to get there is a pretty decent hike. You can't get close to the beach by car. So, Matt and I took his little inflatable boat over to the beach, toting along and extremely oversized and very heavy cooler. It was quite a painful adventure, getting the cooler to the boat. The things I go through for the pledges.... :) In the end, I wound up with a sexy farmer's tan [burn].

I was not happy at all going into this immuno quiz. I think that the powerpoints we get are pretty terrible from this particular teacher and most people agree that explanations are a little lacking. Also, I am not a fan of little cutesy ways to remember things; B-cells and T-cells don't tango, and I wouldn't want to make a sandwich out of serum or antibody. And, as I expected, we were not so much tested on the concept of these little memorization techniques, but the actual memorization technique (which I think is a pretty terrible way to test). As it turned out though, I did well on the quiz, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. The information isn't presented well (in my opinion), but the quizzes are pretty easy, so it all works out in the end. Now, just wasting a couple hours between class and ICM.