New happenings around school

Today, the AUC security guards have decided that they are going to begin checking IDs at the gate. If you don't have your ID with you, you're sent back home to get it. Today, there was a line of cars waiting to get in. Fortunately, since I rode my scooter today, I just drove around them (I really love that scooter!). But, since most people don't carry their ID around, since we've never been checked before, there were a lot of people sent home. I'll try to get a picture if there's a line tomorrow.

I think this is the product of everyone complaining about a few incidents on the island lately. Apparently, there has been somewhat of an increase in crime around here lately. But, NONE OF IT was on AUC's campus. AUC's campus has always been safe and I've never heard of a single incident. So, in true St. Maarten fashion, they have implemented a security measure which will likely do nothing. I really don't think that the muggers on the golf course are gonna care that they're checking ID's at the school gate. If anyone actually thought that all of their complaining would bring about a change in the police presence, they were sadly mistaken. So, instead of making anything better, it just made things more inconvenient.

On a more positive note, we had our second MCB quiz today. Barring any stupid mistakes on my part, I probably got a 100% on it. But, I don't know how much of an accomplishment that is since the quizzes have definitely been easier this semester. But, easier in a good way, hopefully not a way that will harm our Step I scores. On the tests now, there are a ton of clinical questions. So, we still have to know all of the various enzymes which are defective in a bunch of diseases, but at least they're not questions of minutia anymore, which weren't helping anyone anyway. It makes learning it a lot more interesting. So maybe, they're not easier, I just like it better?

Finally, BioStats is nearly over, and I can't wait!! Pretty sure she could have gotten through all of the biostats in a week or two if we didn't move so slowly. But, to be fair, I have had stats before. So, it may be a little harder if it was brand new. In any case, starting next week, Monday is the only day that we won't be out of here at 11:20. That will give plenty of time to get home, go to the pool, catch up on some TV, and still have lots of study time. :)

False Advertising!!

Today, I got my new license plates. It's one of St. Maarten's many absurd rules that every January, you must pay about $170 to renew your plates. What I really don't like about it is that they don't care when you actually got your plates, you just have to pay every January. So, I just got my first set of plates (and paid about $170) in September, and now, I had to do it all over again!! Fortunately, the folks from Nagico insurance come to the school, collect your money (along with a small convenience fee, of course), and bring you your plates a couple of days later. This saves the hassle of driving into Phillipsburg and dealing with the hellacious St. Maarten DMV. I can only imagine what that place is like now with the whole island trying to get new plates!

In any case, I think it's about time that they take the phrase, "The Friendly Island," off of the license plates. It really is false advertising. Considering all of the problems that AUC students have been having lately, I would say that this place is hardly the friendly island. If they want to be a little more accurate, perhaps they could consider, "St. Maarten, the slow, inefficient, lazy, uncaring, unproductive, not even always safe in the daytime island." That sort of sounds like a NyQuil commercial, but it's true!

Gotta say though, I kinda like the blue color. It goes nicely with the silver car. :)

9/10 doctors agree....

This isn't a political statement on my part, I just thought it was funny, whether you like the guy or not. And, since I'm in medical school, maybe it's appropriate?

Apparently, you guys (and gals) like facebook!

So I've got that little blogrush widget on my sidebar, which is supposed to bring new visitors to my site. Basically, it tracks how many people see my site (and thus their widget) and for every person that visits, I get a recent post of mine shown in other people's blogrush widget. Sounds like a good concept, right? But, nobody really ever clicks through. Although all of my posts are shown through the widget a couple of hundred times, I'm lucky if one or two people actually click through. Mostly, I just keep the thing on there because I like the way they track visitors and they have a neat little graph to look at. Actually, I've posted a screenshot of that graph before when Digg visited my blog, if you're curious as to what it looks like.

Anyway, I haven't had a single click through in quite a while. I guess my post headings aren't interesting enough. But, after writing the facebook post, which has only been syndicated 100 or so times, I've already got a click through! Maybe I'll put the word "facebook" in all of my titles. Interestingly, my visitors also spiked today (yesterday) for some reason. It is very obvious that people stop visiting when I post less frequently. The correlation coefficient is probably like .8, which is a strong positive correlation. I learned that in biostats. :)

Good immuno site

A couple of other second semester students told me today about a very helpful website for immunology. The microbiology department of University of South Carolina Medical School has put audio of all of their immuno lectures online. And, they correspond almost perfectly to ours! It must be nice having a competent IT department, but we wouldn't know anything about that. Apparently, U of MD med school has their lectures videotaped and put online every day! I bet they don't have a silly mandatory attendance rule either, for their graduate students!

Anyway, I listened to a small part of what we've been doing lately (immunoglobulin genetics), and it probably will be useful. Without saying anything mean about our professors at AUC, I wish we had this guy. The other professor that came last semester from a US med school and did part of our embryo block was also pretty outstanding. I'm thinking maybe this is a trend?

Here's the website: http://media.med.sc.edu/microbiology2007/

facebook woes

So in the middle of MCB, this is what I'm thinking about: I'm sick of facebook sending me messages about things that were done days ago. I just got a message that someone wants to add me as a friend, someone that I confirmed a couple days ago. I'm done with facebook e-mails. Can you turn them off? I'm about to find out! Now time to bury my head in Lippincotts. To make up for all this crappy studying for even crappier quizzes which it seems like we have almost every day now, I'm going scuba diving today!! It'll be the first time in 2 months or so, so it'll be nice to get out on the water again! I'm debating not taking my camera along this time, so there may or may not be pictures to follow.

ICM

On monday, we had our second Intro to Clinical Medicine class. I'm still deciding whether I like that class or not. I think that I will, but just not this semester maybe. This semester, the focus is on patient centered interviewing. That's basically the part where you introduce yourself, make the patient feel comfortable, and find out exactly what's wrong with them, but in their own words, and by asking open ended questions. Some doctors forget to do that part, and go straight to asking specific questions about what they want to know. There's definitely merit to what they're teaching us, but it's just not terribly exciting right now. They have us saying things like "We have 10-15 minutes to conduct and interview and in that time we're going to......what would you like to accomplish today?" I think telling the patient how long they have is kind of tacky, and so do a lot of the doctors that are teaching us. But, I guess it gives them a general idea of how in-depth they should be going.

This week, we spent almost the entire 2 hours doing the introductory steps with a mock patient. While being a paramedic has not helped at all in most classes, it is definitely going to make a difference in this one. I think it was fairly obvious to everyone that this was not the first time I had talked to a patient. While most of my group was extremely nervous and some even forgot to ask the patient's name, I thought it was very easy to do. And, while the mock patient had comments for everyone on how to improve, she just looked at me kind of dumbfounded and said, "that was really professional, I felt very comfortable talking to you." So, it was good to hear that 9 years of practice is finally gonna make a difference. Next week, we're spending probably the entire class learning how to take vitals (BP, pulse, and such), so that'll probably be another incredibly boring day.

Despite how boring the class can be right now though, at least we discuss things that are going to matter when we're doctors. And, every once in a while, the doctor throws in a clinical scenario, which I'm sure will become more frequent as we go. So, the class will probably become one of my favorites. At the moment, MCB is looking like it's gonna be my highest grade right now (although certainly subject to change), but man is it dull!

more photos

So I finally figured out HDR last night, in between a lot of studying for quizzes today. The problem was that I was trying to use the RAW files instead of converting them first, but the program I was using doesn't play very nice with RAW files. So, as soon as I imported JPG's, I got much better results. Here are a couple pictures that I made very quickly last night. They're actually all a combination of 3 different pictures. Since it was windy though, the leaves were blowing a little, and I didn't have enough time last night to take it into photoshop and fix it. Maybe later, if I ever have time.

On a side note, it's very cold in Lecture Hall 1 today! I think I'm gonna start reading Lippincotts in lecture today, since the MCB lecture is pretty useless and if you know that book, you know the test. Time to get to it...

Oh, and what is Dr. B's hang up with "back in your mind's eye?"

Going Away Party

Unfortunately, my friend Mike will be leaving AUC sometime tomorrow. It's a shame that he's leaving because I know that he tried hard here and he's a very good guy. So, a bunch of people went out last night for his last big night out in St. Maarten.

We started at the Tijuana Yacht Club for dinner. They've got good food for good prices, a delicious (and very alcoholic) trashcan of liquor, and decent music at night. I was actually there for lunch too since I didn't know that I'd be heading back there later for dinner! Good thing I like Mexican food!

After that, we headed across the street to The Mansion. The only thing I knew about the place was that when John went there a week or two ago, he woke me up at 3am to tell me about how he got beat up by the bouncers, for no apparent reason. I didn't really believe that there was no reason, until I found out today that two or three other people from my class were also punched by bouncers, for no reason. So, the bouncers suck and should be arrested, but man is the place nice!! When you walk inside, it's like you step out of St. Maarten and into New York or something. The whole place wound up being filled with AUC students before the end of the night. It's a trade off, I guess; you might get your ass kicked for no reason, but you might have a good night in a really nice club.

Anyway, here's a couple pictures from last night. There are 305 of them on my flickr page, so go check it out! We'll miss you, Mike!

just about sums it up