One Small Step (and Some Shrimp)

We had lab final exam for bacteriology lab today. Although this is really of little significance because it was only 10 points and the class isn't over, I no longer have this lab on Wednesday afternoons, which frees them up for getting other things accomplished. Wait a sec, who am I kidding? It frees them up for me to twiddle my thumbs and waste the time away haha.

In other news, millions of small shrimp washed into shore yesterday in Grenada. Or at least this end of Grenada. A random massive shrimp kill. It smelled quite terrible and ruined my plans to go for a swim yesterday afternoon when I had some spare time. The smell got stronger and stronger as I approached (smelled fishy and dead) so I was looking forward to getting in and getting away from the stench! I did my usual wander along the shoreline to see if anything interesting had washed up. I didn't notice them at first. They are quite small and mostly translucent. But when I did, they were suddenly every where. The shore was loaded with them (and ants rushing to take part in the world's largest picnic), the water was littered with them, and the smell was quite strong. At first I thought to myself, I'm not going to let some dead shrimp scare me off or gross me out, but after a little bit, I realized that I should be scared off and disgusted. These were millions of dead organisms, and not only did they die for some unknown reason, but they probably were attracting and releasing tons of happy bacteria. Not exactly the kind of water I want to be swimming in. Mostly because it seemed like a potentially big health risk to take, and since I have NO time to be sick and an upcoming 4 day weekend, I decided not to chance it. So instead I poked around and took some pictures, and then returned home a bit disappointed. Maybe I will get another better chance this weekend!

A Grenadian Water Problems Finally Works In My Favor!

Yes, you read that correctly, a water issue that was a good thing! Mostly because it got me out of class but didn't affect my dorm : D. There was some sort of water issue about mid-morning with the veterinary buildings. Not too big a deal for morning lectures, but when we showed up to anatomy lab later and there still was no water, well... Thankfully our professors were reasonable. Smelly, rotting carcasses + no water means no lab for us! I liked getting this extra time back in my day, especially because we had a physio exam this morning and class until 5!

We also got out of pharmacology early this morning giving us an extra 30 minutes of lunch time. Yay for lots of extra time today! I have even been very good an used the time productively! There is no way I would have gotten even most of my list of things to do for tonight done if I hadn't utilized my extra time earlier.

Another little fun story for you. On our anatomy exam on Friday, apparently if you looked really, really closely, all of the correct multiple choice answers had a faint grey bar over them. They photocopied an answer key by mistake. But this was very, very difficult to see. Even I didn't notice it (and it's pretty rare that I miss something small and trivial like that), but a few of my classmates did. And so we were left with a dilemma. Let it go and leave things alone? Throw it out completely? Modify it some how? Make us retake it? Sadly, it was an easy A test so I would have done well regardless (why couldn't this have happened to the evil hard test we had earlier this semester??). They ultimately decided to throw all of the multiple choice questions out. The exam was composed of 30 scantron questions (mostly MC but a T/F and a few matching) and then 10 points of fill in the blank/label the diagram/short answer. Of the 30 questions, they tossed out 24 of them. Wow! A fair and reasonable compromise, but I really wouldn't have cared much unless we had just tossed it (grade booster!!). Even retaking it would have been fine, like I said it was easy.

6 More Weeks of Tropical Left

Not much exciting happened today either. My roommate and I went to the grocery store since we didn't get around to going yesterday. That was pretty much the highlight/outing of the day haha. I have been extremely productive while studying though. I got through all of my physiology material for my exam on Monday and a few other tasks on the weekend list started/crossed off. I'm thinking of rewarding myself with an early bed time. Gee, I'm getting so old!! My vet roommate went out with people just a few minutes ago to hang at Bananas. Me? I want to curl up and go to sleep. Sheesh! Hoping to squeeze some beach time in tomorrow afternoon, and then preparing for my physio exam for the rest of the day. But, only a handful of exams left before finals, and I will be officially done with my first year 6 weeks from now! And between then and now we get a 4 day weekend and May 1st (Labour Day) off!

Exams, Exams

Not much exciting going on over here currently. Anatomy exam this morning, physiology exam on Monday. Might make it out into the sun for a little bit one of the weekend days, but I have a lot to learn before Monday morning-bummer. Eat, sleep, study-the plans for the next couple of days (and previous couple)! I really look forward to not having to get up so early on the weekends. Even though they are often bordered by an exam on each side, it really is nice to have a break from waking up so early!!

Swimming, Cake, and Candy

Went for another quick swim today-yay for getting out of my room, getting some vitamin D, and moving my muscles and joints around! The water was much calmer and clearer today (which was perfect because my roommate tagged along). Unfortunately we didn't have a whole lot of time, but it certainly felt good to get out!

It's my vet school roommate's birthday so naturally we had cake to go with it! Unlike most grocery stores, IGA here sells superb cakes! They are so moist and tasty, it's really quite amazing! They taste like a homemade cake rather than something you picked up at your local grocery store bakery (I've now had 6 of them so I feel fairly confident in backing their deliciousness haha). She (and I) love chocolate, so I opted for a very tasty chocolate truffle cake, complete with chocolate shavings! It was super delicious (but then again, when is cake not??).

The other noteable event today was a SCAVMA meeting. A few of the executive board members went to SAVMA symposium recently so this meeting was all about their conference, some other random announcements, and the best part-FREE STUFF! If you happen to be a student, then you totally understand why free knick knacks (no matter how useless or tacky, or how many you already have) are amazing. For those of you who aren't I can't even begin to try to explain. It's just some sort of phenomenon. It's free therefore you feel like you absolutely must have it, and it is clearly the best and most useful thing(s) to add to collection ever! It's like free food. Doesn't matter if you had pizza every day for lunch prior, if you happen to run across it for free on day 5, you will automatically feel compelled to accept, and it will taste delicious (even if it's cold, old, and stale). It's just one of those weird things. Anyhow, my take home was some pretty purple beads, a few pens, and some candy. The candy is significant and probably the best part. Why? It's not because I'm still young enough to think that all candy is amazing, but actually because candy doesn't really exist here. Sure you can get a few select, highly over priced items, but for the most part you're out of luck. You know that candy aisle at the grocery store? Yeah, that definitely doesn't exist here. There are a few things at the registers and that's about it. So getting some candy? Big deal! 

More Swimming

Yay for more swimming today! For today's post, I send you to this link to view amazing coral and fish, because I just spent 15 minutes browsing all the beautiful critters instead of writing. Oops!

Did see this today though, absolutely gorgeous!

Pharmacology

Can you tell when I have exams yet? Seems to be preceded by a lack of post haha.

Today's exam (the first after midterms) was pharmacology. Yuck. But not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be thankfully (it always concerns me when I finish an exam in 7 minutes haha).

I find the topic of pharmacology interesting, but this class seems more like a game of trivia than learning things that I should actually know to be a good doctor. It's all great and well to know a bunch of random things, but the main points are majorly de-emphasized, if they are emphasized at all. Not so useful. It's also kind of frustrating when information is presented only once, but not all together. For instance, two of the inhalant anesthetics we covered cause laryngospasm/bronchoirritation, but they weren't listed together. The first was listed independently (but not solely in the drug) and the second was listed in a table with the first drug, but the first drug was marked as having that effect! Our notes are littered with examples like this.

I'm pretty sure the most frustrating part of this class is that it's not over in May! We still have one more semester of pharmacology to go before we get to escape this madness. I get it, they are in the process of completely overhauling the department, but I'm pretty sure students have gone from learning nothing with the old way to learning a whole lot of nothing with the new team. Hm. Sounds pretty counter productive to me!!

In other news, I went for a swim this afternoon. Seemed like a more fun and exciting way to exercise than Zumba in my room, plus it was gorgeous out! The water was a little rough because it was pretty windy, but it just made me work harder, and I got to see the fish and swim the reef all the same :).