Carnival weekend

So the carnival went pretty well.  The turn out wasn't as good as we had hoped but one of the semesters had block exams(3 exams back to back) that monday and I believe another had another exam later that next week.

I feel though that everyone that attended had a blast.  We had a bouncy house and carnival games for the kids, BBQ for the hungry, and beer gardens for the thirsty.  The beer gardens even had a life sized "beer pong" table using 55gal drums.

Human sized Beerpong or more correctly stated "Beiruit" as there are no paddles involved.

The class was also able to get a hold of some wonderful raffle prizes they gave away as well as a wonderful donation for some of our professors...A Pie the Professor Raffle!!!

Our Bacteriology professor Dr. Soto even allowed us to draw two names just to make it a little more interesting.  He is one of the best sports.  Another professor Dr. Belle Nibblett got the wonderful opportunity of letting me pie her in the face.  We won't have her until next semester for Mechanisms of Disease where I'm pretty sure she'll find some way of paying me back ;-)
Our old anatomy professor Dr. Spencer also showed up with her child and allowed us to use her as another pie target.  Overall I think it was a great success.  Not necessarily a financial success as it was a big risk running this event.  However a success nonetheless.  Especially when you figure there were two students in our class that were planning the entire event outside of studying for one of the most difficult semesters in our program.  They definitely deserve a very large pat on the back for doing such a wonderful job on a very fun filled Saturday afternoon.

Jess repping her 7th.

I'm probably going to regret this in a few weeks ;-)

So that was last Saturday.  It will probably be awhile until my next post as Finals are coming up and 3rd semester is one of those "constant fear of failure" semesters, at least for me it is.  It definitely keeps you on your toes.

Fundraising!!!

Here's a bonus post because you all have been waiting so patiently.

At the end of our stay on the island each semester has a very elegant banquet where we invite all the professors as well as past members of our class to come together and have one last fun time before finals and leaving for clinicals.

This party is of course not cheap and can sometimes run as much as 80,000ecd (~$30k).  But that covers the venue, food for about 400 people, DJ, as well as open bar for the majority of the evening.  Because of these high costs, each semester's class fundraises through the 7 semesters here on the island to pay for the event.  This is usually accomplished with different bake sales, useful items, clothing, and events.

Some of the fun bake sales we've had in the past have been: cup of dirt(pudding/oreo cookies), taco bar, thanksgiving(turkey with all the fixings), kebabs, pulled pork sandwiches, etc.  Each semester usuallly runs a bake sale which occurs once or twice throughout the semester and the profit goes towards their banquet at the end.

Sometimes a semester will come up with an item that they personalize and sell that's useful.
We've had...

• digital stethoscope timers that help with measuring pulse and respiratory rates
• pens with a tablet stylus in one that have Ross University written on the side
• penlights in different semester colors that help with determining pupillary light reflexes

Clothing is also a big seller.  Each semester comes up with designs for a t-shirt that usually have an inside joke associated with them that has to do with life down here on the island, or veterinary medicine in general.

• There's a shirt that says "FOCMA Life" on the front with a cross section of a feline leukemia virus.  FOCMA is the acronym for a type of protein that shows up in infected cats that can help us determine if in fact they have been infected.  It also sounds like something else that a stressed out vet student might say ;-)
• We have another shirt that has "Vet School" on the front and "It's like med school, only harder" on the back.

There are definitely a lot more but those are some of the funny/most interesting ones that I like.

One of the last fundraisers we have down here on the island are events.  Each semester usually is response for an event that occurs during the semester (6th semester always is responsible for running the Mr. RUSVM event I spoke about earlier).  Other semesters have their special event that they will run through their stay on the island (Red semester runs an American idol-like event we call "Island-Idol").

This semester, Blue semester (my semester), decided to try and throw a daytime carnival which is happening tomorrow.  It's going to have a bounce house, carnival games, easter egg hunt, food, as well as a beer garden for the adults.  We're also going to have an auction to "Pie-the-Professor."  I'm really excited to see how it turns out!  I'll try and take some pictures to show you all after tomorrow.

So yea, these are just a few of things we do when we have a little bit of free time and it isn't being spent sleeping :-)

Treading above water...and doing just fine.

I'm pretty sure my posts are following an exponential curve.  I really hope I can fix that next semester with a little self discipline.

As of yesterday I am done with all of my midterms for this semester.  All I have left is my Bacteriology laboratory final exam as well as four final exams for my four classes (Pathology 1, Bacteriology, Virology and Pharmacology 1).

This semester feels like it has gone by extremely fast (at least compared to the other two I have for reference).  Of course that happens I guess with monotony throughout your weeks.  Wake up, class, eat, study, bed.  I definitely haven't gone out that much this semester.  I'm hoping to also fix that next semester.  I think the fear of failure in 3rd has driven me to enjoy very little downtime between studying.  Virology contains so much material that a good portion of the people that fail a class at Ross, usually fail this class.

Ok now I'm done complaining about 3rd.  What are some good things you say?  Well, I'm finally learning things relevant to medicine.  We'll learn about an infectious agent in Viro or BacT, and then learn about a disease process (pathophysiology) that occurs because of that agent.  It's nice being able to draw relevance to something being learned as opposed to just brute force memorization because it's "important for your profession."  Now all I have to do is keep it all straight in my head for the exam... and for NAVLE boards.