Phi Chi Wine and Cheese

I think the Wine and Cheese Gala has become a semesterly tradition here on the AUC campus. It's definitely one of the more popular events hosted by Phi Chi because not only is it set at Dr. Atchley's beautiful lagoon-front home, but you get the opportunity to sample 300 wines from countries around the world as well as eat AWESOME food catered by Rare, considered one of the best restaurants on the island. As a Phi Chi pledge, I had to help set up and clean up, but I was able to enjoy the event once it started. Here are some photos below taken by the very talented Nate Soon. For even more photos of the evening, please click here.  (p.s. wearing a white dress to a wine event is not advisable) 

Goodbye Block 3 (Good Riddance) and Hello Number 4!

In exactly one month and one day from now, I'll be on a flight back home to Boston. And when I return to AUC after my 10 day hiatus, I will officially be a second semester student.

Crazy isn't it? I can't even fathom it right now. It seemed like just yesterday I was sitting at home and freaking out about Caribbean medical schools and now I'm nearly done with my first semester.

So Block exams.... this is the first time this semester I felt woefully unprepared for my exams to the point where I was having mini panic attacks throughout the week punctuated with a pretty huge freakout moment the night before. I kept asking how did this happen? I've been studying but I guess somewhere in the second or third week I was letting some lectures slide, and I wasn't attending MCB as much as I should have (8 am classes are a bitch). Unlike the first two blocks, block III is an extra week long so you are tested on FOUR weeks worth of material rather than the three. Additionally, instead of having 40 questions for the block exams, you now have 50. Time was never a problem for me in the last two block exams and often finished early, but this time around I actually had to be mindful of the time. I found myself racing against the clock to finish the last 5 or 10 questions of each exam. This was especially true for anatomy. I used every last second.

I feel like my study habits were excellent for the first and fourth week of block 3 and the second and third weeks I just put things off. And when the weekend rolled around for these middle two weeks, I didn't spend much time at all going over the material because I went on a couple of boat cruises that took over my entire Saturdays (one being the Regatta). Considering I stupidly failed my last histo exam, I made sure that wasn't going to happen again and decided to go over the material at least 3 times before Monday. This was the last Histo exam of the semester and would account for 40% of our total grade. As you all know by now for anatomy, we are not friends. I had been in the "failing" range for anatomy for pretty much this entire semester, and  I really didn't want to be there again so I studied my tail off.... for the abdominal  region... pelvic region.... not quite as much. MCB was going to be terrible for me. I could feel it by the Thursday before blocks. I was studying everything else and neglected MCB. When I was midway through Lysosome diseases, I knew there was no way in hell I was going to finish all the material for the block, let alone memorize all the proteins and diseases I had to. I panicked, I freaked out, and then I slowly came to accept it. I kept telling myself I was going to fail this exam and it would be okay because I have a decent buffer and the fourth block exam and Final would count for 50% of the total MCB grade. After I came to terms with the fact I was going to fail, I was able to refocus and spend the rest of my energy on my other two subjects.

Curious how I did? Here we go, drum roll please:

Histology:
Class Average-84%
Me-90% :-)

MCB I:
Class Average-79%
Me- 62% :-(

Anatomy:
Class Average -81%
Me- 80%! :-O
(What's particularly interesting about my anatomy grade is for the written portion, 30 of the questions were on the abdomen and 20 on the pelvis. As I already mentioned, I spent most of my time on the abdomen and allocated little to the pelvis.... turns out I only missed 3 abdomen questions [27/30 damn good for me] but I missed 7 or 8 questions for the pelvis [good thing 3 of those were thrown out!]. There is hope for me yet.)


At this moment, I am passing all my classes for the first time this semester!!! I've passed histo with an overall grade of 80% and it's officially OVER. I passed my first class in med school. Since we won't be having histo anymore, we will be taking Embryology for this last block and the grade we get for that is added in to our overall Anatomy grade. Due to my 80% in anatomy, I'm officially passing the course and despite my terrible performance in MCB, I'm still passing.

Mission Complete

I'll upgrade it to Mission Accomplished once I kick ass in all my exams for this last block.

Related articles

• Block I Exams and Post Show Festivities (medschoolcaribstyle.com)
• Block II Hits and Misses (medschoolcaribstyle.com)
• First Semester Done and I've Passed All my Classes! (medschoolcaribstyle.com)
• Semester 2: Block I  (medschoolcaribstyle.com)

31st Annual Heineken Regatta: "Serious Fun"

As you can imagine, there are a lot of perks going to a Caribbean medical school, but I'm going a little bit further and saying there are way more perks going to med school on St. Maarten as opposed to Dominica, Saba, or Grenada.

There is civilization here.

And we get the Heineken Regatta.

The Heineken Regatta is a yacht race held in St. Maarten every year. It first began in 1980, as a local affair with only 12 boats racing and now, in its 31st year, the event has grown into an international boat race boasting 300 yachts entries this year and representing 32 different countries. The Heineken Regatta began March 1 and ended March 6 in explosive fashion with a "final party" in Simpson Bay's Kim Sha beach featuring Wyclef Jean. The picture below is from the event last Sunday, but unfortunately I was in my dorm studying!

Although I missed the final party, myself and 200 other AUC students/Professors enjoyed the Regatta Saturday thanks to Phi Chi, the medical fraternity here on campus (I'm currently a pledge for Phi Chi and I'll be devoting a whole post to it at a later date).  The members of Phi Chi were selling spaces on boats that they secured for the Regatta. They started off with three boats, but because of the high demand, they got an additional two boats to accommodate all who wanted to attend. If you are in Phi Chi, it was $100 a spot, and for those not in it, they had to pay $120. I know the prices seem a bit expensive, but it is open bar for the duration of the boat trip (8:30-4:30) and snacks, lunch was provided. I ended up being on the boat "Tango" with my close friends and with a lot of people in my first semester class, so I knew I had a great group going into Saturday. Around 60 of us ended up being on Tango so I also got to meet some other students from the third and fifth semesters. The fifth semesters had just taken the Comp exam the day before, so you know they were ready to party. 

On Saturday, I woke up at 7:00 and met some friends at 7:30 to take a cab over to the marina. It was only a 10-15 minute ride. Once we arrived to the docks we had to wait for the rest of the students to arrive before we could climb aboard Tango. At this time I took various pictures and even signed a petition to "help save the dolphins forever". Direct quote right there. The girl saving dolphins was probably eleven years old. I got a nice little ribbon bracelet out of it with three beads. 

Once we were all gathered and the crew finished stocking/prepping the boat for our departure, we climbed on. First thing I did was grab a Presidente. That's all I would drink for the rest of the day. I know my limits from college and I've realized that if I just stick with beer the whole time, I last much longer. Mixed drinks go right to my head. We set off and 50 photos later, we got to where all the races were happening. I was shocked when we arrived because I'm fairly certain that spectator boats and the actual racing boats were all jumbled in together. There was a point when our boat jumped right in the race.... I think. There was a long line of boats with crew members all wearing the same outfits jumping from one side of the boat to the other, and we just sailed right into them. Perpendicular. Then the captain turned us so we were then parallel to the other racing boats and we were then just sort of in the race. It was strange, but pretty cool. I wondered if this was some sort of interference, but apparently not. After watching the races for some time, Tango went to a rendezvous point at a nearby beach to meet up with the 4 other AUC boats. We had lunch here (subs and chips), and then went swimming. A lot of people jumped in to get to the beach, and a lot more people jumped in the ocean to swim to the other boats to visit friends. I checked out the Mirabella (the largest of the 5 AUC boats) and was slightly jealous that they had a slide.

Below are few of the boat pictures I snapped during the day. I ended up with 6 pictures of the actual Regatta and 120 of everyone on Tango. The last picture is pretty much all the first semester students that were on my boat.

My blog hits 10,000+ Pageviews

What's this insanity happening? The less I write the more visitors I get! I finally got to 10,000 pageviews late last night and it seems that I'm averaging around 115 or so pageviews a day these last few weeks.

I know I have been neglecting my blog a little bit, but don't worry I haven't forgotten about it... I wish I could say I've been busy, but I think I've been lazy more than anything.

So who has been visiting my blog you ask?? I'll share with you some of the random stats I get to see everyday.

Roughly 80% of my readers have been from the United States and the remaining 20% have been coming from here (The Netherlands Antilles), Canada, Australia, England, Japan, Russia, South Africa, France, and....Guatemala of all places.

Operating Systems:
60% of you guys are using Windows
31% using Macs
2% Linux

For surfing the web:
29% are using Chrome
24% Firefox
23% Internet Explorer
20% Safari
1% Opera

My most visited post continues to be the AUC USMLE Step 1 Results for 2009, followed by my post concerning the class size and attrition rate of AUC, St George, Ross.

For those of you who don't know my website address yet (or bookmarked it):

43% of you end up getting here through a google search
25% via Benji's Blog "Diary of a Caribbean Med Student"
23% of you are actually friends/family who arrived to my blog via my facebook page


Crazy I can see all that information, right?