I've never seen such darkness

No joke, I live in the middle of the woods and I can't see any stars or the moon. The sky must be overcast tonight.

I think the entirety of Lincoln, RI has no power. I can't even see my neighbors house across the street.

our house

our neighborhood

Check that, half the state of Rhode Island is in darkness tonight. My dad and brother went out to check on my grandparents house and they said all the traffic lights are off, the street lights are off, everything is off.

Boo National Grid-- No Power

Rhode Island is a state of one million residents and so far 155,000 households have no power. We happen to be one of those households. We lost power at about 8:30 this morning and have been without it for the last 5 hours. For awhile my parents didn't feel like using the generator we bought yesterday, but finally they decided to hook it up to the fridge. Good decision, guys. Once they started the generator, we also discovered we could hook up our Verizon Wireless router thing into the outlet and get internet . Other than those two things, we have no power. Lights are out, water is limited, and we are all just chilling in the family room with our dog.

It's been raining intermittently throughout the morning, but the wind has been pretty fierce at times. I'm glad our trees are so old and huge, because I'm pretty sure anything else would have come crashing down at this point. Despite all that, I've been thoroughly unimpressed with (the now) Tropical Storm Irene. A lot of hype for a lot of nothing. Sure we lost power for a few hours, and to be honest, I'm surprised we have even lost power for this long. Right now the weather outside is calm. There's no rain and hardly any wind and yet we still have no power. I think National Grid must be making its rounds pretty soon.

For food, we've actually been grilling! My dad just grilled some Sea Bass he brought home last night and we also ate like 5 tomatoes. August is tomato season after all. We are defrosting a couple bacon and cheese burgers for a little later. I'm also enjoying a lovely Coffeehouse Porter from Berkshire Brewing Company.  Other than that, folks, not much else is happening. My flight for St. Maarten isn't till Wednesday and classes start Tuesday. Maybe I'll do the unthinkable and actually try looking at some slides or BRS Path since there's not much else for me to do today. I hope everyone is healthy, happy, and safe. Talk to you again soon.

Hurricane Irene

I've been on hold for 45 minutes now with Jet Blue and I figured why not take this invaluable opportunity and blog about something? Unless you've been living under a rock the last week, most of you know there is hurricane ready to assault the East Coast. Hurricane Irene will be attacking the Carolinas today and is slowly creeping up towards New York, Rhode Island and Boston. And it just so happens that she will be arriving just in time for my flight to St. Maarten...I'm supposed to be flying out of Boston on Sunday at 8 am to New York and then from there to St. Maarten.

Unfortunately Irene will also be in the northeast on Sunday, hence my being on the phone forever waiting to speak to an actual human being about my flight situation. The only silver lining I see now is that Irene has been downgraded to a Category 2 hurricane (it was feared she would go up to a Category 4) and I'm hoping by the time she reaches the cold ocean waters up north, she'll fall to a Category 1 or even just be relegated to tropical storm status.  I feel like my flight will undoubtedly be cancelled, but at least damage will be minimal. For awhile there it seemed like weather analyst were painting this hurricane to be the apocalypse. Some still are doing that, but I'm not sure it's looking like that now.

UPDATE: I got off the phone with my Jet Blue representative and all flights are cancelled on Sunday and Monday morning in Boston and New York. I had the option of flying back tomorrow (Saturday) at 8 a.m. or on Wednesday at 8 a.m. All the flights on Tuesday were booked. The responsible thing to do would be taking the flight back tomorrow morning. I would make it to school early, I could register on time,  be available to proctor the Ethics workshop put on by SJC for the September class' Orientation and I won't miss the first two days of class.

But somehow good reason just doesn't work out sometimes. I took the Wednesday flight.

Just the mere fact I had to cut my vacation one day short made me almost instantly reject the idea of flying out tomorrow morning (I also was not mentally prepared). It's one day less with my family, one day less with my boyfriend. As silly as this sounds, I have a nice dinner date planned with John tomorrow night, and there is no way I was going to cancel our date. Miss registration? pshh whatever. Forgoing my SJC responsibilities during orientation? I've done worse.  Missing my first two days of class? I can still miss another 12.

Yep, sensibility definitely trumps sense today.

p.s. random thought, how funny is it that everyone at AUC has been waiting to be hit by a hurricane all semester in the CARIBBEAN and it never comes. Instead I'm getting hit with a hurricane in Rhode Island on my traveling day.

Related articles

• 'Nightmare' scenario: Hurricane menaces East Coast (boston.com)
• Betch of the Week: Hurricane Irene (betcheslovethissite.com)

Second Semester Reflections

I know it's been a little while. Block 4 exams came and went, as did Finals and after 10 hours of flying, waiting, and driving, I'm back home in Rhode Island. I finally have time to reflect on the last two weeks and actually update you guys on how I did.

I still can't believe this semester is done. I'm sort of in a state of shock at the moment and I'm not quite sure why. The semester went by pretty fast, but the last two weeks felt like "Groundhog's Day." I just felt like I was reliving the same day over and over again. I would wake up, eat, study, and sleep, while never leaving my apartment and I just did the same thing day after day after day. Needless to say, things got old pretty fast. There came a point where I couldn't even motivate myself to look at another slide so I did something crazy and actually went to the library. I've been there about 5 times in the last 8 months. But the crazier thing is I actually studied for like 9 hours straight. I couldn't believe how effective the move was. It's amazing what a change in scenery can do for your study habits. Too bad this was the Friday before Finals. After taking Block 4 exams a few days prior, I was just so burnt out that the entire week was pretty much a wash.

The second semester class got  jipped when it came to Finals scheduling. While most people at the school got to take their exams early in the day and finish at 1:00 p.m. we started our exams at 1:30 and didn't finish till 8:00 p.m. We had a 45 minute break in between. I'm sure there are some people who don't mind taking exams that late in the day, but I'm not one of them. My mind just refuses to work after a certain hour and the fact that I had to take my last exam at 6:30 at night.... yuck. That exam happened to be Physio, and it also turned out to be my worst grade (82%). I don't think I can attribute my score solely on the time though.

The incompetence of Dr. B and his INability to write a normal, grammatically correct, sensical question is astounding. What gets me even more is that the head of the Physio department refuses to do anything to fix the situation. There needs to be some screening process to his questions. I took Physio as a Junior in undergrad and honestly, that class was a lot harder than the one here and somehow I am doing worse when this is the second time I'm learning all the same material... okay?

Sorry for that. These thoughts have been weighing on me for a little while now and I just had to get it out.  After my last rant about MCB Block 2, I went to the head of the MCB department with a couple other students and we told Dr. M about the situation. Afterwards I think he did go ahead and speak with our teacher and  I'm happy to report that the last two block exams in MCB have been fair with no random/pointless/absurdly detailed questions, and the class averages have improved.

I'm sure some of you guys are wondering how I did overall. Did I or didn't I meet my goal? Did I get A's? Did I fail? Well, the two words that sum up my semester are "Just Short", unfortunately. I ended up with an 89 average in both MCB and Immunology for the semester. One point away from Honoring both those courses :( For Block 4 I had gotten an 84 in Immuno and a 92 in MCB. For Finals I got a 94 in Immuno and an 84 in the MCB Shelf. I just flip flopped. It's disappointing that I was doing so well in MCB all semester and getting that 84 on the shelf ruined my average. I had no idea it counted for so much. As for Immuno, all her exams and the Final are all evenly worth 20%, which is a rarity. Finals are  longer with more questions and to have them be worth the same as all the block exams is definitely unique to Dr. Braciale.  If she had placed more weight on the Final, I would have honored this class, but maybe its better this way. The average for the Immuno Final was surprisingly low--only a 78% so I guess those who did poorly were able to take solace in the fact this wasn't worth much more.

Physio quickly became my worst class after block 4 where I did terrible in the exam. We had an excellent teacher for that block teaching cardiovascular physiology, but unfortunately I was unable to finish the exam in time. Almost all my wrong answers came with the last 6-8 questions. My final course grade in Physio ended up being an 80% (p.s. that is somehow worse than when I took Physio the first time in college).

And lastly, did I meet my goal of making Dean's List? I'm not sure. To make it, a student needs an 87% average in their classes. When I took the average of my classes including Biostatistics, I had an 86.6% Do they round this number up? I have no idea, but I'm going to take the liberty and say that they probably don't. If 87% is the cutoff then that's the cutoff. Imagine, if I had gotten one or two more questions right in any of my other exams, I might have made it. *Shakes head* I guess there's always next semester.

DeVry Buys AUC for $235 Million

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this one. Incredulity, anger, and sadness were a few of my initial emotions. I think a numbness has set in at this point. Facebook feeds blew up this morning with people discussing the change in ownership and most communicated feelings of outrage, betrayal or sarcastic joy. The truth of the matter is, I love this school the way it is and I'm afraid DeVry is going to ruin it. There's a certain charm to AUC. I love the small class sizes and the fact that teachers actually recognize me. I like how the classes are fair and that you can succeed if you put the work in. AUC students have been doing outstanding in the USMLE the last couple years and we're only getting better. And now... I'm not sure what's going to happen.

For those of you who don't know, DeVry also owns Ross University. And if you've read any of my posts regarding Ross, I think it's pretty obvious I don't like that school. A school that accepts 500 students and then fails out half the students in the first year? Come on. Who would choose to go to a school like that? Honestly. I'm at a loss. The only reason why I can see someone going to Ross over AUC or SGU is because they didn't get accepted to AUC or SGU. Who wants to go to a school where the school will actually *try* to fail as many people as possible to get their numbers down to the number of clinical spots they have available in the United States. Bad situation.  And it got this bad once Ross came under the ownership of DeVry.

I think the fear permeating throughout campus right now is that AUC is going to turn into a Ross or that we are going to be losing clinical sites to Ross students. Another fear is that we will actually be associated with DeVry, better known for their technical school. I'm guessing once I leave the islands no one back in the States  is going to know or even care about AUC's ownership, so I'm not as concerned about this. But I do not want AUC to become a Ross. If those DeVry people know anything, they will keep AUC as it is. Sure invest the $20 million on us, but build us a real library, a student center, more dorms, but don't try to shove another 1000 students on to our campus. There needs to be a Caribbean medical school with small class sizes, federal loans and a proven track record. We're it. And they really should not try messing with that.

Of course the changes won't be seen for a few years down the road (once I've graduated hopefully), but for all you prospective students, it is something to think about.

Check out the article here.