Transitioning

It is pretty amazing how one week can make all the difference in the world. When I arrived here off the plane I was tired, angry, alone, and seriously doubting my decision to arrive. Now that I have met a few friends and have figured out where things are, I sleep better at night. Here is what has been going on the past few days...

Orientation wrapped up over the weekend with a large bazaar on campus, sponsoring several local businesses to come out and sell their wares. SGU gave each incoming freshman $30 EC (Eastern Caribbean) to spend on food and whatnot. I bought 5 bananas and 2 cucumbers for $7 which came out to not quite $3 in US. Beer and sammiches were also free through the University and it was quite the party.

Monday morning and the semester has begun!!! While all of the med students and upperclassmen vet students headed to class, the 1st term vet students were invited to a beach resort for a 2-day professionalism workshop. A study came out several years ago through the University of Washington that graduating veterinary students were very capable in medical knowledge and technical skills, but epically failed in people skills. Sooooo....SGU has started this workshop (first of many) to teach vet students how to work with people. Some of the future subjects in this term will be topics like grief counseling, informed consent, veterinary ethics, etc. For this workshop we talked about communication overall and did the corny team building exercises. Overall the experience was beneficial in getting to meet many more of my classmates and three free meals over a 2 day period. Here are some pictures of the resort we were at for this....yes that is me in a hammock.

So nice workshop was over on Tuesday afternoon and then Tuesday evening we had the White Coat Ceremony. The ceremony is supposed to signify the welcoming of new students into the medical profession, where we slip on a white doctor-looking coat and say the veterinarians' version of the Hippocratic Oath. Though SGU had good intentions to make this memorable ceremony for us, it was memorable in a way I am glad my parents did not waste the money to fly down and witness it. To start off the ceremony, we had SGU's first female Grenadian graduate make the initial introductions and give thanks to various people. Though Grenadians are a kind and wonderful people, I have not met a single one who willingly projects his/her voice from the default soft-spoken whisper; so if you put a microphone in front of Grenadian and throw her on stage, we do not have a very happy situation. Overall her public speaking skills were not bad and her seashell dress was awesome. The best part of the ceremony was the key note speaker- a veterinarian visiting from Auburn University. I really wish I had taped the whole thing because my description would not do his speech justice...he spent the ENTIRE monologue praising Auburn University. He began with a quote that he felt symbolized Auburn's spirit. He discussed how Auburn's vet school took wing and became a successful university in 1907, back when sugar was $0.05 a pound and bacon was $0.16. He focused 99.9999999% of his attention on how wonderful HIS school was. It got to the point that all of us were looking around mouthing "Are we going to Auburn now?" Even my anatomy professor this morning was making jokes about the key note speaker- it was very special. I did not have my camera on me last night, but pictures will be forthcoming for that.

Actual classes began for us this morning, on another evening I will try to go into more detail about them. I have procrastinated long enough tonight.