30 Day challenge: Day 3

Day 3: Your views on drugs and alcohol

An Old Fashioned from ReeseCLloyd's Flickr stream

In an act of unintentional irony, I am blogging drunk.

Which I guess tells you a lot about my attitude to alcohol if nothing else. In my defence, I should point out that I'm not in school tomorrow or working or doing anything (other than maybe going for a run tomorrow morning) which require me to be up early. Not that I generally drink to excess. Generally.

I think drugs is a topic that can be very complicated. For an individual, I think it can represent any number of subtleties in their personality. All the dreadful aspects of the drug trade and all the ills it brings on the world aside, I think if you can't handle your high, you should probably leave any mind-altering substance well enough alone. I particularly think that becoming intoxicated and getting behind the wheel of an automobile is one of the most awful things a person can do.

I can't think of much to write on this topic without sounding judgmental in one way or another, so maybe I need to go away and think on this some more. Maybe that's the point of this exercise - to go and explore topics you thought you had pegged?

One down, a few more to go

So last Friday was the first exam I have done in Med School. And it was "just" a formative. Being a formative is nice because it meant that we could use it as a way to test how appropriate our work in PBL has been.

Allow me to expand on this - PBL involves a lot of self-directed study and this provides an opportunity to decide how deep you want your own learning to go. This can go either way; you can study too little and not have the detail the exams expect you to have, or you can go too deep and learn way more than you need and consequently expend more time and effort than you need.

I felt the exam went okay. You never can tell before the results and I don't intend to jinx myself! It did demonstrate to me that although it was a formative and a learning experience, people were still quietly obsessing about doing well. The talk was all "I just want to pass", but I suspect otherwise.

Still we worked hard and then partied hard for Halloween. My costume was bloodied scrubs and a theate hat (the obvious choice?) and my drink of choice was Guiness until I was told it was time to go home. It felt very good to tie one on in a most cathartic way. And totally wasn't "using alcohol to relieve stress" like the questionnaires say ;)

Now we've moved on to the immune system and infectious disease which is pretty cool and definitely something I have more interest in than reproduction, so hopefully the revision for this bit will be easier!

One thing I have in common with Don Draper

Last night was a night out at The Blues Kitchen in Camden which was pretty awesome. It's quite boutiquey and didn't get crazy busy which was nice. There was some great food, proper American Southern fare and some great drinks particularly the Old Fashioned that I spent most of the night drinking. And unsurprisingly the music was blues, which makes for good background noise when you're eating, drinking and chatting.

I'm quickly beginning to realise that this kind of thing will have to be a once in a blue moon event as I am now coming to the end of my last paycheque. From here on out it's student loans and whatever I can get from the occasional shift - although I'm still yet to actually get on the staff bank.