It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

Hello everybody! As you noticed, I haven’t blogged in about four days, and probably won’t have much chance to blog in the next week and a half, and you’ll see why. The next week and a half will be the busiest I’ll ever experience THIS YEAR. First we have our 4th Block exams on Monday for Anatomy/Embryology and MCB/Genetics, then immediately afterwards, I’ll be prepping 24/7  (even during my sleep) for the Anatomy Shelf Exam on Friday. This exam is a national exam that is taken by every medical student in the United States. While most schools probably would not use the scores towards your grade, our school decided to use the score as our final exam! Hence, it will be sent to the United States to be graded by the big people in charge of the shelves, then sent back to St. Maarten, where the scores will be bell curved to be more “reasonable” for a course grade. This test will give us an idea how we compare on the national level. Then the following Wednesday, we’ll have our accumulative final exam in Molecular Cell Biology, which will count for 30% of our grade! yikes. It’s a little scary to think that 50% of my grade for MCB will be determined by how I do in the next week and a half. I’ll be biting a lot of fingernails in the next few days.

On another heart-warming note, our school has begun putting up Christmas decorations, with poinsettas everywhere you look and a large Christmas tree in the atrium. It looks pretty nice, which I’m surprised of… earlier this week, I saw Le Grande Marche (the local grocery store) began selling Christmas trees, but they looked more like “Christmas bushes.” They weren’t quite conical shaped, and the leaves weren’t quite needles, but more juniper-like. I just assumed this was what they grew in this part of the Caribbean… afterall St. Maarten is more of an island of bushes and cacti than a tropical forest. But our Christmas tree looks pretty nice.. perhaps they fed-ex’d it over from the states. Check it out!