Thursday, July 31, 2008

Day Twenty Five.

This is the night before our final presentation! I'm a little nervous to be speaking in front of 70 people, but I think I'll pull through. We finished with our presentations today, and we met with our journal club leader. She was a really good person, and I'm sad that we won't be seeing her anymore. We had some good talks about neurology, even though shes going to be a dentist. Our presentation is going to be the last one tomorrow, so I'm happy about that.

Today, after our short class, our journal club worked on our presentations. I think today was an uneventful day, but it was a different kind of uneventful. I enjoyed today a lot more than I did the other days. After we finished our powerpoint presentation, me and a couple of friends hung out. I really enjoyed getting to know these people.

After my last journal club meeting, I met up with Courtney and Susan to go to Ross in downtown Philadelphia. We walked around and I found myself a new suitcase to replace my old broken one. The embarrassing thing was having to carry it from Ross back to the dorms.

We went to McDonalds for dinner tonight. After eating, we hopped back onto the subway and went back to the dorms. I spent the night outside, socializing.

All in all, it was an uneventful night but the reason I liked it so much was because I got to know people a little bit better. The sad thing is that we'll be leaving in three days.

1 comment:

Don Gosney said...

Cynthia⎯How wonderful to hear from you again. It seems like forever since we’ve heard from the Penn Gals and we were starting to worry. Maybe you all were studying too hard, or maybe you found a local frat with a full keg of beer or maybe you just stopped caring for those of us you left behind. When the silence becomes deafening, our minds start going off in wild directions and we suspect the worst. But now that you’re back, all is okay.

Of course, we have to wonder when we read that you splurged and hit up Mickey-D’s for supper. I realize that you’re all a part of that demographic that Mickey-D is after but did you have to succumb? Imagine that your folks are reading this and start to worry about you slipping into poor dietary habits. The least you could have done was go for the Burger King where the patties are char broiled instead of fried.

You’ll probably make your oral presentation before you get a chance to read this but on the off chance that you get up early and do some extraneous reading, we wish you all the best of luck. And before you head in to face your classmates, remember that you’re there to have fun. If you get an education while you’re having fun, that’s just the icing on the cake but the fun part is the cake. Without the cake, there’s no reason for the icing. If we who are so much older and wiser than you have faith in you, why should you doubt yourself?

I’m glad you went for some new luggage. The horror stories you wrote about earlier didn’t make the return trip sound all that safe for your gear. On my first trip to the Antarctic I bought a special large duffel with a set of wheels on the bottom for easy maneuverability. These were the days before all luggage came with super sophisticated wheels like they do now. Those wheels were pretty rudimentary. Anyway, as I’m at the baggage check area waiting for my bag to come up the ramp, first comes some hardware and then some pieces of wheels and then my bag rolls up. Of the five wheels that were attached when I gave them my BRAND NEW high priced bag, only one wheel was still attached. Now try to imagine trying to lug around a 130 pound bag without wheels⎯along with my other bags and camera equipment. Now I’m a whole lot bigger than you all are but I’m not that big. All I could do was just drag it around. And I didn’t have a Ross to go to for a replacement.

About that journal club leader who was speaking on neurology but plans to become a dentist: aside from drilling, filling and billing, dentists do root canals which drill deep into the nerves of your teeth. Isn’t that a part of the body’s neurological system? I’m pretty sure that before I let my dentist do some drilling like that he’s had at least a brief class on neurology.

Hey, you have but a couple of days left to bond with your new friends so make the most of them. Have some fun, post a few blogs (with photos) and then head on down to the airport where you can come home to us.