Through a series of unfortunate events yesterday, some beyond my control but most perfectly within it, I ended up locked out of the house on my afternoon off. Surely Thursday is your longest day, you may say, but this week was different. The week of the bussing boozefest that is BMSA Mystery Tour. I entertained notions of going this year, but thankfully the Sci-Fi club Christmas dinner was booked for the same night, so I had my excuse. From what I hear it was the usual drunken mess, which isn’t really my cup of tea, but seems to have the opposite effect on most of my class. I have no desire to drink until I can’t remember where the hell I am, or feel feelings.

But I digress. My clinical attachment GP Dr Gough, being the incredibly awesome person he is, gave us the afternoon off to give those group members who did go a chance to recover. Having an afternoon off sounded like a good idea initially, but I missed it all the same. So I rushed back to the house and only realised I was missing my keys when I reached the middle of Stranmillis. It was raining fairly heavily by now, so the only place to go was Nerdtopia until Mark or Niall made it back home. The weather sucked, but as usual Nerdtopia was very good. It was £2 for all sizes of hot chocolate thanks to the weather, and I had a good chat with the owner who is really dead on, and even gave me some extra hot chocolate. We chatted about life in general, then I started back for the house to see if anyone had turned up. Of course it was a Thursday, and everyone else was away on clinical attachment till 4/5 pm. It was a nightmare, and I entertained finding another way into the house, but that notion didn’t last too long. It was cold, wet, and nearly everyone else was still in class. I was going to bother Alan, and then remembered the one place which was warm, had computers, and I could work. The McClay library! The solution to every problem, though it was ridiculously busy. The afternoon wasn’t a waste after all, and I got a fair bit of work done on my presentation and SSC revision. The library isn’t perfect, and one of the things that really aggravates me is computer hogging. I don’t mind if you stay on the computer to work all day, please don’t ever leave all your stuff over the desk with your coat on the chair (blatantly logged out) only to come back about 30 minutes later. Don’t be shocked if I do any one of the following: move your stuff away, throw your stuff in the bin, just set fire to it all, or just point out the simple rules of the library (have some common decency people). This isn’t a restaurant…there are no reservations here.

Anyway to paraphrase Roy from the IT crowd, “People…what a bunch of bastards.” That’s my rant for the week over with anyway. Well sort of, but I won’t be ranting any more here tonight. In general, the week was pretty busy. Most of my time was spent creating and tweaking a presentation comparing two drugs used for a particular case of COPD, which my group gave this morning. Thankfully I escaped presenting because I had done pretty much everything else, and my group won! How exactly you win a treatment presentation I do not know, but apparently ours was the best, which is always nice. My SSC finished up today as well, with a bugger of a test that I could have easily done without. At least it’s out of the way and I don’t overly care about the result.

In random things, I’ve noticed my punctuation can be rather extreme at times. Over-punctuation?! It’s a serious problem! I apologise, and also want to inform you that I’m not shouting at the screen when I’m writing this (apart from the library seat thing). My use of punctuation just needs some refining, so bare with me for the time being.

The QUB Sci-Fi Christmas dinner was also this week, in the Northern Whig. It was good as far as Christmas dinners go (and my first paté

experience was also pretty good) though I never find them as good quality as the standard meals. The food I got at the Whig last time I was there was very good and beautifully presented. Fair enough, when you are producing food for a lot of people at the same time it isn’t going to be as exciting as an individually prepared meal. It was a good night out all in all, though I was nearly freezing to death walking back to my house. The prices for cocktails are really too steep a lot of the time, especially for distinctly average ones. There were some good ones available, but I managed to strike out and pick a glass of disappointment. At least we had a few pitchers of cocktails at the table. The best part of it all though; another excuse to wear my suit, which has only had a handful of airings this year. Suit up!

As far as other things go, I put together the PQAC facebook group for second year medicine, and set up the email account. The whole idea of the group is to make it easier to contact the class representatives and provide a more central place to collect course feedback, but membership has pretty much leveled off. We’ve got up to half of the year group onboard now but nobody has posted! I need a way of getting things off to a start – perhaps an announcement in lectures, or something else. I don’t want to keep bothering people about it while still making them aware that they can contact the year reps if there are any issues or comments about the course. I’m starting to wonder how many people actually care about this stuff…going by the general trends in the year, not that many. It is important because the course can actually be changed in response to feedback from PQAC and students, as opposed to the council back at school who had no ability or power to change anything (particularly with the syllabus set in stone).

I did say I wouldn’t go off on a rant again, but I did, so sue me. Don’t actually…that would be a bad idea, and an expensive option.