Life After Connecticut College

So, my first semester of graduate school was pretty awesome. Admittedly, I was not a huge fan of Philly or Penn when I first got there...especially coming from beautiful conn college. But, I've really come to appreciate the school and the city for what they have to offer.
We had some great end of the semester department parties hosted by the department at a restuarant called the Bubble Tea House and on the 14th floor of the Biomedical Research Building. The Bubble Tea house is an Asian fusion restuarant that serves bubble tea and lots of other tea. It's always fun drinking and eating with your professors, something we should have done more often in college! I have to say, those student advisor selection parties at Dean A's house were pretty awesome! Anyway, the Bubble Tea House party was fun. The BRB party was also awesome, as I got slightly tipsy before heading to my final class (the party was in the early afternoon) in pharmaceutical ethics! Of course, it made class even more interesting. Don't worry, I was so nervous I'd do something embarrassing, even more embarrassing than normal, that I waited for about an hour of class before I decided I could speak coherently. But, I did get to know some of my classmates very well at both of those parties, and they are an interesting group of people. We have a lawyer from Merck Pharamceuticals, a lawyer for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, a researcher for Pfizer, a big time (pharm hatin') lawyer from philly, a bunch of doctors, an executive at Johnson and Johnson, and some very accomplished professors just to name a few.
I also ended the semester with ANOTHER dinner party that included a different crowd of people and my brother as the lead chef. I'm never quite sure who's gonna show up, but a different mix show up each time and it always works out really well. Maybe I'll have one in january with Chris's awesome band! I listen to them all the time and I would recommend you do the same. Back to the dinner party, we had duck and sweet potatoe latkes! It all turned out really well and if you're looking for the recipe I'll send it your way.
I'm back home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin hanging out and trying to relax during my 40 day winter break, which will be my first real winter break since middle school. I will miss my florida swimming training trip, but milwaukee is just as warm. All you Jews I hope you had a good Hannukah, and everyone else have a good Christmas. But no matter who you are you should drink eggnog, apparently first consumed in Jamestown, Virginia after its founding in the early 17th century. WHO KNEW?

Posted by Sam Garner at 07:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

First off, let me tell everyone to check out the photos from the Class of 2007 Half-Year Reunion, which you can view by clicking the link under the pictures of the seven bloggers on the main page. There are some pretty cool shots!

On to more pressing issues! So Mitch and I had our much-anticipated ugly holiday sweater party on Tuesday, and I'm proud to say that I took the prize for most heinous specimen (the sweater, not me). It was a tight contest (it was literally tight; I was wearing a women's size medium), and there were some good contenders, but it's tough to beat a lime green cardigan with ice skating reindeer, mirthful snowmen (sorry, snowpeople) and a dancing Santa. Despite the fact that this God-awful green garment guided me to victory like a tacky neon lighthouse, I did not hesitate to return it to Sears after work yesterday [Editor's note: I swear to the Ghost of Christmas Past that this is the exact sweater I wore to the party; thanks to Ben from College Relations for the Photoshopping]....

....Earlier in the day on Tuesday, Becker House (my work turf) had its holiday party, which included my first-ever Yankee swap. I made a trip to Target to try to find the dumbest possible gift, and I think I was successful: I paid $5.99 for a small box of fake leaves labeled "decorative filler." The best part is that they are made in China and have a warning that they are highly toxic. It ended up backfiring on me though because our custodian Eric, who is one of the nicest people on campus, got stuck with my crappy gift! I gave him a Chili's gift card to make it up to him, which he seemed to appreciate. Christmas crisis averted!

Last night, Mitch had his holiday party with the Admissions office, and they even had an afterparty! I went to sleep at about midnight and Mitch was still out having a good time; I guess if you deal with teenagers all day some of their youthful vigor rubs off (eww, I don't want to think about anyone's vigor getting rubbed). Meanwhile, I was stuck home alone just doing laundry and twiddling my thumbs (ugh, I don't want to think about anyone's thumbs getting twiddled either). Fortunately, I caught this new game show called Duel, which is pretty much like 50 people playing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? two at a time against each other (when we were kids, my brother and I had a game called "Duel," except that just involved punching each other in the arm until one of us couldn't take it anymore). The show isn't anything too spectacular, but what made it interesting to me was that they identify each player not by name but by occupation, i.e. "The Used Car Salesman" or "The Carpenter" or "The Software Engineer" or "The Crossing Guard" or "The Negotiator" or "The Count of Monte Cristo" or "The Goonies" or "The Hunt for Red October" (oh sorry about that; I'm writing this post while making my Netflix selections online and I guess I got sidetracked for a second). This aspect adds a nice undertone of class warfare and socioeconomic prejudice to show, which just makes for good television (plus one of the contestants is a stripper).

Tonight I'm gonna try to get the rest of my Christmas shopping wrapped up (pun definitely intended). I only need three more gifts, so hopefully it won't take too long (I'm seeing my future in a Crystal Mall).

On Saturday I'm playing a gig downtown at The Oasis with Professor Gabe "California Love" Chandler; hopefully I'll be able to build up a little more New London street cred. The last time we had a gig downtown, there was a photographer there from the New London Times (southeastern Connecticut's free weekly journal of record), but alas my visage has yet to grace their 35% post-consumer pages.

Next week I'll be at my parents house in beautiful Nashua, NH, so I'll probably be blogging 4-17 times per day out of sheer boredom. Don't miss it!

Posted by Chris Reilly at 01:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I thought I'd use that title because I figure most people don't read my blog but they will atleast acknowledge my titles. If you do read the blogs...definitly check out Chris's!

So if you have read Chris's last entry, you know that I hosted a christmas/holiday party this past friday. This was my second attempt of the season for a holiday party (the first was poorly attended due to the fact that I was over zealous and held the party on thanksgiving weekend when everyone was still home). Overall it went pretty well. The highlight was definitly the abundance of jello shots (in christmas colors of course). My new friend (who I met on the bus) was in attendence, but he brought with him 2 friends who ended up consuming one too many jello shots and turned from nice interesting guys to sleaze balls who chased my roommate around all night. They also made off with my bottle of jim beam...which doesn't fly with Jaime Pepper. After a nasty phone call the bottle was quickly returned...whewwww. I believe Chris explained the rest of the party pretty well so I'll let you read his blog for more info on that.
Saturday was pretty interesting. The Rustic Overtones/WTF show was off the hook as expected. And despite an anxiously anticipated run-in with an ex, I made it through the show without too many emotional scars..another whhewww.
So tomorrow I'm renting a car and hauling myself and my dog to NYC where I catch a flight friday back to California for a week..YAYYYYY! I can't friggin' wait to see the west coast. Not a whole lot of people understand what it's like to live 3000 miles away from where you grew up. So as cali people say "I'm totally stoked"!!! When I fly back to NY, I plan to spend new years in Manhatten so if you're doing something exciting in NY please let me know!!! We're all still deciding what to do!

Posted by Jaime Pepper at 01:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well this was a weekend for the record books! As you may recall from my last post, I headed up to Boston for a holiday party at the home of Jaime "The Ferocious Five-Footer" Pepper and for a Welcome to Florida/Rustic Overtones double bill at Harper's Ferry (Boston's premier Civil War-themed rock venue). Along for the ride was, of course, my roomie Mitch "Nebraska?!? I hardly know her!" Herz as well as our friend Laurel "Rude, Crude, and Tattooed" Mitchell (she's actually only tattooed, but I thought she could use a more substantial nickname). Compounding the fun factor of the weekend was the fact that Laurel's 21st birthday was on Saturday. Not surprisingly, it was quite an adventure....

....Things got rolling on Friday when Mitch and I picked up Laurel at Conn's own Shain "Yearning for Learning" Library and hit the road. We arrived at Jaime's place, which is either in Allston or Brighton (no one knows for certain where one ends and the other begins; they're sort of the Siamese twins of Greater Boston towns), in record time and consequently were among the first guests to arrive. It had actually been a pretty hectic week, so I was eager to starting having some fun (as opposed to most of the time, when I hate to have fun). Fortunately, fellow Class of '07er Cornelius "Gardenburger" Hardenbergh (that joke was especially clever considering he is a recovering vegan) was already in attendance, so I chatted with him for a while. We had such a good time catching up that by the time I looked around the party was in full swing! Immediately something seemed askew, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I discretely polled Mitch, Cornelius, and Laurel to see if any of them had sensed something similar, but none had detected anything out of the ordinary. Perplexed, I decided to to put it out of my mind and assume that nothing was wrong. A while later, however, it struck me: the ratio of dudes to ladies was about 7:1! Certainly this is not unheard of, but after being at Conn and its 60:40 female:male ratio for four years, I felt a little out of place. Laurel, on the other hand, seemed to have no problem being on the receiving end of the advances of every eligible male in a 100-yard radius (Mitch and I are not allowed to hit on Laurel because, as she says, we have already entered the "friend zone"). The rest of the party went fine; one of the highlights was a keyboard, bass, and drum machine jam featuring me and '04 Camel Nate "Was Naked on the Poster Advertising His Senior Recital" Peirce, during which I was forced to lie on the ground while playing keys since no one had a keyboard stand (I'm willing to suffer for my art).

The next night was the WTF/Rustic show. During the day, we had our first practice session in over 2 years (our songs don't exactly call for virtuosity). As I mentioned in a previous post, Rustic is definitely WTF's favorite band, so we wanted to play as well as possible. Duncan, one of our singers/guitarists, has pretty much modeled his life after that of Rustic's lead singer Dave Gutter (that's actually his stage name; his given name is David Downspout). Thankfully, we sounded good at the show, but really we just wanted to get our set out of the way as soon as possible so that Rustic could start. As expected, they played an incredible show. During the encore, they even brought Duncan's sister's boyfriend Joey (the first person to ever get a Welcome to Florida tattoo) on stage to air guitar and dance. They also shouted WTF out during their set and held up one of our t-shirts! The best part, though, was when Dave signaled for Nadia, the ex-girlfriend of Wes (the other singer/guitarist in WTF), with whom Wes had broken up only 2 days prior, to come on stage and dance! I should note that this young lady is very, very attractive and made an excellent on-stage danger, so much so that Tony, the drummer from Rustic, made a stripper joke about her when she got off the stage (no one makes stripper jokes about me anymore; I guess I'm not as young as I used to be). It was certainly one of the more memorable WTF shows to date.

Yesterday was significantly less fun but noteworthy nonetheless. Since Laurel is still a student here at Conn, she needed to get back to campus to take a final exam. So, we all bundled up, Mitch and I borrowed a few shovels from Jaime's neighbors, and we started digging out my Camry. Because Mitch and I are so manly and muscular (go with it), we had that thing cleared out in no time (Laurel provided moral support). The roads actually weren't too bad, though I took it slow on the highway just to be safe. A car behind us on the Mass Pike actually skidded out and flipped onto its side! When we finally got back to New London, I dropped Laurel off on campus, bought a pizza with Mitch, headed home, settled into the couch, and watched football all afternoon (because, once again, Mitch and I are so manly).

Tonight I'll be starting my much-delayed Christmas shopping (it's much-delayed because the mall is my second least favorite place in the universe; my least favorite is of course Temptation Island [Editor's note: that joke took me over 3 minutes to come up with]), and then tomorrow is the ugly holiday sweater party, so I'll be sure to update y'all again soon!

Posted by Chris Reilly at 08:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Okay so I know I just posted an entry but I had to write this one..

This weekend I was in Miami. My cousin called me thursday night and told me she had and extra free ticket and a place to stay for the weekend.. I told her I had to work but she told me I was being silly and that I should have someone cover for me and go down to miami with the girls and walk around art basel and see the exhibitions and lie on the beach. she convincing..

An ex boyfriend of mine, nick, lives in Miami and I'd never been so Friday morning I texted him that I was flying down there and would love to see him and where he lived etc etc. Later he called me back and told me he'd made plans for us to go out. I, being quite broke, told him I couldn't really afford going out, and that I was only going because everything was paid for and that I wanted to lie on the beach day and night but he told me not to worry about anything..

Aaaand so we went out. We went to the MANSION. I dont know if anyone knows where that is or what kind of a place it is but let me explain.. It is a pretty big night club with a VIP section in the middle (which was where we were) and let me just say that thinking that I wouldnt be going out, I only brought comfy pants and silly shirts, no make up, nothing dressy and def no heels. The overall club was like any other; very loud, filled with drunk people and men with pick-up lines. Smoking was allowed, both cigarettes and weed, there were pole dancers and the waitress' wore very little, and were all taller than me.

So we were in the VIP section, oh and I don't drink, and my ex's current girlfriend was one of the waitress' there. So she brings a huge bottle of vodka over and everyone starts drinking and spilling stuff all over the place. then my cousin leans over and asks 'how much do you think the pole dancers make?' Apperantly they make about 200 dollars a night. Not bad, I guess but then nick told me that his girlfriend works 3 nights a week at this place, and makes over 100 grand a year! So my mind stops for a minute or two and I feel like an idiot working at a juice bar for 10 bucks an hour but then I see an idiot grab nick's girlfriend's ass and kiss her neck and I am back to loving my job at the juice bar.

That night they spent about 1500 bucks at the mansion and my cousin said 'isn't it weird that the two of you dated in highschool but you'd never even consider going out with him now because of the way he lives?' Which makes me wonder how different I must have been in highschool but yeah anyways it just blew my mind how much money they spent that night and how much money people make at places like this doing what they're doing...

Posted by Deniz Dinler at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This entry is to give everyone a heads up on dating.. and who NOT to be

(and just to clarify I am writing this as a woman who has been hit on by men. I don't know how it is to be hit on by a woman or what it is to be a man and hit on by a man or a woman..)

In college we had all these events that brought people together and if you'd meet someone you thought was attractive in someway you had the opportunity to perhaps ask around a little to make sure you liked what you heard before you jumped into something.

Well in the city, things are a bit different...

You meet a lot of people every day whom you know absolutely nothing about because your friends don't know them either. Things also seem to be moving in a much faster pace in the city than it ever did in college. I understand that the faster pace makes people somewhat more aggresive but if you're a man, do NOT approach a woman you think is attractive with a pick-up line. I understand that it's hard to come up to someone and start a conversation. And you should know that a woman DOES want to know that she looks good but she doesnt want THAT to be the ONLY reason why someone is talking to them. The other day a dude came up to me and said 'wow you have a lot of beauty marks.. you MUST be beautiful!' Don't be that guy..

That said, men don't have to be the only one's approaching the people they find attractive. Be confident and give someone your number if you think they're worth it.

Ladies, wear what you wanna wear, for you, not for the creeps who will be circling you like vultures. It's okay and HEALTHY to wear something you like and think you look good in but be comfortable wearing it. A low cut shirt doesnt mean you're a slut or that you are looking for some action. It can mean that if that's what you want it to mean, but it doesnt have to. It's okay to think you look great in something and appreciate what you look like in it. And if you get a pick-up line and it's seriously a sad attempt, shut the guy down. Don't be the girl who giggles at everything and smiles back because she doesn't know what to do or how to stand up for herself (if you're uncomfortable with the kind of attention you're getting that is). Shut them down so they KNOW it's not working.

Some pick up lines we've gotten since being in the city and responses we've come up with..

You.. wearing that shirt with that body.. should be illegal...
You, talking to women like that IS illegal!

Wow you have a lot of beauty marks! You MUST be beautiful
Wow you really ran out of pick up lines huh?

Has anyone ever told you you have beautiful breasts?
Yes everyday, too bad you can't have them

Posted by Deniz Dinler at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Although I spend most of my free time playing scrabble on facebook, I've managed to get out and discover the boston music scene. This may be the best place to meet people because you already have something in common with the people there (the type of band) and if you're a musician this is a plus because a lot of musicians go to shows! so that's 2 things in common. So i've finally figured out how to make friends...yay! The only thing I regret is that I haven't actually played any music since I've been in Boston which is sad because it used to be half of my life. Unfortunately there isn't a Boston MOBROC.
Moving on...I had a great time in DC with Alex, Eric, Duncan and Jesse...photos will be on facebook when I figure out how to do that (I just bought my first digital camera). DC is an amazing city. The free museums were the best part. I also got to go to the free zoo which was tons of fun. The whitehouse is a lot smaller than I expected.

Ok I have to talk about what happened to my roommates sunday night FOR ALL YOU DRIVERS OUT THERE WHO ALSO DRINK!!! All of my roommates were in a car with a friend of ours that was driving who was slightly intoxicated when they hit a patch of black ice and crashed into a tree, the drivers car is totalled. All of them walked out of the crash with reasonably minor injuries. My roommate who was sitting in the front passenger seat thankgod had her seatbelt on but the seatbelt gave her 2nd degree "friction" burns from the force of impact. The two who were in the back have massive brusing on there legs and knees. They are ridiculously lucky considering that same night 6 people in boston died from driving on black ice related incidents.

Ok I gotta end this blog here...sorry its on an intense note. but I'll follow up soon with details of my christmas party i'll be having this weekend!! Anyone who's in the area feel free to stop by! DRIVE SAFE!!!

Posted by Jaime Pepper at 04:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well, December is upon us, meaning that 'tis the season of wintry weather, wassailing, wonderment, and weight gain (in that order). I've actually been pretty good thus far about keeping my merriment maximized (okay, now the alliteration is approaching an absolutely excessive echelon JUST STOP IT, REILLY!).

On Friday, I attended an ugly holiday sweater party in New York with a few of my friends, including fellow bloggitarian Nathaniel "Mister Mistletoe" Borgelt as well as Class of '07 members Ali "AliCat" Filippelli (yes, I am in fact too lazy to look up the correct spelling of her last name), Sophie "SophFitzticated" Fitzgerald, and Alyssa "Explains It All" Tartaglione. The prize for ugliest and holidayiest sweater went easily to Alyssa, who had her sweater brought in from another state. It was well worth the effort; the hideousness of this garment quite simply eludes description.

The holiday party streak continues this Friday...

...when Mitch and I will be traveling up to Boston "Can't Go a Quarter Mile Without Bumping Into a Camel" Massachusetts to visit '07 bloggerina Jaime "Salt &" Pepper (okay, now I've gone too far with the nicknames). On Saturday, I'll be sticking around Boston to play what is possibly the biggest concert of my life! Welcome to Florida will be opening up for Rustic Overtones at Harper's Ferry in Allston (plug). Rustic is definitely the collective favorite band of WtF, so it should be a really great show. It's also my friend Laurel's 21st birthday on Saturday, a fact which should bump up the fun level to the next stratum (check out that vocab word).

Next week is holiday party season here on campus; I'm eagerly anticipating several staff parties as well as my first-ever Yankee Swap (I hear they're usually a non-stop thrill ride). There's a $10 limit, so that will restrict my options while shopping for the perfect terrible gift (right now I'm deciding between a case of Ramen noodles, the Lou Bega box set, and a $10 gift certificate to eHarmony.com). Mitch and I are also hosting our own ugly holiday sweater party on Tuesday; all potential attendees should note that this post will serve as the official invitation (I don't want anyone at the party who doesn't have the decency to go online and read about every detail of my life).

After all of these parties, I think I'll be too tired to participate in Christmas itself, which is fine with me. I went through an "incident" when I was six that left me with a pronounced aversion to reindeer, so I never get too excited about this particular holiday (I'll let you decide what that means and whether that story is true). I also have to decide what I should do for New Year's; if anyone out there has a great idea, by all means let me know (unless your name is Sam Garner, in which I don't care about your plan to count down to 2008 "in style" at the Brookfield, Wisconsin T.G.I. Friday's).

More updates to come during the egg nog aftermath (ooh, that would be a great Yule-themed hip-hop group)....

Posted by Chris Reilly at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

In this story, which is a true story, Lani is the girl I had a shift with at the juicebar on Monday... She was taking orders at the time while I was back juicing stuff and bringing people their orders.

it's a sad sad story but I had to tell it. so here it goes..

A woman orders a salad, eats some but doesnt finish it. Comes to the counter and says 'I would like to take this home', Lani says 'sure' and grabs a box for her to put her salad in and hands it to her. The customer responds with 'No, I would like to take it TO-GO". Lani, confused, says 'So you're saying you'd like ME to put it in a box for you?' and the customer says 'Well I AM going to take it home..@!#?' So Lani brings the salad over to me and says 'when you're done juicing, do you mind boxing this salad for me?' and I say 'sure.' and go back to juicing and the customer says 'She's not boxing my salad!' Lani responds with 'Yes I know, she will when she finishes doing what she's doing right now, can I help the next person?'
Once I finish juicing, I box the salad and bring it over to the counter. There were a bunch of people standing around and I had no idea who's salad it was so I put the boxed salad on the counter and yelled out 'salad to go?' and the customer said 'yes' and pointed at her bag so I would pick up the salad and put it in her bag for her. And so I did.. Had I known the whole story, from when she had arrived to the point where she told me to put the boxed salad in her bag, I would have asked if she'd like me to carry her bags home, open the box, put some salad in my mouth, chew it and puke it in her mouth so she didn't have to bother doing anything...

I think both Lani and I were both confused at first serving this woman who clearly did not want to step 'down' to our level as servers but then later we wondered if she maybe truly had no idea how to box a salad because all her life other people have been doing everything for her. Can you imagine living a life where you are so rich that you are incredibly helpless and dependent on others because you never got to learn how to take care of yourself and actually live?

Posted by Deniz Dinler at 11:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I really do enjoy being on the road for Conn. Meeting with alums is great, but the time between my meetings is often even more interesting (boring introductory statement complete).

On Monday I was strolling the streets of Washington, DC, a.k.a. "A Windy City" (they make no claim to be the only windy city, unlike a certain other presumptuous blusterous metropolis), and I was flagged down from about 50 feet away by a young woman whom I thought was former fellow Conn College Class of '07 Camel Julia Kwolyk, but who, upon closer examination, turned out to be a Greenpeace worker. Since I had already made eye contact and walked towards her, I felt obliged to stand out in the beastly breeze for a minute and speak with her. As someone relatively new to the field of fundraising, I was also interested to see what her solicitation strategy was like...

"Do you care about the environment?" she asked. Since I live in the environment, I responded that I do.

"Do you support philanthropy?" she continued. Since I work in development, I not only support philanthropy but am supported by philanthropy, so I once again answered affirmatively. At this point, I was completely trapped between the "if" and the "therefore" of her syllogism. I agreed that I would donate using their monthly plan, which is the same system I use to donate to Conn and which I recommend to everyone, especially young alums. I told her I'd like to donate $5 per month, which is the same amount I give to Conn; that seemed like a pretty reasonable donation considering that I'd be doing it indefinitely. She informed me, however, that there was a $15 per month minimum! I agreed to the rate but now feel like I have to give Conn $10 more per month just to even things out! She was very excited to have gotten a donor and enthusiastically walked me through the address and billing information. After I said "New London, CT" once prompted for my city and state, she asked why I was in town. I told her about traveling for Conn and meeting with alumni and soliciting gifts. This got her even more excited, and she told me that we should get together to compare notes on fundraising tactics. I told her that I was flattered but was only going to be in town for a few days. "Well," she began, "if you change your mind, I work at this corner every day, so you know where to find me." It's quite perplexing that I can't get a date in New London, yet women are trying to pick me up off the street when I'm on the road. Maybe if I was on the road all the time.....

Yesterday I got out of a morning meeting with this really nice couple from the classes of '98 and '99 and decided to take a cab to my next meeting since it was so cold out, despite the fact that the distance was probably walkable (forget I said that, Accounting Office). I hailed a cab with relative ease and gave the driver the address that the alumna with whom I was meeting next had given me: 50 Massachusetts Avenue NE. While waiting to arrive at my destination, I browsed through a few files. When the cab finally stopped and the driver told me the fare, I hurriedly paid him, packed up my things and exited the cab. As he drove away, I looked around and realized that there was no sign of the restaurant that I was supposed to be at; in fact, there was no sign of anything except dozens of row houses and a few cars passing by. I soon discovered that I was at 1500 Mass Ave SE! It's times like this that separate good advancement officers from great advancement officers (or in my case, from pretty good advancement officers that don't have the cell phone number of the person they're meeting and therefore cannot call ahead to say that they'll be late). Since there were no cabs or metro stops anywhere in sight, I laced up my dress shoes as tight as they would go and traversed the 1.5 miles in record time. I actually made it to the meeting (which turned out to be inside of Union Station, which would have been very easy for a cab driver to find) on time, but needless to say I wasn't smelling like a bouquet of daisies on a spring afternoon. I took a quick bathroom break to get my freshen up on and had plenty of time to relax before lunch.

Compared to this stuff, my meetings seem pretty dull, so I'll spare my readership (which at this point probably just consists of my mom) the boredom of hearing about them.

Posted by Chris Reilly at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So Friday was our big kick-off party for this year's Senior Giving drive. I'm in charge of the program this year and have the task of more than 95% of the seniors to make a gift (could be tricky because no group of people could ever do anything better than the Class of 2007 does anything (that was confusingly written (sorry))). Anyway, the party was a lot of fun, and we're already at about 20% participation! One of the best things about it was that the turnout was great despite the absence of alcohol. As usual, President Higdon said all of the right things; he really makes my job easier in that regard.

Right now I'm in DC doing some alumni visits, which is nice. I've met 14 new people just in the last two days and have yet to get anyone's name wrong (knock on wood). Yes, I actually did just knock on a piece of wood when I typed that (assuming that this end table in Starbucks is made out of actually wood and not just compressed, bleached coffee grounds). I've had to drink a lot of coffee this week because I need to use the free wireless in cafes. I guess buying a Blackberry would probably rectify this situation, but frankly I'm not sure if I'm ready for that kind of lifestyle change; fellow bloggist and former Chris Reilly roommate Nate "Flaxen, Waxen Locks" Borgelt got an iPhone a few weeks ago and has not been the same since. The last time I saw him, he was standing in front of a 10'x10' black cloth backdrop on a street corner and rambling about how incredible it is to have so much functionality in one device. Actually now that I think about it, that might have just been a TV commercial.

It's almost meeting time, but I'll add more updates from the road later.

Posted by Chris Reilly at 03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week I had some pretty interesting classes. On Tuesday my bioethics proseminar discussion was about confidentiality in medicine. Most of the debate for the last 40ish years has been based around the case Tarasoff vs. The Regents of the University of California. Basically, a man was seeing a psychiatrist and told him that he was going to kill his ex-girlfriend. Patients say things like that all the time, but this time the patient actually killed the girl. SO, the parents of the girl took the doctor and his superior to court because they did not follow through with their duty to warn. Good points have been made on both sides, but do you think doctors have a duty to warn if they have strong reason to believe another person's life is in danger? It's a lot harder to give a clear answer on this than you might think!

On Wednesday my Bioethics and National Security class, which is awesome, had a guest speaker, Griff Trotter, talk about the ethics of coercion in disaster based medicine. The talk was pretty interesting, but the dinner afterwards was a lot more fun. The department treats guest speakers to dinner at nice restaurants around campus and invites a few students to come along. Dinner conversation ranged from topics related to his talk to mountain climbing, naked runs, narcissism, fraternizing with students, hippies and his experiences as a military doc in disaster medicine (always makes for some cool stories). The philosophy discussion at dinner was really fantastic and intense, but it was nice to see such a down-to-earth guy.

My Thursday class, pharmaceutical ethics, was centered around medical writing, ghost writing publications and academics taking money from industry. Ghost writing publications for peer-reviewed journals is a huge problem which just adds to my lack of trust of peer-reviewed journals. An example would be a pharm company writing an article about the effectiveness of one of their drugs and then paying an expert in the field to sign their name to the authorship line (that wouldn't be biased at all). Even the big time medical journals like the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine are not immune to these types of cheats, although they have done much to mitigate this problem. SO, next time you say "well it's from a peer-reviewed journal," remember that that doesn't mean it's perfectly authoritative.

There's a healthy dose of bioethics for you for the week.

Posted by Sam Garner at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)