Plate o' Shrimp

This and That

It is 8:15 and perhaps the most telling comment about how midterms went is that I fell asleep at 7:15 last night and slept straight through until 5 this morning. It is not that I was missing sleep, staying up late cramming. I got 7 to 8 hours of sleep every night during midterms. It is not that I had exhausted my self physically by a long hike or swim. I was just mentally exhausted. I tried to study over the last couple of days and I have been going to lecture but NOTHING has been sticking. So I find myself in a sort of battle. I want to give myself enough of a break so that I am rested and ready to resume my studies, but I also don’t want to get behind.

Speaking of my situational ADD, I am sitting in a clinical skills lecture to which perhaps 110% of the class has shown up. It is on the science of alcoholism and started a full hour earlier than most of our lecture. Unfortunately clinical skills is considered a class merely to be born, not really embraced. Ethics lectures are even more poorly attended, and the well-meaning lecture in charge of the ethics portion of the class is widely regarded as condescending and out of touch with student. Obviously I am finding the overly basic and unenlightening lecture on alcoholism less than compelling. If I wasn’t falling asleep at 7pm perhaps I would do something to create a change in the situation, but for now I am unmoved.


In front of my apartment there is a hurricane-damaged hotel without a roof. The rumor is that it has been sold. A small jungle of oleander, bougainvilleas and other flowering shrubs has grown up around it. To get to the main road and catch the bus I walk around the hotel and through a small glen. Last week a flock of smooth beaked anis.. a strange cross between a crow and a parrot, scolded me for disturbing their morning. For the last three days, a set of friendly and determined men has been clearing away the little jungle with machetes and re-exposing the hotel. They create great heaps of flowers and green shrubbery. It has been sad to see the not so old hotel in ruin, but also sad to see my little jungle go away. I wish they had fixed up the potholes in the road instead.

posted by Sa @ 8:36 AM