Today I really began to get hooked on General Assembly. I decided to work on my case for the Advanced Patient Counseling Competition I was participating in this afternoon, and better to work on it in there where I can hear everything that's going on as well as ask questions of the more advanced students around me!
My time slot for the completion was 3:10, so after lunch Christine and I went to our room to practice and get ready. Here's a little blurb I wrote about the competition:
Patient Counseling Competition - Ron, Ojong, Christine, and I all participated in the advanced PCC. Our case was about a 26 YOF who is having levetiracetam added to her drug regimen of carbamazepine. These are drugs I have not yet covered in school as I am only a rising 2PD, although I have learned the pathophysiology of seizures well so I had a good knowledge of the situation. Doing research on new drugs was extremely interesting and beneficial for me. I have never participated in a counseling competition before, so although we practice in school, the competitive edge of the afternoon was thrilling. The feedback was great and are improvements that will help my counseling and communication skills in more ways than just pharmacy. I thoroughly enjoyed my first PCC and look forward to participating in many more!
Although I missed some points, I had a great time. Christine says she hit them all, so I hope she moves on to the finals! Well of course I hope I do too but I don't think that's realistic. We headed back to GA for the rest of the afternoon.
We decided we were over Indian food, so we took advantage of the in-hotel restaurant, Okra, which gave all conference students a discount on the buffet. This included better quality food of the same things served to us (makes sense since it's prepared in smaller portions), and pizza, pasta, and dessert bars! This might have been our most satisfying meal yet, although I may have messed up. They served us water that they said was filtered and I drank it, but my stomach began cramping and didn't stop until later on in the night.
Tonight's event was auction night. I had purchased raffle tickets earlier in the day, so although I had no intentions of bidding on an item, I hoped to win a raffle prize! It was a pretty causal night, but me and the girls decided to make it a little black dress affair. We got down a little late after our dinner, but right when we arrived one of the girls from the U.S. Was modeling an item, a headdress and shoulder covering jewelry things, I know I'm not explaining that properly, and shortly thereafter a few of us did win raffle prizes! My prize was African jewelry, country of origin I am unsure. Whitley (the one modeling) loved them, so I gave her the earrings, since they were dangles and I honestly never wear those. One item was a jacket from Germany, and it sold for €175. 175?!?! And that's not the only high one. The money these things sold for is crazy!! Anyway, there was no real event after the auction was over, so some of the Canadian students decided to plan a beer pong tournament in the garden. There were far too many people interested in participating to keep it at one table of beer pong, so the game changed a million times and 75-100 of us socialized in the yard. At one point I went inside to use the bathroom, and when I pulled my dress up, it ripped!! Amy assured me you couldn't tell and I went about my night. But later on I sat down in the grass and it split up to my hips! My night ended there (which is okay because it was 3:30AM at this point and I headed upstairs clutching the back of my dress. It was a long night which may be a regrettable lack of sleep tomorrow, but it was fun just talking to people and getting to know them better. This night really brought all the participants together as friends instead of fellow participants I think.