I miss Grey's Anatomy.

Thursday's morning activities included Leadership Development for THREE HOURS. We broke into random groups of about ten people, and were assigned three tasks which were designed to show us some situations we may encounter in the veterinary profession. While a bit juvenile in some ways, I think the projects were good in determining what type of leaders there are in the world, and what type we specifically are. Right off the bat, one girl just sat back in her chair, said something about this activity being stupid and her being hung over and that she wouldn't participate. Cross that girl off my list for possible lab partners.

The first activity was to trace body parts or draw a symbol of our group identity, and within the symbol write words that we feel are good qualities in a person/group/vet, and outside of the symbol write words that are negative qualities. Our group chose to trace our hands (circa thanksgiving turkey pictures when you were 8 years old) into a 'sun' style shape. We were given sharpie markers in various colors; it took a few people's handtracings to realize that it was good we didn't decide to trace our silhouettes or we would have a face full of sharpie.

Next was the teambuilding/positive & negative input activity. Two kids were told ahead of time that they were to give feedback verbally, one would be the positive person and the other the negative (that would make two negative people now if you count the hungover girl, who I just ignored). The group was given some paper, masking tape, markers, cardboard boxes, and scissors and were directed to create a habitat for an animal of our choice. Side note - I found it interesting that in discussing with other groups most people opted for pocket pets of some kind; gerbil, hamster, rabbit, ferret - one cat and no dogs. Back to our group...we chose to create a rabbit cage, and after about 10 minutes of bantering over ideas we began to build. There were about 3 or 4 people who quickly jumped to the floor to start physically working on the project, 2 people created the 'bunny', and the rest sat back and gave directives/suggestions. It was pretty easy to figure out what the pos/neg people were doing. And it was interesting to see who sort of became the natural leader, taking charge and making sure things were being done (me).





This is "Tapey", our beloved rabbit.





Tapey's cage, complete with den (hole cut in box leads to another enclosed box.

Our final exercise was to read a passage about substance abuse in the veterinary field (a blurb about a student who abused drugs and alcohol, which eventually lead to him using patients meds and him getting caught by another student. Will she tell on him? Will he clean up his act? Or will she sit down and shoot up with him? This story led to some colorful recollections of people's encounters with vets/techs using stolen drugs, and with discussion about alcohol/drug abuse on campus. Apparently its really easy to get narcotics around here. Who would've thunk it, considering Columbia is like across the pond.
The afternoon was left to us to find something to do, and as there aren't any amusement parks or mini-golf courses around here we went to.....drum roll please.....the beach! My mom will love it here. This time we headed to Timothy Beach and most of the students played beach volleyball. I was a bit beached out at this point, so I parked myself on a stool at Ziggys and read my book.



Students playing volleyball just outside of Ziggys.


Shortly after my arrival at the bar, a nice local came in with his 8 month old monkey, Cindy. She was dressed as an island girl, which was just too cute, and not just a bit creepy (they look remarkably like shriveled up babies with lots of hair). He let us hold her, take some pics, and feed her. She was very sweet and playful, jumping from bar stool to bar stool in an effort to make us chase her.



Cindy with her owner.




Derek had to have another picture. She really seemed to like him!





Kristin #1 and me with Cindy (She's my future lab partner. Kristin, not the monkey).



Kristin feeding her new friend some pinto beans from our chili cheese fries.




Derek asking for just one more shot (and Cindy enjoying her pinto bean)!

All in all it was a perfect afternoon, which was topped off by me coming home, cleaning up a bit, and hitting the sack.