Long Day And Night

I woke up extremely exhausted but ready to take on the morning ahead. We had this competition where all the groups had to sing a top 40 song to one of the proctors. The first 3 groups who did this first would be awarded house points.

The night before, our proctor planned the whole thing out; two girls would grab Allison (the proctor) once she got her breakfast and all the rest of us would come out, surprise her with a few posters and sing for her. In the end, we were the first ones to sing to her, after barely going before a group that was going to sing to her as well. I admit, it was a little embarrassing, but it was really fun.

Class today day was a little different than usual. After we finished the film from yesterday, “And the Band Played On” we had a class discussion about the social issues of the film. Once again we were put into groups to discuss one of these social aspects and our group talked about the media aspect of the film. We all decided that the media was extremely reluctant to screen anything about AIDS. AIDS was first thought to be caused by gay people, so the press ignored anything and everything with the name ‘gay’ on it.

There were also other elements in the film that I found pretty terrible about our society today. Many places, like the blood banks, were unwilling to do anything about the AIDS virus in their blood because there was not enough evidence to prove that the AIDS virus was transmitted through blood transfusions. Although you do need evidence to prove such a thing, the fact the people were dying after getting blood from the banks was good enough for proof. The only reason these facilities decided doing anything about AIDS was because they did not want to lose money. It seems that these companies only concern was money, and not human lives. All this made me realize that ALL social aspects influence drugs and science in general.

In the Seminar Room

After our discussion, we all left to the Vanderbilt Research Facility – something we haven’t done yet. We were going there to hear a seminar taught by Sean B. Seymore. He was some sort of drug patent lawyer and we spent the time there to lean about the patenting of drugs. We learned everything; from the invention process, prosecution, and enforcement. In all honesty though, this part of science does not interest me as much because it has to do a lot about the legal process of science.

The beautiful cieling of Wyatt Hall

Once class ended, we went to the Wyatt Hall, where all the Arête classes would do a presentation for everyone. All the classes were pretty entertaining to watch, with the Dance around the World class being my favorite. All the dancers were pretty good after dancing for only a week and I really enjoyed the Bollywood-style dancing going on. This really makes me excited for my next Arête class: Glee which I believe involves both singing and dancing.

Waiting for the show to begin...

Later that day, we got ready to go to the Glow-in-the-Dark Dance in the Wyatt Hall. I usually don’t dance, so I wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy it as much. I was totally wrong though. The dance was so much fun! We danced and jumped around until our feet hurt; that ended up being around 9:45 though.

Ready for the dance!

Tomorrow will be the beginning of my first weekend at VSA and I am looking forward to what’s in store for tomorrow. I heard a baseball game is on the list! I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow then.