Friendships In VSA

Today our lesson was on the origin of drugs, and how people perceive the risk that drugs may or may not impose.Risk is all about perception, and how each person separately views each situation. There are several factors that come into play when analyzing risk. For example, factors like control, trust, new risks, and cost-benefit ratio play an important part in this. If someone controls the situation, they feel like there under little risk, however if it was that same situation controlled by someone else, that person feels nervous since they are no longer in control. A lot of the other factors also go along this way; if there is trust, there is less risk, if there is something unknown, there is more risk.

How does this translate to drugs? Well, there are several drugs people worry about too much, or even too little. For instance, people are not aware of the simple over-the-counter medicine like aspirin. Aspirin can cause stomach ulcers, which is a serious side-effect. However, many people just take aspirin without thinking about the side-effects since the benefit of getting rid of your pain seems higher than the side-effect that can happen. People usually think about this in a “this can’t happen to me” way and therefore don’t perceive such things as harmful or risky.

After this lesson, we all had the chance to teach a section in our textbook to the class. The section I had was about teratogens, a drug or chemical that is harmful to an embryo and will cause birth defects. I think teaching in front of the class is a great way to speak out and have a taste to what it is like to be teacher. The students and professors also asked me questions and discussed about what they thought about the subject. Class went by a little slow; nonetheless, I still learned a lot.

Anna and my roomate Meera!

Arête class was really great today since we actually got to spar each other with the sabers (swords). I did very well if I do say so myself since I beat the first couple persons I sparred. Even so, I lost my last round. I hope we get to spar with more people tomorrow!

Tonight, we had this cool ‘event’ called S.O.F.T Night, which stands for sign out free-time. During this time, everyone can sign out to cruise around town for about two hours. Although it is not as long as I’d like, I still had a lot of fun. I hung out with a bunch of my new-found friends in Sweet CC’s and the nearby CVS. Sweet CC’s had REALLY good frozen yogurt and I hope I go there again.

At Sweet CC's

(Left to Right) Alexa, me, and Sara

After S.O.F.T Night, I ended the night with my friends and we played card games, guess games, and other sorts of games. Overall, I’ve had such an amazing day today with all my friends. Making new friends is what these summer programs like these are for; you want to make new friends to make new connections, and ultimately learn from them.