Carrot on a stick

There hasn't been a lot of new material thrown at us SRTs recently, because we've been writing exams for a week and a half. Maybe this weekend, I'll actually get caught up. Getting completely caught up on the material, I'm supposed to learn, is starting to look like a carrot on a stick to me. A good thing to strive for, but pretty unobtainable.

I hate the brain

Guess what I'm studying now? I hate brain anatomy and physiology. It's just to damn disorganized and hard to visualize. I kind of suspect that as an RT, I won't actually need a detailed knowledge of brain anatomy and physiology. If I ever have to poke around in someones brain, things have gone horribly wrong and probably won't end well...

Finished Exams

I finished my midterm exams last Wednesday and they seem to have gone well. I should have all of my marks by Monday. The marks I have so far, are pretty good. A couple of courses are giving a lot of people trouble and quite a few people are scared that they failed the exams for those courses. Those are the two courses that weed people out of first year. The attrition between first year and second year of my program is about 25%.

I'm a bit baffled by the people in my class, who don't realize how much they need to study. As the semester has gone on, I've adapted and improved my studying to accommodate the learning that's required by the program. A lot of other people just seem to use the same bad study habits over and over and then hope for the best. They're not doing so well and seem to spend a lot of time complaining about how "unfair" things are. Expecting you to learn and apply what you have learned is not unfair, it is required! I used to constructively argue with "the complainers" and give them some advice on how to be more successful. They've bought into the "it's not fair" mindset and won't listen to anyone who doesn't support it. Now when people complain I keep my mouth shut and start reading something or just wander off someplace. It really is unfortunate because they're all pretty intelligent, decent and sensible people. They just have blinders on and don't know it.

I did a job shadow with the staff at a local hospital's RT department a couple weeks ago. It was a really good experience. I watched the cardioversion of an atrial flutter, a tracheotomy being performed and the bronchoscopic biopsy of a vocal chord tumour. The hospital that I went to, seems to be the best one for job shadows. The people who go to that hospital always come back with good stories. One of the people who went there last week, actually got to bag a patient.

It's a Saturday morning. I got up at 6AM, made some coffee and started studying. That's nothing to brag about, that's just what needs to be done. I'm now studying material that was covered in a lecture on October 15th...

I'm never doing that again

After deciding not to cram for my Cardio A&P exam last night, and getting a good nights sleep, I wrote the exam. I am never ever pulling an all nighter, to study for an exam, ever again. I finished the exam really early and found it pretty easy. It had a few questions that required some thinking, which I wouldn't have been able to do very well if I had pulled an all nighter.

Lesson learned: Sleep more, study less.

I'm half way done my exams. I have an infection control exam tomorrow and then a couple more exams next week.

Dangerous study experiment: To sleep or to cram? That is the question.

I have to write a Cardiovascular A&P Midterm at 8AM tomorrow morning. I don't feel like I've done enough studying. I've spent quite a few hours, studying for this midterm over the last few days, but I just don't feel like I've done enough studying. The temptation, and plan until about 15 minutes ago, was to cram all night.

In the past, when I've done an all night cram for an exam, I've wondered if I would have been better off by just closing the books and getting a good nights sleep. Studying your ass off and then writing an exam when you're physically and mentally exhausted sucks and I just don't feel like putting myself through that kind of crap again. I'm going to try it! I'm going to bed. Maybe things will work out and maybe they won't...

Either way, I'll at least have something to post about tomorrow.

Posting Holiday

I might not be posting for a while. I'm studying for midterm exams.

I did a really good Job shadow with an RT department on Thursday, so that's probably what my next post will be about.

My first midterm is on Tuesday October 14th. My last midterm is on Wednesday October 22nd.

Bad paper pushing

I have to submit all of my immunization records to the school's Health Services department, so that they can make sure that I have met all of my immunization requirements.

For the second time, they are telling me that my immunization requirements are incomplete. The last time they told me that, I told them to look at the documentation in my paper file.

When they looked in my file, they found documentation confirming that all of my immunization requirements have been met.

This kind of stuff ticks me off.

Tests and Marks and other stuff

The A&P test I wrote on Wednesday was a lot easier than people were expecting. I really won't know how well my new hybrid lecture/study note strategy will work for me, until I use that strategy to prepare for some more challenging tests. If I'm not mistaken, the next batch of tests will be midterm exams. Those will start on October 14th, which is the day after Canadian Thanksgiving.

I have a group assignment in my General A&P course that's due in a couple of weeks. The assignment has a few components and they will all be posted on an online discussion forum. Everyone in the class is expected to participate in discussions related to the posted assignments of others. I was a bit miffed today when my group mates told me that they had decided that we were going to have the bulk of the assignment finished and posted by tomorrow night. I really was planning on working on some other things that seem to be a hell of a lot more important. I'm glad that I kept my mouth shut, about the self imposed arbitrary deadline, because the assignment is mostly finished and I don't really have to worry much about it anymore. That was a first for me. I'm the slacker in the group, who had to be bullied into getting my ass into gear!

Today I also finished the first draft of an assignment that I have to hand in tomorrow. It's just a one page summary of a journal article but it sure did feel like quite the chore, when I wrote it up early this afternoon. I was a bit stressed because I had to get it done, so that I could work on my part of the group project that I mentioned earlier. I haven't spent any time today, trying to get caught up on my reading and studying.

The test marks for the course that everyone was worried about, were posted today. A lot of people didn't really do very well. I got a 75% and I think that's one of the better marks in the class. In my program, a pass is 65%, so 75% isn't really something to be proud of. A few people who usually talk about their marks fairly freely, "didn't want to talk about it". The people in my class are fairly studious, and are accustomed to doing well academically, so they aren't too pleased about getting low marks for anything.

286 people applied to get into my program. The program only has 36 first year seats.

For a few days, I was actually only about a week behind in my school work. Now I'm almost 2 weeks behind again and I'm kind of OK with that fact. WTF?