Tuesday, December 22, 2009

3rd Semester marks

As expected, I got spanked on most of my exams. Fortunately, I had pretty decent marks before I wrote my finals. My lowest final mark for 3rd semester is a B+. I can't think of myself as a straight A student anymore, now that I have a B+ mark, and I'm OK with that. I'm still waiting for one more mark, which might also be a B.

I think that a few people, who were just passing, might have failed a course or two. If I'm correct, my class will be a bit smaller next semester

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Semester 3 is over

Semester 3 is finally over.  It was a pretty good, until I ran into the final exams.  I wrote 7 finals and only felt good about 2 of them.  I get all my marks on Monday.  I had pretty good marks going into finals, so I'm pretty sure that I didn't come close to failing any courses.

I ordered my 4th semester textbooks from amazon.com.  The Canadian dollar is almost at par with the US dollar and retailers, including booksellers, are gouging Canadian consumers again.  One of the books I need is The Essentials of Respiratory Care.




The school bookstore wants $103.95 for it.

Amazon.ca wants $94.95 for it.

Amazon.com wants $69.96 (US$: 43.71).






Semester 4 starts on January 11th.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Last exam today

I write my last final exam today! This semester should be over and done with in a little over 5 hours. I went to bed at 9PM last night and got up at midnight to do some more studying. I'm surprised that I'm still wide awake and studying. Hopefully I won't crash before my exam at 9AM.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Cardiodiagnostics final update

The Cardiodiagnostics final was hard. I was the last one to finish writing, with five minutes to spare. Everyone thinks it was a hard exam. I heard that it even made a couple of people cry. There's also some speculation that the exam tested some things that weren't even taught in the course this year. I just assumed that I didn't study enough.

Someone left the exam an hour early. I think that person didn't do so well. The exam had a lot of questions that required quite a bit of thinking and figuring out.

There's was even a protest letter floating around about that exam. Not a lot of people were willing to sign the letter, so it's probably not going to be delivered to anyone. There was lots of melodrama from all of the It's not Fair Club members.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Half way finished exams

Holy crap, this week sucked for exams. I wrote 4 exams this week and only felt good about one of them. I have a Ventilator Competency and 3 more exams to go and I'm done with this semester.

I think next weeks going to be a lot better than this week.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Less pessimistic about Cardiodiagnostics Final

I'm tempted to delete my previous post. I was a bit overwhelmed while I was writing that one. I'm just flying through the Hemodynamic Monitoring part of my Cardiodiagnostic notes. That stuff just makes sense and I don't have to memorize any lists of things!

I won't have enough time to properly study all of the ECG interpretation material. if I have time, I'll probably just quickly review the electrophysiology of the heart and the characteristics of different arrhythmias. The ECG interpretation part of the course will be tested less than everything else, for the Final.

I'm still keeping the fact that I only need 38% on this final, in the back of my mind. That fact is comforting. I need to be comforted.

Study rush

I'm doing some rushed studying again. I'm a little bit apathetic about final exams. Do I really learn the material better, by studying for exams? Last minute studying helps for exams but does last minute studying really help me reatain what I've supposedly learned? Most likely not.

I spend a great deal of time studying before tests and exams but still feel the need to do cramming before finals. I feel like I'm just studying for marks. I can't really sit and think about any concepts or relationships associated with anything. I'm just absorbing bits of testable information for exam writing purposes. I'm supposedly not supposed to cram, but the volume of material seems to make it mandatory.

I write my next exam (Cardiodiagnostics) in about 6 hours and the volume of material, that I still have to cover, is quite daunting. I didn't get much studying done yesterday because I had a lot of sleeping to do in the afternoon.

I think I might just stop studying for the damn final and start trying to learn some Cardiodiagnostics instead. I'll probably get a crappier mark on the exam but I'll end up learning things better.

This has been a pretty horrible week for exams. I only feel like I did well on one exam. The other two exams didn't go so well. Today's exam probably won't go well. I need a 38%, for today's exam, to pass the course.

I'm having trouble actually giving a crap. I hope next week's exams go a bit better...

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Haha I don't care

I had a big ass smile on my face when I was writing my Pharmacology final today. I didn't have a clue about a lot of the questions. In my mind, it really didn't matter because I only needed a 27% on the exam. I've never studied so hard and been so unprepared for something before. I just can't seem to remember drug names. I also can't seem to remember what drugs, whose names I can't remember, are for.

I'm planning on learning that stuff properly, after I'm done my exams. Pharmacology's kind of important.

27%

My exam yesterday seemed to go really well. I sort of felt, like it was written just for me. It tested my strengths and almost none of my weaknesses. I expected to hear everyone talking about how easy the exam was, when we were all finished it. Instead, I heard quite a bit of ranting about how hard and unfair the exam was.

I was quite surprised by one of the ranters. She's one of the best students. I almost never beat her when marks are concerned. She has a freakish recall of A&P and can always explain concepts to others, without any hesitation. Yesterday, she sounded like a card carrying member of the "It's not fair!" club.

Today I write my Pharmacology final. I'm having trouble with all the drug names and dosages. The Cardiac drugs are giving me the most trouble. I need 27% on the final to pass the course.

Monday, December 07, 2009

Maybe, not so good

My exam today, may not have gone so well. Maybe I'll get a better mark than expected, which happens quite a lot with me.

I just started studying for tomorrow's exam, a couple of hours ago. I'm feeling kind of rushed and a little bit panicked. I need a 34% on that exam to pass the course. I think I could probably pull off a 34% without even studying. Why am I stressing so much?

Should I study more and sleep less or study less and sleep more. That's the question I'm going to have to answer in a few hours. Tomorrows exam is at 9AM.

Sunday, December 06, 2009

Required to pass

I'm studying for my final Neonatal/Pediatric Respiratory Care exam, that I'll be writing tomorrow.

I just did the math. I need 36% on the final, to pass the course. That's a pretty comforting thought.

Thursday, December 03, 2009

A few more things to do

I only have a couple left to do for this semester:
  1. 7 final exams
  2. 1 lab competency

We had our last lecture, of the semester, today. My first exam is on Monday.

I actually got an 83% on my last Pharmacology test! I seem to have an ability to intuit the correct answers to multiple choice questions on Pharmacology tests...

Intubation on the floor

I did my Airway Interventions competency a couple of days ago. My scenario was a cardiac arrest, on the floor. A couple of physicians were doing CPR and I was supposed to do the intubation.

The first laryngoscope I grabbed had a blade that kept on falling off. The first ETT I grabbed had a cuff leak. I had some trouble visualizing the glottis, probably because of my positioning relative to the patient, but didn't have too much trouble with the intubation.

Only one other person got the same scenario that I did. Everyone else had more relaxe scenarios like extubation or intubating someone prior to surgery.