And so it begins

School started with a vengeance. For anyone interested in my class schedule, you can check it out here.

Tuesday morning I arrived on campus at about 7:40am, in plenty of time to enjoy the free food and coffee and mingle a little before orientation officially started at 8. The food was good, I immediately ran into someone else from the Portland area, I got to chatting with a few people, and I perused my overstuffed orientation folder. We were soon called into the auditorium to be welcomed, over and over, by various people and warned, over and over, how hard this year is going to be.

The rest of the morning was spent in groups of about 20 moving among the classrooms for mini orientation sessions on different topics. I don't remember most of what they said, except the really important stuff. Things like, "Sign up for lockers on Thursday," and, "You'll be getting an iPod Touch." The rest of it just turned into a big jumble of words that I can't be bothered to sort out in my head.

Post-orientation we were fed a good lunch, I got to chat with a few more people, and even fell in with a nice group that was hanging out around a picnic table while we waited for our first class to start. Of course, our first class was the most intimidating: Pathophysiology and Pharmacology. We're just call it Path/Pharm. The instructor talked about a huge variety of things, mostly involving drugs and how drugs become marketed. She talked a lot about the "ka-ching factor," which is kind of important in developing and marketing new drugs. Another big topic was the complete lack of regulation of dietary supplements, like St. John's Wort, multivitamins, etc. Most interesting fact of the day: Someone did a study of what is actually in herbal supplements and discovered that in a single bottle the content of each pill ranges from 0%-400% of what is claimed on the label. Kind of scary. Also, please don't take St. John's Wort, especially if you're on birth control.

Class got out at 3:50pm, I hopped on my bike and pedaled back home as fast as I could. I then dropped my school stuff, ate a muffin and an orange, grabbed my racing stuff and hopped on my other bike to go over to Full Moon Vista and catch a ride with Shana to the GVCC race. For the whole painful story of the race, go read my other blog.

I got home from the race at 9:30pm, proceeded to eat a giant plate full of pasta, jumped in the shower, ate some more, packed up my stuff for school the next day, and then collapsed in bed around 11:30. My alarm went off at 7am and I was not happy about it. I got up anyway, grabbed my bowl of shredded wheat with bananas (I'm turning into my father) and ate breakfast while I dealt with the pile of awaiting emails. Eventually I convinced myself to get moving again and I arrived at school in plenty of time for my 8am Health Assessment class.

Health Assessment is going to be hard. The material itself is not hard, but there's a lot of it. This is where we learn how to chart, take health histories, do physical assessments, use all the fancy jargon and abbreviations, and generally get prepared to dive into clinicals in the middle of July. Lectures will mostly be on the theory, charting and history-taking. Labs will be practicing techniques on each other. We got the whole, "You will have to strip down and get poked and prodded just like a patient," talk. It was funny to watch some of the princesses in the class cringing.

After class we picked up our stethoscopes (mine's pretty and red) and scrubs (navy pants and white tops, whose brilliant idea was that?). Then we had our pictures taken, unfortunately mine will eventually go on the Fuld Scholars website for all to see. That took about an hour, so we still had an hour for lunch and my stomach was already trying to digest me from the inside out. I ate with a nice group, I even know some of their names, and then we headed back for Genetics class.

Genetics will be fun. First of all, I know all the basics. There are few subjects I know better than genetics, except maybe nerve development. Secondly, the teacher is wonderful. She's a recent graduate of our program, so she understands our pain. She said she would rather do her PhD three times over than go through that one year again. That's just an inkling of how hard this is going to be. She's also very funny and very energetic. It's going to be fun to learn how to apply all the genetics knowledge that I have to nursing practice.

After genetics, we had to take tests. I don't know why, but they were mandatory. The tests were the Nursing Entrance Test, which is a little assessment to see if we can multiply fractions without a calculator and whether we know basic grammar. It also included a section on stress levels, with agree/disagree questions like, "I need more friends," and, "My financial situation has recently changed." I think I might have scored high on that one. The second test was supposedly a values and ethics test, but I couldn't understand half the questions because I didn't know all the nursing jargon, so I mostly picked at random. We'll be retaking that one at the end of the year to see how our answers have changed. Hopefully I'll understand the questions then.

Once the test were over we were free to go home. It was about 4:30 by now, and I was very hungry, again. I had forgotten to grab muffins today. Anyway, I got a snickers bar from the vending machine to get me to the bookstore so I could spend another $200 on books and then I rode home. Laden down with all my acquisitions of the day, plus all the books that I had brought with me in the morning, I rode home slowly. Now I have to figure out which readings are the most important, because I'm already behind by about 10 chapters. I might also go through that overstuffed orientation folder and find the things I think I'm supposed to sign and return to them.

Right now I'm so tired and overwhelmed that I can't even think straight, let alone talk about the people I'm meeting, the obnoxious girls in class, the probably transsexual with about a dozen degrees, etc. You'll just have to wait, I'll get to it all eventually.