Busy busy busy

I'm sensing a theme developing with this program. It revolves around reading and not sleeping. My to do list for this weekend:

Read 14 chapters in 4 textbooks (this doesn't include genetics reading, because I just don't do that)
Take an online genetics test
Take an online Nursing Science Quiz (after reading the 4 chapters that I'll be quizzed on)
SOAP write up of a neurological assessment exam (probably 3 pages, considering that I did my assessment on someone with a crazy health history)
Watch two assessment videos (about 30 minutes each)
Make assessment flash cards for General, HEENT (Head, Eyes, Ears, Nose, Throat), and Neuro
Study for my Path/Pharm test
Study for my Assessment test

I'll probably take the genetics exam tonight after skimming the book, since it's all basics that I should know. The rest of it, I'll sort out later.

Anyway, I know my posting has been infrequent this week, which is entirely due to the craziness of my schedule and the need for a night out last night. Because of the Memorial day holiday all of our normal Monday classes were shoved into our Wednesday schedule, giving Wednesday 10 hours of scheduled classes/meetings. It started badly, since I didn't realize that lab had been moved back to 8am and showed up at 9am. Luckily two other people did the same thing (one of them a professor, the other became my lab partner). We rushed through the HEENT assessment on each other and managed to finish almost everything.

After lab I skipped the NxSTEP meeting. NxSTEP is a program about professional deveopment, how to get a job, write a resume, etc. It was not mandatory, so I took a 20 minute break and got myself some coffee. Then I went to the Fuld Scholars meeting, which was blissfully short and sweet. All we have to do is 40 hours of research with a faculty member over the course of the year. That's it. No paper, no poster, no talk, nothing. Just do the work.

I then rushed back to the auditorium for the Path/Pharm test review, which made me feel much more confident about the test to be taken on Thursday. Immediately after the review was a 2 hour genetics class, which Joanna (the prof) managed to keep interesting and fun, somehow. From there we sat through 2 hours of awful Nursing Science lecture. That class is dull, the professor treats us like 2nd graders and we learn nothing worthwhile. Everyone hates it. Anyway, after that bit of torture was a 3 hour Path/Pharm lecture. Thankfully, Amy (the prof) cut it short by about 30 minutes. Actually, she just saw that everyone was trying to pay attention and failing so she asked if we wanted to go home and got a resounding YES. At that point I retired to the student lounge for an attempt at studying for the test, gave up after a half hour and went home. As you can probably imagine, I was quite hungry and physically exhausted, so I made some stir fry while chatting on the phone with Lauren, ate, watched a couple of videos for assessment the next morning and then collapsed in bed.

Thursday was much more bearable. Assessment was pretty straight forward, a lot of information but nothing too complex. I then had a few hours of break and spent my time on the phone trying to figure out why I hadn't received an insurance card yet, signing up for the med center gym, eating lunch, and studying for the Pharm test. Pharm started at 1, took the test (multiple answer multiple choice questions are very interesting) and then sat back and mostly tuned out the following lecture on the nervous system. I'm pretty confident in my nervous system knowledge at this point. After Path, I grabbed some dinner in the only open cafeteria in the hospital, and went back to the gym for a quick required orientation session. The guy thought it necessary to explain to me that the weight machines are for building muscle and the cardio machines are for burning fat and I just smiled and nodded a lot.

I then rode home, changed into lycra and rode back out to meet a member of the UR cycling team for a nice relaxing 30 mile ride. We took it easy, didn't talk too much and I finally managed to decompress from all the stress of the week. Post-ride I showered and went BACK out to the Distillery (kind of like a McMenamins) for a beer with classmates. There were about 20-25 of us there, with people filtering in and out depending on level of exhaustion and whether they had lab the next morning.

I got home around 11:30, fell into bed, woke up at 7:30 this morning and went to lab. It took us a full hour longer than our given lab time to finish the neurological assessments on each other and get all the info for our write ups. It was kind of fun though, testing balance, coordination, reflexes, etc. Eliciting reflexes is not as easy as it looks.

After lab I went over to the gym for a yoga class and some weightlifting. Feeling much refreshed, but rather hungry, I rode home, ate lunch, and took a two hour nap. Now that I'm awake and fed again, I need to get started on some of this homework so I'm not buried by it tomorrow and Sunday. With luck I'll even be able to ride this weekend. I'll try to post more often from now on so the posts are not quite this long.