I don’t wanna go back
I’ve determined that a month is a bad amount of time to have off from school. If you have less than that (say, a week or two) then there is a sense of urgency to get all those things done that you didn’t have time to do while classes were in full swing. More than that and you can get a j-o-b and remember why school was so nice and begin to miss the ivory tower. But a month… well, a month means that you start off feeling like it’s an interminable amount of time with nothing to fill it, then you get out of that funk, get into some good books, start some projects, and suddenly realize that all too soon it’ll be back to the grind again. Oh well.
I have done a lot of non-scholastic reading. Finished up Opting Out? and read two more books last week. The first one is called Charity Girl and it’s a fictional account of an actual situation that occurred during WWI wherein the war effort combined with the temperance movement resulting in the imprisonment of women who had contracted venereal diseases. This was an effort to protect “the boys” from contracting said diseases, ignoring the fact that often, the imprisoned women had contracted the diseases from the soldiers rather than the other way around. I wasn’t a fan of the ending, but it was an interesting read on a part of history that I hadn’t known existed. The other book was entitled Autumn Blue and was your more traditional female interest book… not too deep, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I had two other books that I’d taken out of the library, but as I tried to get into one of them and then the other I realized that whatever compelled me to pick them up in the first place was not enough to get me past the first few pages, so back they went and I came home with another pile. I’m partway through another chicky-type novel and have two more to go. Hey, the textbooks will be back soon enough, might as well be hedonistic while I can.
I also picked up Stich ‘n Bitch Nation from the library and made a trip to the craft store to buy some needles (why is it that every project I try seems to call for needles in a size I don’t happen to have?) and some yarn. I found a pattern in the book for a Fair Isle sweater… I haven’t tried Fair Isle knitting before, but I like the way it looks, so thought it was worth a shot (helped that the pattern is called Fairly Easy Fair Isle). There were also patterns for cat toys. I swear, I am NOT turning into a scary cat lady, it’s just appealing to be able to knit mice. Hm, that last statement sounds somewhat weird.
I have done SOME school prep, mostly in terms of ordering books. So far only two of my four classes have books listed and unfortunately one of the required books looks to be a bundle pack. I figured out one title from the bundle, but can’t determine the other. I found two books with the same author on Amazon, but the titles don’t help narrow it down. The school bookstore, as one may imagine, is rather enigmatic when it comes to listing book titles and ISBNs are totally missing from their descriptions in an effort to force people to buy them through B&N. But forget that… my money is too precious to be wasting it on padding their pockets.
I found out yesterday that our physiology class is going to be offered online and we (the direct-entry students) aren’t going to have our own section anymore. I’m wondering what happened there. When they first listed the classes both sections had a room, time, and a professor listed. Now, suddenly, we have a professor in Florida? I don’t get it. And I’m not at all pleased with this sudden push for online classes. Hell, part of the appeal of doing this program was because I’d get to share the experience with fellow students, collaborate, come to have an intimate relationship with the school and the people so that years down the road we can reminisce and get misty-eyed about the days spent in the computer lab at Hewitt and the drinks shared at Libby’s and the good (and bad) times we all had together. But it turns out that we’ll be spending even more time cooped up in our own homes typing correspondence with our classmates whom we could just as easily be sitting next to having a real-time discussion. Have you ever text-messaged someone or IMed someone and realized that if you just picked up the phone and called you could have had the discussion in a minute, but instead you have just wasted half an hour determining that yes, you’re going to meet them at such-and-such a place at such-and-such a time and you’re wearing jeans, so yes, it’s okay that they wear jeans, too? That’s my analogy for online learning. I’m not saying that online learning is useless, but I think that context needs to be considered. If you’re offering a program for people who work full-time jobs then yes, an online environment may work better. But I find that in our program the support of our fellow students is essential and it’s hard to feel that we have that when we are only together one day a week. Okay, I’ll end my rant there. Perhaps I focus too much on the experience instead of the end result… but I refuse to regret holding that stance.
Back to the present, I have plenty to keep myself busy, what with the reading and the knitting and the monsters. I’m still sad that I wasn’t able to get out to Michigan. But I guess we can’t have it all. Though I think I will go buy a lottery ticket now since the jackpot is $300M. That would go quite a ways in securing my happiness, even if I still have to take online classes 
Philadelphia freedom
My birthday present to myself (aside from a Brooks Brothers shirt that I managed to score for less than $5 after discount and coupon!) was a trip to Philadelphia to visit my friend and former roommate. As I mentioned previously, she’s lived down there for three and a half years and I had yet to go down and see her, though she’s been to see me multiple times.
I left on Friday morning and was in Philly shortly after 5pm… Mapquest having sent me on a couple unnecessary detours (though I did get to see some interesting parts of the world I wouldn’t have otherwise seen) and having driven through a thunderstorm complete with minor flooding and hail. Our evening was fairly uneventful… I got the grand tour of her apartment and then we went to the local Friday’s to enjoy drinks and dinner on their deck. Next door to the Friday’s was a defunct John Harvard’s brew pub, which was something both of us associated with our Boston days and were sad that we couldn’t enjoy some refreshment there.
Saturday we made peach cobbler pancakes and bacon to sustain us on our tour through the Mutter Museum. On the way there I got to see where my friend goes to school as well as some of the streets of Philadelphia (cue Springsteen). At the museum we were treated to an extensive display of Benjamin Franklin’s contributions to modern medicine, skulls, skeletons, preserved specimens, wax models, and all sorts of medical oddities. It’s a rather unique museum, as you can imagine. I have to admit that I was somewhat surprised at its popularity. As we were leaving we saw a wedding party assembled in the lobby. I’m not so sure about the idea of getting married in such a place, though maybe they were both physicians or something. In all we spent about three hours there and still had not seen everything there was to see. After that we went for some authentic Philly cheesesteak sandwiches. They can’t be healthy for you in the least, but my “whiz wit’” was pretty tasty. We went back towards city hall after that and did some shopping to work up our appetite again for the Naked Chocolate Cafe. It reminded me a bit of LA Burdick, another gourmet chocolate store which was another fond memory of the Boston days. Their hot chocolate is like drinking a melted chocolate bar. Anyway, at Naked Chocolate Cafe we had a frozen blackberry lemonade, a “junk in the trunk” bar which seemed to contain just about everything but the kitchen sink (nuts, coconut, butterscotch chips, chocolate, who knows what else), and a black forest cupcake. There was so much else there that would have been delicious to try. I’ll have to check their shipping policy! We rolled ourselves out of there and then went to hang out with some school friends of my friend.
Sunday started out slow, but relaxing after our busy day on Saturday. It was also pouring, which washed out some of our plans to wander. But we headed back into the city, checked out the Reading Terminal Market, killed some time wandering into stores, and then had dinner at The Melting Pot which was the most delicious meal ever. As you may have guessed from the name, it is a fondue restaurant and the table has a warming plate in the center. They serve a four course meal made up of three kinds of fondue and a salad. We started off with the Wisconsin Trio cheese fondue which the server prepared right at our table. That was followed by the salads. I chose the Athenian salad and my friend had the California salad. Again, delicious, and a perfect size. For the entree we chose the Coq au Vin cooking style. Despite my well known detestation of mushrooms, their presence in the sauce was quite tolerable (I just made sure none of them stuck to my food). We were given a plate of raw meats and filled pastas and a bowl of veggies to cook in the sauce. The meats were all marinated just about perfectly. I especially enjoyed the sirloin and filet. We also had about seven different dipping sauces to go along with the food. It was a very fun experience. Then to top it all off, we had the Disaronno Meltdown (with milk chocolate) for dessert, which they flambe at the table. What’s better than a flaming pot of chocolate with strawberries, bananas, pineapple, pound cake, brownies, graham-cracker and Oreo cookie dipped marshmallows and cheesecake? The server even put a candle in the cheesecake for me to celebrate my birthday (and thankfully there is no obnoxious singing in this restaurant) and on the way out they gave me a $10 coupon for my next visit… I think I may be in trouble here. It was a truly decadent experience and an excellent way to celebrate my birthday, but I fear that I have been spoiled and I’m not sure if regular food will ever taste quite the same again
The trip back today was fairly uneventful. Drizzly and longer than I planned, but good. Blah, back to reality. I like vacationing much better! But I do have a new cookie press to play with, so that should keep me busy, and I also have a pile of books from the library that I need to read while I still can!
Whiling away my break
Wow, I can’t believe I’ve been out of classes for a week and a half already. And I still have lots more break to go. In some ways that’s a wonderful, glorious thought. In others, downright depressing. I need a job.
Anyway, during my break I have managed to accomplish a few minor things. In terms of productivity, that would mostly revolve around getting the spare room/office organized. Why I insisted on a two-bedroom condo is beyond me. The second bedroom usually turns into a gigantic walk-in closet. But it’s actually functional now that the crap has been sorted through and the ancient computer tossed in the basement. I (well, my mother and I) finally hung stuff on the walls in here… which goes quite a ways in toning down the brilliant red walls. But once you can see as much of the floor as you can now the cream-colored carpeting also offsets it nicely. It’s turning into the office space I envisioned. When (if?) I have money again I think I might need to get another bookshelf to house all the nursing books that are collecting in toe-stubbing piles around the house.
In less productive accomplishments I watched the entire first season of Gilmore Girls on DVD. My friend has the first four seasons and loaned me this set. I will have to beg her for the second season. I watched the series off and on during the network run, initially because I had to see if it was true that a main character was named Rory, then because it was so darned funny and charming and touching… I seriously want to move to Star’s Hollow. But being able to watch the series in order has filled in a lot of gaps and cleared up some of my Gilmore Girls questions. Important stuff. Like, now I now why people ask if my name is really Lorelai (in the show Rory’s real name is Lorelai, her mother named her after herself, and thus Rory is a nickname… but no, my name is Rori, just Rori).
I also got some books from the library and have been going through those. For those who may remember my post ranting about my choice of “anti-escapist” fiction during my last break, you will be relieved to know that I was more successful in my search for escapism this time. I read one book called Addled which was a bit tough for me to get into at first… not hard to read, I just wasn’t sure I liked it, but by the end I found it quite entertaining… and I enjoyed the way the author wrapped up the story. I also read–don’t laugh–Anne of Ingleside, the sixth book in the Anne of Green Gables series. I have the first five and had reread 2-5 recently after seeing the PBS/CBC movie of Anne of Green Gables on TV. The fifth one didn’t do so much for me, but I thought I should read the sixth to find out “what happens next.” What happens is more of the same Anne from book five. The formerly spunky, independent, strong-minded girl/woman gets increasingly more boring the longer she is married and the more children she pops out. Of course I try to keep in mind the era that the book was written in and about and the fact that it’s probably hard for an author to make an older married woman interesting to an audience of young girls, but for heaven’s sake, did she have to turn Anne into such a mush-pot? She’s barely even likeable, and I wonder if Lucy Maud Montgomery herself got sick of her character since she focuses a lot of the book on the different children and only at the end adds a little reality to married life when Anne worries that Gilbert has fallen out of love with her after fifteen years of marriage… a concern which is neatly wrapped up when Gilbert reveals that he’s really only been concerned about a patient of his, but he found out that his hunch was right and the patient will be cured of whatever it was that ailed her, to which Anne remarkably becomes cheerful and happy once more. How nice that a couple married fifteen years only suffered one week’s worth of marital strife. How nice, and how utterly unrealistic. Anne, you let me down, dear girl. I’m not sure I’ll ever feel up for reading 7 or 8. But we’ll see.
Currently, I’m going a little more anti-escapist (can’t let the brain turn to mush, you know), reading Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home. So far it’s an interesting read, particularly because the author actually did research on the subject where scant research had been done before. She points out that this “trend” of women leaving successful careers to be mommies isn’t necessarily the trend that the media is making it out to be, in fact more women with children are working today than in the mid-80s, yet there are many highly-educated women who have left successful, high-powered careers to stay home and this book explores the reasons behind it. I haven’t gotten too deeply into it, but it seems that she’s hinting at the significant role of workplace inflexibility in this trend and pointing out that employers will have to work harder to retain their talent than they currently do. In my experience of corporate life I can definitely see how this is true… and I think it goes beyond making nice little policies and touting them to the employees. My employer did make some strides that were positive, especially in light of the policies of other organizations. For example, anyone who became a parent was given 4 weeks of parental leave; for moms it was added to their short-term disability leave, for dads (or non-birthing partners) it could be taken any time during the first year… which was a huge improvement over the former one whopping day of paternity leave, and also allowed adoptive parents to take parental leave. But, you know, what happens when leave is over and you come back to work? For those people who do make their kids a priority they get the sneers of “oh, you’re coaching another sport, eh?” or “leaving early again, hm?” yet, conversely, the people who are all about work are sneered at for being uncaring parents. You really can’t win the game no matter how you play it. I couldn’t blame the women I knew who were powering their way up the ladder who stepped off and said, never mind, I think I’ll push the stroller around the suburb instead of putting up with you lot. Anyway, I’ll be interested to see what else the author has to say on the subject.
Besides that… I got my stats book and attempted to start reading it, but I’m not feeling it. For one thing, I was disappointed at the lack of problems in the book. I really wanted to do some nice math problems. And, no, I’m not kidding. I find math relaxing and fun. I love the medication calculation worksheets we have to do for school. Hey, some people do sudoku, I personally like algebra. Phooey. Stupid book. I might have to go find one on my own.
In other news, the monsters are keeping me busy. I attempted to booby-trap the kitchen counter with packing tape today. I think rather than dissuading them from getting up there, though, it’s just compelling them to be smarter about jumping with enough oomph to get over the tape barrier. However, one of them did manage to get stuck to three strips of tape. The nice cat mommy would take the tape off. The mean cat mommy (me) rolls around on the floor laughing like an idiot while the cat tries to figure out how to get her limbs unstuck from one another. Hee hee.
I think I’ll head to Philadelphia this weekend to visit my Boston roommate. She’s on her break from vet school and I haven’t been to see her since she moved down there three and a half years ago. It should be a blast. I’m still bummed that I won’t be able to get out to Michigan. I talked to one of my friends out there today and could hear the new baby making noise in the background and it made me sad that I’m not going to get to meet her for a while yet. She sounded so cute. Grumph. And I could be so useful… I’m good at diapers and the like. I made the older baby laugh the last time I was out there, and she’s not much of a laugher. Grr…
The monsters are getting restless, time to go supervise!
Semester 2 – check
I haven’t been in much of a blogging mood lately. Funny how dial-up can do that to you! But I managed to make it through the summer semester successfully.
The policy class ended shortly after my last post and I ended up with an A in that. I was still disappointed with the class in general, though. I’m not sure if it’s just that Blackboard is not particularly conducive to online learning or if I’m not particularly attuned to learning in an online environment… perhaps a bit of both. But I felt that I would have gotten a lot more out of it had it been conducted in a traditional format… or even a hybrid format. Either would be preferable. Plus it was such a short amount of time it was hard to actually absorb any of the information. But it’s over and done.
Mental health ended in the middle of July. And there went my 4.0. But to be honest I was happy just to have it over, and happy that I passed both the lecture and clinical portion of the class, since I guess a couple of my classmates are having to petition to stay in the program because they didn’t get the minimum of 80 in the lecture portion. Those tests were tough. Blah. And I hated the clinical setting we were in. I had serious doubt that the work they were doing went very far in helping the patients. But what do I know?
Adult health was a stressful course. It’s the backbone of nursing and it feels like an impossible task to try to absorb all that information in such a short amount of time. But I made it through that okay, too. I think I even got an A in it. The clinical portion of that class was excellent. It really reinforced what we were learning in the classroom and the hospital we were in seemed to be full of friendly people. I got to see some cool stuff while I was there. I learned to do EKGs in the ER on my last day. I saw an aortic valve replaced with a porcine valve. I saw two cardiac catheterizations. Unfortunately–for me, anyway–neither of the patients needed stents, but it was cool to see.
So we made it through. The class vibe is seriously suffering, though. It’s kind of depressing. Maybe the month off will give people some downtime to rest and regroup. But I thought that after first semester ended, too. So we’ll see. I’m pretty excited for the next batch of classes, though. We’ve got two more pre-licensure courses: public health nursing and childbearing family (AKA maternity and peds); and two more core graduate courses: research and an advanced physiology course. Yay for science. Not so sure about the research course. I’ll have to see what we do with it. But I ordered the stats book that was recommended for it already so I can try to brush up on stats while I’m on break. I pulled out my textbook from when I took it as an undergrad and it was totally Greek to me (hahaha, math joke). But I also took stats for math majors which is rather more intense than stats for other types of majors.
As for my other plans for break, the lack of money is putting a crimp on my plans. I was hoping to do a lot of travelling to visit friends, but I just don’t know how I’m going to afford it. Plus I have two kitties now and I’d have to figure out what to do with them. So I think those plans will be severely scaled back. Especially after the passenger side window on my car went down and decided not to come back up, which I was quoted anywhere from $200 to $650 to fix. But my mom came over yesterday and today and we were able to get the spare room cleaned up quite a bit and I’m actually typing this in my “office” instead of at the kitchen counter. I have some more general cleaning to get done, but it’s nice to have a study room. I’m also making friends with the local library again since you can’t beat free books and DVDs. The big 2-9 is next week. If anyone is looking for gift ideas, winning lottery tickets are always appreciated
