Still alive and busy
I had an oral exam in Public Health last week, and by my count, I bombed it, just pulling off a passing grade. I'm almost thinking it was a pity grade, but at this point with the nursing school I'll take anything I can get.
Next week I have both Pediatrics and Mental Health. Pediatrics is a monster of a course that has a good ton or two of course material to slog through. By a regular measurement of 80 pages of notes per course by one classmate, she took nearly double that for Pediatrics. And I really don't like or understand pediatrics. Little people are weird. Their parents are insane. And I say that as a parent who's had kids in the hospital.
God Bless YouTube, for it has every physical exam and reflex video I need to understand wtf is going on in this course. How else would I be able to remember what the Moro reflex is? And God Bless my classmates for making such thorough notes, and the classmate that made the thorough yet extremely condensed version that I could print out and take with me.
Despite it having less than half the material, Mental Health might prove to be more harrowing to study for. Y'know, having been there, and all, and it still being a very personal issue. Good news is that after this summer spent in Maon Yerushalayim, my time in an outpatient program has given me great insight into how nursing for mental health works.
If I don't pass either of these two exams, it seems as though my year off won't be a full year off, and I'll have to take these courses. I'm thrilled about that prospect, and hence why I'm wasting time posting here instead of studying.
In somewhat related news, I started using Ritalin again for the first time in about 17 years. I use the term "use" because it's still, in my mind, a street drug with huge potential for abuse. I've found myself singing Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life" in reference to my new meth of choice quite a bit. But it's working, and I don't have the jittery explosiveness that I had when I was 12. Despite that I'm posting here, it's working. On Yom Kippur, for the first time in years, I was actually able to concentrate on my praying, instead of having my head jump to every subject not connected to prayer. When I study, I can go for full half-hour periods without jumping out of my chair, and can last the full four hours until the drug wears off on a study session. It's wonderful and amazing and scary. Even the Internet is less of a distraction. Being off Facebook is also a great help in that :P
As for the depression, it's still there and lingering and driving me up a fucking wall. I still sleep over 12 hours a day, or so it seems. Still trying to kick it. All this because the dean decided to question my ability to treat human beings based on the status of my mental health. I guess I am proving her right, though I'd really like to try and prove her wrong in the end.
Random thought of the moment - if I end up working in America briefly, it'll be the first time I'll be dealing with uncircumcised penises. Yes, this is the regular thought of a student nurse in Israel.
My recently purchased second-hand BlackBerry is dead, or so it feels. I need to run through the CrackBerry forums to find out what could be causing the phone to be so slow and unresponsive. It's like running Windows 95 on a phone, minus the blue screens. So I'm mostly using my old Sony Ericsson W595, which now has a broken battery cover but at least is more reliable than the BlackBerry. I want a Samsung Galaxy S II :(
A reminder, yet again, I'm doing Movember this year, and you can sponsor me here.
Saving the best for last, the family is doing well. Yaffa's looking into a Masters program again, still trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. We think we've got it this time, but the path to it will be long and tedious. The girls are 2 years and 8 months, and are amazing spectacles of awesomeness. The pre-school they're at is doing wonders in teaching them new things. They know about Rosh Hashana, and insist on blowing the shofar I got for my bar mitzva, which consists of putting their mouth to it and screaming, "tooooot!" They've learned about Sukkot, that we build a Sukkah and put Schach on it, and we shake the Lulav and Etrog. They're learning so much, it's making me swell with such pride knowing that their minds are developing so well.
Next week I have both Pediatrics and Mental Health. Pediatrics is a monster of a course that has a good ton or two of course material to slog through. By a regular measurement of 80 pages of notes per course by one classmate, she took nearly double that for Pediatrics. And I really don't like or understand pediatrics. Little people are weird. Their parents are insane. And I say that as a parent who's had kids in the hospital.
God Bless YouTube, for it has every physical exam and reflex video I need to understand wtf is going on in this course. How else would I be able to remember what the Moro reflex is? And God Bless my classmates for making such thorough notes, and the classmate that made the thorough yet extremely condensed version that I could print out and take with me.
Despite it having less than half the material, Mental Health might prove to be more harrowing to study for. Y'know, having been there, and all, and it still being a very personal issue. Good news is that after this summer spent in Maon Yerushalayim, my time in an outpatient program has given me great insight into how nursing for mental health works.
If I don't pass either of these two exams, it seems as though my year off won't be a full year off, and I'll have to take these courses. I'm thrilled about that prospect, and hence why I'm wasting time posting here instead of studying.
In somewhat related news, I started using Ritalin again for the first time in about 17 years. I use the term "use" because it's still, in my mind, a street drug with huge potential for abuse. I've found myself singing Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life" in reference to my new meth of choice quite a bit. But it's working, and I don't have the jittery explosiveness that I had when I was 12. Despite that I'm posting here, it's working. On Yom Kippur, for the first time in years, I was actually able to concentrate on my praying, instead of having my head jump to every subject not connected to prayer. When I study, I can go for full half-hour periods without jumping out of my chair, and can last the full four hours until the drug wears off on a study session. It's wonderful and amazing and scary. Even the Internet is less of a distraction. Being off Facebook is also a great help in that :P
As for the depression, it's still there and lingering and driving me up a fucking wall. I still sleep over 12 hours a day, or so it seems. Still trying to kick it. All this because the dean decided to question my ability to treat human beings based on the status of my mental health. I guess I am proving her right, though I'd really like to try and prove her wrong in the end.
Random thought of the moment - if I end up working in America briefly, it'll be the first time I'll be dealing with uncircumcised penises. Yes, this is the regular thought of a student nurse in Israel.
My recently purchased second-hand BlackBerry is dead, or so it feels. I need to run through the CrackBerry forums to find out what could be causing the phone to be so slow and unresponsive. It's like running Windows 95 on a phone, minus the blue screens. So I'm mostly using my old Sony Ericsson W595, which now has a broken battery cover but at least is more reliable than the BlackBerry. I want a Samsung Galaxy S II :(
A reminder, yet again, I'm doing Movember this year, and you can sponsor me here.
Saving the best for last, the family is doing well. Yaffa's looking into a Masters program again, still trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. We think we've got it this time, but the path to it will be long and tedious. The girls are 2 years and 8 months, and are amazing spectacles of awesomeness. The pre-school they're at is doing wonders in teaching them new things. They know about Rosh Hashana, and insist on blowing the shofar I got for my bar mitzva, which consists of putting their mouth to it and screaming, "tooooot!" They've learned about Sukkot, that we build a Sukkah and put Schach on it, and we shake the Lulav and Etrog. They're learning so much, it's making me swell with such pride knowing that their minds are developing so well.