Sunday, September 17, 2017

Level Three Week Two and Etc.

School update:

Week two down!

FridayI finished up with the intensive two week clinical class--today was skills testing day, which is always nervewracking--and next week I start at my clinical site. I also start two lecture classes. So...we'll see how this is all going to work out.

We are in class for seven and a half hours, the check offs were only taking about ten minutes each. The total time for the three was about half an hour. The other seven hours, we were supposed to spend studying or whatever. Like a fool, I took two of my fifteen textbooks but it was so loud in the classroom that it was impossible to study, so I put my books away and instead sat and gossiped with the other students who sit at my table....for six hours. (We left an hour early.) That kind of time wasting is frustrating.

There's lots of things that are frustrating about this program, but I'm trying not to focus on those at the moment. I don't know if ignoring those things is helpful in the long run. I mean, the last thing I need is an ulcer, right?

Anyway, the four other students at my table are the enormous guy I paired with on the first day to perform CPR on the mannequin, two Native American women (both of whom are military veterans), and Colette, who has been in each of my classes since day one (and who I went for drinks with with Vanessa a couple of weeks ago). Everyone is interesting to some degree, and it turns out that the enormous guy and one of the Native American women work in the same facility already, though not together. They know a lot of the same people, however, and their stories about their coworkers and some of the patients they care for can be harrowing.

Etc.:

We've been having some lovely cloudy, gray days. Sometime rain is thrown in there. Sometime there's a rainbow or two.

On Tuesday Dave and I had our singing lesson. It was a short one this week, only 45 minutes. We started working on a Paul Simon song. I like singing something new each week. We've done things from the 1950s through the 1970s, the Beatles, Fats Domino, Cat Stevens, Paul Simon. I like the Beatles the best so far. A lot of the songs that are so familiar to us have some complicated bit of something to them. It's probably why people listen to them over and over.

We cooked a few nights this week--nachos one night, and I forget what else--but on clinical class days, I am exhausted, so we went out for dinner. Last night we tried a new place, an upscale-ish pizza chain restaurant. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either. I liked the salads, but they were over-dressed with an only okay dressing. The pizza was impressively inventive on the menu but only ok in execution. That sounds pretty negative, but it was not a challenging place and if I'm going to eat good but not great pizza, there are plenty of local pizza joints I would rather toss my money too.

After dinner, we had to run by Target and spend a hundred or so odd dollars on things. I don't know what all.

On Saturday, Dave had a lesson and then he went to see It with Paul and Judi. I don't do horror movies or scary movies of any sort (I find it violence as entertainment to be disturbing), so I stayed home and...didn't study. I napped.

I've not been sleeping well and it's killing me when I'm having to do a full day of classes on three hours of sleep or less.

Anyway, in the evening, we went out for dinner (I had eaten a very late lunch, so I just had a salad and about three of Dave's french fries), then we came home and I tried to study for a bit. (I'm already behind in the classes that haven't even started yet.)

Today is Sunday and we're headed off for a late lunch with my mother and brother at one of the dive-y Chinese restaurants that we frequent.

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