Burn Burning Burnt Out

I wrote this on Monday:

The Brain had a mini-revolt this morning when I woke up, so it spent about two hours trying to convince me not to go to class. It won in the end, of course. I texted the instructor and asked to make up the lecture on Wednesday, so that's fine. Then I went back to bed. And I slept. And slept. And slept. I slept until about 3:30 in the afternoon, then I got up, took a shower, and started studying.

I have a huge pharmacology exam on Wednesday and The Brain does not like pharmacology. I think it's interesting, but I'm already so burned out on new information that I am having trouble shoving things into my head. This is not the week to fall down. After the pharm exam, I have another exam and a paper due. Monday I have two more tests, neither of which I have studied for. Not a single bit. So I'm not going to do well, I don't think.

I wrote that on monday and it's now Friday.

I did get my paper turned in, nine hours early--at 11:00 p.m. instead of its 8:00 a.m. due date, and I also "failed" that pharmacology exam. I put "failed" in quotes because I got a mid-C on the exam and I need at least a high C at the end of the term to move on to the next level, so I try to focus on getting at least high C's on everything. Most of my grades are in the A/B range, so "failing" this exam with a mid-level C brought me down from a high B to a lower B overall. (There's one poor woman in class who had a slightly higher B than I did and did so badly on the exam that she is now failing the class, which means that she probably was in the D or lower range for this one exam. There is little room for slippage.)

Does that make any sense? Here's more:

And I "failed" another exam this morning--on three hours of sleep, it was almost a given--in my clinical class. By failed, I mean I got a high C and I needed a mid-range B to pass--but I can retake this exam if I so choose to. And if I choose not to, my grade shifts from an overall high B to a low B.

Yes, it's ridiculous.

Monday, I'm planning on "failing" two more exams, but these are in classes where my B's are mid-range, so "failing" may actually end up putting me in danger or actually failing--as in, not getting the high C's I need to move on to the next level.

So we'll see.

Most of the students in class are "failing" (like me) or failing as in actually failing.

So my new mantra is from Winston Churchill: "Success consists in going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."

ClassMates

 One student voluntarily dropped out on Tuesday evening because he was failing-failing one of the classes and his ego was such that he didn't want to face the inevitable. One student failed an exam (and a retake of the same exam) that we have to pass to be allowed to finish out the term. He is now gone. Two women have disappeared without any word to anyone about why. One student took a leave of absence to help care for her ailing father.

In one class, I shifted my seat a couple of weeks ago, mostly to move to the periphery of the room and get out of the strike zone of the instructor that everyone dislikes. I ended up sitting next to a beautiful but very quiet woman who, over the past two weeks has opened up. She is a single mother of a high school senior. She works full time and is also in the military reserves. She failed this class last term and she failed out of the same program at another school and was talked into returning to this program by her co-workers.  I can't imagine...


One of the other students in the same accelerated program I'm in (a kind of subset of the larger program in which we earn two degrees in roughly the same time that the other students earn one degree) is in a kind of slow-motion free fall. He is missing online assignments. He is failing (really failing) the exams. He is just...failing. I can't tell why, except that some part of him seems to want to fail.

There's an instructor who is just...unpleasant. She is gratuitously mean and one of those people who seems to think that it's her job to root out weaknesses in students. She seems to see those weaknesses as a sign of some kind of moral inadequacy that she has to stamp out. She favors the young white women over all the other types of students (with the possible exception of the male students who largely hold themselves apart from the women). She is a good lesson in how not to be though. (She's the instructor I changed seats to avoid.)

Other things:

This week the older mannequins were set up so that we could practice a slew of procedures throughout the week. They had breasts for breast exams and fundi with various degrees of bogginess and nasogastric tubes. There was a stack of babies to practice on, too. I named mine Viago and said I hoped he would grow up to be a vampire.

We came home to a rabbit in the front yard, calmly munching on the grass. I called Kelly to have a look, then came inside to find a grasshopper just calmly sitting on the bed, looking at me. A cricket has taken up residence near the bed and I haven't even tried to catch it. It chirps me to sleep in the evenings. A few days ago, Dave took pictures of the two coyotes (he suspects it's actually three) who have taken up residence in the neighborhood.

We had a bbq dinner with Chris and LuAnn this week, too, on Wednesday? I think it was Wednesday. We went to the little locally-owned BBQ place which might have well been in the south, it was so hot in the restaurant. 

Eating out has become our usual--neither of us want to cook after work or school--and I'm getting way too much sodium in my diet as a result. Today one of the instructors bought a gallon-sized ziplock bag full of Oreo cookies to class and I ate about a half dozen of them. The healthiest student in class--the guy who munches on baby carrots and drinks a gallon of water a day--was grabbing stack after stack of them. And speaking of stacks: Yesterday, the student who failed out sent us a stack of pizzas--classy move, that--five of them, and we ate those. I'm back on the caffeine, too. We're supposed to be taking care of people's health, but because we're all so exhausted and in need of any kind of comfort after rounds of demoralizing exams and lectures, we're all living on sugar and caffeine and alcohol (for those who drink). I don't know that it's a good cycle.

This afternoon, after a ramen dinner, Dave and I stopped and filled a shopping basket with chocolate and chips. I'm munching on chocolate covered biscuits now as I down a giant fizzy drink from Sonic. We bought a bag of chips that claim to be English breakfast flavored. Egg and black pudding chips? But curiosity killed the cat--by clogging its arteries with trans fats, apparently. I should be studying....

The oldest clinical instructor, a woman in her 70s makes a point of telling us every time we see her that she is so impressed by us. She is really proud of us. The others? Not so much. But her? We love.