Andi’s Blog…or life according to the voices in my head…

Happy Birthday to me! :-)

Oh, and Happy Australia Day too.

School seems to be off to a pretty good start. I got a 95 on my first algebra test. It was actually a pretest to determine if we were performing at the appropriate level to stay in this class. The algebra prof told me I could pretest for the intermediate class and move up a level if I wanted to. I’m still thinking that since it’s been so long since I’ve done this kind of math it would be better to stay here to be sure I have a strong foundation moving forward. I’m just happy that all my previous math skills from high school are still in my head somewhere and don’t seem too reluctant to rise to the surface. This still puts me on schedule to take College Algebra in the fall or maybe second summer session if I can squeeze it in. As long as I finish it this fall, it’s still on time for the radiology application next spring. Plus, it will be nice to have this easy math class this semester so that I can focus on anatomy and physiology which is quite involved.

I think I mentioned before that I really love my anatomy professor. This class is going well, although we’ve just started doing anything active in the lab. Unfortunately, because of the scheduling, we’re always a little rushed in lab. Yesterday we had three experiments on diffusion and osmosis. Because of the time crunch, he suggested that different members of the group set up and start the different experiments. So I started on the first one with the girl next to me, the perky cheerleader girl started on the second one and then there was the boy… One guy added this class, so now we are up to two token males. The new guy is in my lab group. I don’t want to make the call that he’s stupid yet, just that he doesn’t seem to pay attention to detail. He interchanged the words beaker and test tube from the directions and added Benedicts solution to the beaker rather than to one of the two test tubes with a sample from the beaker, as he should have done. This would have tainted all the results, so we decided to start over. Only one problem, we had used most of our glucose solution for the initial set up and the lab had no more glucose prepared. Prof Wayne said it was no big deal and that we should just get the data from someone else. It was nice that he wasn’t all hard on us for screwing up one of our first lab exercises. Still, we weren’t about to give up, so one of the girls in my group went around the lab and scrounged the leftover glucose from the rest of the groups (we needed 10ml and had originally been provided about 12.5ml, probably to account for spillage). We were able to come up with the necessary 10ml, but didn’t have enough time for it to set and get the appropriate results. We’ll still have to get the data from one of the other groups, but something good did come out of this.

One of the reasons I like this professor aside from his lecture style is his grading style. The first day of class he said that attendance isn’t strictly mandatory in that he doesn’t officially take roll or anything. He stressed that it would be difficult to pass without attending, but that if any of us felt that confident attendance was at our own discretion. However, he also said that he does notice attendance and participation, and that for anyone who ends the semester on the cusp of a higher grade, those would be the factors that would entice him to bump up a letter. I was delighted with that philosophy. I still remember my first college semester. I almost had a 4.0 and was horrified when I discovered that there is no difference between an 80 and an 89; a B is a B. Anyway, as we were scrounging for leftover glucose solution from the other groups he came by our table and said that our determination impressed him. One week in and we’ve already gotten noticed in a positive way, which takes the sting out of the screw-up, and may also come in handy if I find myself with another 89 near the end.

After school, I decided to do some recon at Barnes & Noble. I’ve been considering trying to get a part-time job there. I have now decided against this. My reasoning is somewhat shallow, but in my opinion valid nonetheless. The recon mission was to get an idea of the employee dress code. After about twenty minutes of browsing and asking about a book at the info counter (so I could sneakily peer over the counter for a waist-down view) it became clear. B&N dress code appears to be business casual – slacks or skirts, loaferish shoes, blouses, or dressy sweaters (though mostly blouses since it is Texas – see previous post). Call me crazy, but I don’t want a job where I can’t wear jeans, tennis shoes, and a nice T-shirt or knit top. If it was a high paying career job it would be a different story, but for a pt while in school barely above minimum wage job, I refuse to spend the equivalent of a paycheck or more on a wardrobe that I’d only wear to work and will require ironing. In fact, part of the reason (among other more carefully considered reasons) that I’ve chosen radiology as my future real job is that I think I’d be cute and comfy in scrubs. So I guess this means that I’m still looking for reasonable pt work. I hate looking for work, but not nearly as much as I hate ironing and/or wearing slacks. Don’t even get me started on pantyhose and heels!

It has been unseasonably warm (even for Texas – hi 70s-mid 80s) since before Christmas. Christmas morning just didn’t feel the same. Sure my dad and sister are both still in Iraq, but also it just didn’t feel like Christmas opening presents while wearing shorts and a tank top. Last night it finally got cold again (low 40s at night up to mid 50s during the day). Now I know many of you are thinking, “that’s not cold at all!” but it’s better than it was.

Honestly, I hate the cold weather, but I love sweaters. It’s a bit of a conundrum. I haven’t been able to enjoy sweaters in almost 2 years because they were rarely necessary in Baghdad, and besides, the laundry there would have shredded them. When I got home in October I bought several beautiful new sweaters on sale and they have been patiently waiting in my closet for months. I’m just hoping that I’ll get to wear them at least twice before it gets warm again. With any luck, it may get even colder for my birthday and I’ll be able to wear my beautiful new coat too!

Of course, all this chilly weather would be much more enjoyable if I had a nice guy to snuggle up with… Is it a bad sign if you have a really great sex dream and you’re the only person in the dream? I…um…I have a friend who wants to know…yeah…that’s right…a friend… ;-)

So, I finally started a blog, which means that certain people can stop nagging about it. I also started school this week, which means that my dad can stop lecturing me about going back to college. This does mean of course that he will have to find something else to lecture me about. Hmmm…will he move on to the “when are you going to get married and give me grandchildren” lecture? It seems to be a pretty popular one.

As for school, it seems to be going well for the most part. My initial expectations were as follows:
Scariest class – Anatomy & Physiology
Rustiest skills class – Algebra
Throw away easy A (although required) – Intro to Computing
In reality, my expectations were way off.

Although still a little scary in that I absolutely must make an A to insure acceptance into the radiology program, my anatomy class is actually quite pleasant. The professor is great. His lectures are engaging and he is capable of speaking plain English in addition to sci-speak. He also teaches the lab rather than passing it off to a TA. I’m not particularly looking forward to dissecting the cat and I’m especially dreading the sheep’s eyeball (squishy and icky) but I’ll get through that ok. Note: there is only 1 male student in this class.

Algebra had me worried. It’s actually the same class I aced in 8th grade and took up to honors calculus in high school, but I haven’t done any math since then that didn’t involve a cash register, so I pretty much assumed I’d forgotten it all. I need College Algebra for the program, but I decided given the fact it’s been over a decade I’d better start small, so I went back 2 levels to warm back up to it. The first day of class we had a pretest review for the pretest that is supposed to determine if we’re actually in the right class. I was amazed how it all came rushing back to me. I got everything right, I just wasn’t sure if I was actually doing the work right so I went to the review today and then took the test. I’ll know if everything’s ok next Tuesday, but I feel pretty good about it. I like my algebra professor a lot too. She seems to have a good teaching style and today we had several new faces in the class. Turns out they were in her pre-algebra class last semester and switched sections this week to have her again rather than the professor they’d registered with. I think that’s a good sign.

My Intro to Computing Professor is a complete moron. The class is kind of a joke anyway, but it’s required so I was hoping to get what I could from it. For starters it’s a 3 hour class only on Tuesdays, so it’s a really long class at the end of an already long day, but that’s the only way I could fit it into my schedule so I could go T&TH rather than M thru TH which should in theory make it easier for me to fit in a job (more on that in a couple of weeks I hope). The silly college scheduling people thought it would be a good idea to have the lab first and then the lecture. Professor Moron didn’t like this and insisted he couldn’t start us on the first lab until we’d had the first lecture. He then decided to kill the lab hour by rambling on about nothing. Someone in the class suggested what we were all thinking, that he start the lecture in the lab and then we could get out of the lecture an hour early just this once. I was all for that since this class was scheduled to end at 9:20pm and I had started my day at 9am for my first class. He didn’t like that idea and just kept talking about nothing. We had a 10 min break and then headed for the lecture room where he rambled for another 30 minutes about his hard-luck-life-story before talking about anything pertaining to computers at all. Then he explained that most of his lectures had 30-40 slides that would take him 1-2 minutes per slide depending on how much we asked about them. Everyone was VERY quiet, still somehow 30 minutes later he’d only gotten through 3 slides. He breezed through several in the next 45 minutes while still managing to go off on random tangents about his conspiracy theories and how his sister went from being a physician’s receptionist to being the nations top pharmaceutical sales rep in only one year. At 8:45 I thought I saw the light at the end of the tunnel; we had hit slide 30 of 31 and for a brief moment it looked like we might actually get out of there a tad early. Then he got on the soapbox about how social security will be gone long before any of us retire and he began to lecture about real estate investment property as the sure way to insure financial security for retirement. I almost walked out at that point as I have already heard this lecture from my father on too many occasions to count, but I thought that would make a bad impression on the first day. With only 13 people in the class, he definitely would have noticed me leaving.

After all that, I decided I needed a beer so I went to visit Lara at The Roadhouse. Luis was bartending too and we ended up talking about school since he’s also attending. He suggested I switch to the online section of the class. A little deliberation and a couple beers later I decided he was right. I had originally thought about taking that class online, but decided against it hoping that I might learn a little more about some of the software by actually taking a live class. As it turns out, I can’t imagine learning anything from this professor. He specifically stated that we were pretty much on our own for the lab assignments but he could answer questions (although probably not answers that actually pertained to the lab), so I’d basically be teaching myself anyway. Now it just makes more sense to teach myself online at home where I can go to class in my pajamas if I want to. I went online yesterday to do the add/drop thing but all the online sections are full. In the end I decided to just drop the class and take it online this summer. I hate dropping classes – it makes me feel like such a slacker. It’s just that I think that professor is so horrible that it would be a huge waste of my time and money to stay in his class. I’d probably end up making a terrible grade just because I loathe him so much.

All in all not a bad start to school after a VERY long hiatus.