So the boyfriend was in a pretty bad car accident last Friday and has a small fracture in one of his vertebra (T2) and, until recently, was unable to drive. So that made me the designated driver! I don't mind though. In fact, he wanted to get out in his huge truck sooooo bad that he risked life and limb by letting me drive it all around town while we ran errands. I zip around in a small little focus most of the time. He drives this huge, mamma-jamma diesel truck. I'm sure I looked pretty ridiculous driving that thing. Me, a skinny little b*tch driving this monster truck and squealing when the little volkswagon beetle next to me (far below me actually) looks to be crossing the line just an itsy witsy bit. BUT I didn't hit anything! AND when I parked the huge thing, I was IN BETWEEN THE LINES!!!!
Score for me!
This morning a layer of ice covered everything and I drove 10 mph all the way to the gym (yes, I'm that dedicated) and now the sky is orange, there is a huge pile of leaves on the other side of my front door, a layer of dust everywhere else AND it's cold and windy as !#$%.
Less than a year to go right? I can do this. Thank heavens for the stash of huge delicious cinnamon rolls in the freezer.
I've got one more itty bitty test to take and then I'll be completely done for a month! I'm not really worried about this test. It's only 50 questions and the professor will more than likely just pull questions from old tests. There are two things due tomorrow, but--like a badass--I finished it all last night. I just have to print it out and turn it in. I won't even have to come up to school tomorrow. I'm so close to being done, I can taste it! And it tastes like sweet sweet victory.
Annnd I get to see my sweetheart in a little more than a week! Can't wait!!
Tip for college:
When a proffessor gives you a 100 question take home final with really difficult questions, they are probably directly out of a book. A book that is probably at the school library.
I missed one question and got a 99. Go me!
What a hard-ass. His exact words as he was assigning it were "Because I know yall will want something to do." psh. Whatever.
Oh well. I'm uber excited about going home and seeing the fam for the first time all semester!!! Gonna make a pumpkin pie, gonna eat lots of good food, gonna relax and laugh over a margarita. It's going to be awesome! And then I get to see the boyfriend as well!! I'm soooo excited! It's the little things I miss like going places with him and just being with him and talking with him that I miss the most. And cuddling. Not going to get mushy or anything, but I definitely miss my snuggle buddy.
For a week at least.
So I see my last blog post was back in July. No one could have predicted the slew of projects and activities I got myself into since then. I guess it all started when I got accepted for the master's program I was trying to get into. The graduate school program that started 2 weeks after I graduated from my undergrad career that is. Quite the quick change. In a nut shell, with my dad's help I found a quiet place to live. Advertised as small, it is anything but. I have all this room to myself and it's private and quiet and I can do whatever I want, whenever I want to do it. It's a tiny little bungalow rent house, but it's the perfect size for one person and it seems even bigger since I went with minimal furniture. It is quite the cutie.
So I started school here. On the first day, they corralled all the new students into one big room, locked the doors and proceeded to break us of our silly undergrad habits. Any student to arrive to a class more than 5 minutes late will recieve no higher than a 75 on the next test for that class. Anytime a student is to be absent, it is that student's responsibility to contact the faculty coordinator before their first class to notify them of their reason for being absent. A student is not encouraged to work during the semester (I also think they should have warned us that our nutrition and rest would also need to be forgotten).
All in all, it's been a tough semester so far in regards to tests and the work load, but it's no more difficult than what I had imagined. My grades are lower than they were in undergrad, the professors make up tests from sometimes miniscule details in the chapters, and 99% of my free time is spent writing papers, finishing a project in lab, etc. I'm not complaining; I feel challenged to a degree I've never been challenged before and it's quite exciting. Today, for example, I am reviewing a classmate's 20 page paper on the genetics of neurological disease. I can't be too easy on her because my review of her paper is 20% of my own grade. If the professor finds things that I don't catch then I get docked points.
To sum it up, what i've been doing since July is finishing undergrad, studying for the certification exam and then attending graduate school. And while I've been in graduate school, I've volunteered to help a researcher on campus with her study and in return I get to use her study as the topic of my make-believe grant proposal (the 20 page paper mentioned previously). That went very well. I guess I expected too much of myself, because I thought I was the most clueless grad student she's ever had, when in reality, I was "the best grad student" she ever had. Her words to my professor! I'm flattered to say the least and I take back every bad thing I ever said about her.......
On to something completely different. Today I was perusing the christmas gift magazine I got in the mail when I found two things of interest. The first was Absinthe. No joke. They were selling an absinthe glass, spoon and sugar cubes with a description of the proper way to pour this famous drink. Never tried it personally, but I don't think I'd be too keen on trying anything green you have to pour over a sugar cube into a "special" glass.
The second was a kit to test your dog's DNA. You swab your dog's cheek and mail it to a lab to find out the breeds in your mixed-breed dog. Quite the variety of gifts in this magazine...
This is the shadiest, sneakiest, snarkiest semester yet. The boring, elementary management class and the research class that we sometimes have, sometimes only meet for 10 minutes, really do quite an impressive job at disguising the difficult, evil other personality of the semester. I am doing pretty well at studying for the looming certification exam in August some time, but I'm not doing such a great job at checking when things are due. Like research papers for example. The rough draft is due...tomorrow! Actually we found out on Monday that it was due wednesday but yesterday the Prof, in his carefree I-don't-give-a-rat's-butt attitude, announced they would be due friday. So we already did it. It wasn't very hard, but this does allow us more time to edit it. Yes, edit the rough draft. Because we can. Because we are awesome. This is higher level thinking, people. And the more we do now, the less we have to do later and then there's more time to devote to planning a fabulous end of the year party for the CLS Society and class mates and whoever. Did I mention that the CLS Society raised about $1400 this year? We had $200 to start with after $400 mysteriously disappeared from the society account right after the old officers handed over their titles. I was pissed. It worked out just fine though. We had a lot of expenses but somehow we ended up with a huge profit. I'm happy with it.
Oh. Update on the boyfriend. He's working diligently in his office right now as demonstrated below:
Boyfriend: "I just choked on my own spit"
Me (the caring girlfriend): hahahahaha
Boyfriend: "It hurt"
ok well that's about it. I didn't really go into too much detail about the sneaky, snarky semester. I should change my name to RamblingGirl.
I got accepted to graduate school for their master of science in Molecular Pathology program. I'm uber excited! Can't really talk right now though. I have to run off to another bake sale that's suppose to be on the first year students' shoulders but most of them are so freaking lazy. Oh well, it's something to do! I did all my finals last week. It was an extremely hard week but it's over now and I couldn't be happier. The rest of the program should be a breeze now!
Ugh. Ok I'm taking an early study break to catch my blog up on all the things that have happened!! Good grief, I've gone on another clinical rotation with a less than amiable (yet very helpful) supervisor, traveled across the state for an interview for a graduate school program, met up with long lost relatives, helped organize a trip to a Clinical Laboratory Science Convention where I was elected as the Vice Chair for the state-wide student forum (against all odds I might add!) and I went to a bar and drank with both my professors!!!
My goodness, so much to talk about but I really just want to get down to the best part. I was elected as Vice Chair!!! I had one other running mate so you might say I had a 50% shot at getting elected but that's not really the case. So each year, the convention is held at a city where there is a school with a CLS program. Most of the time, it just happens that out of all the students that run for student forum positions (chair, vice chair, secretary), the ones that get it are the students from that city/school. Usually that's because every student from that city's CLS program attend. We only had 9 people out of 30 attend TACLS this year...mainly because the first year students are lazy and it involved some slight traveling. Anyway, so yeah this program's students outnumbered the other schools like 5 to 1. They easily made up a third of the students at TACLS. I didn't know I would be interested in running. It just sorta happened. I got excited and wanted to do something so I raised my hand. It turned out that there were 2 students running for each position. 3 from one school, 3 from another. Game on. I made the comment to the other girls running that I was nervous, I didn't have a speech prepared, etc. Immediately, the other girl running for Vice Chair said, "Yeah, we've been ready for months. We've had it all planned out." She was trying to intimidate me! It sorta worked but I still had hours to prepare a speech. My classmates were a big help, too. I love those guys! We all just sorta look out for each other.
So the time came when I was suppose to get up and give my roughly rehearsed speech. I'm sure I sounded ditzy because words just came spilling out of my mouth. I told them my name and that I was a vice president of the CLS society at my school. I blabbered on about being type A and a little OCD and just being drawn to leadership positions. Something like that. I got a good laugh out of everyone. One of my classmates tried to take a picture and I told her not to. More laughs. I told them it would be short and sweet because my nerves were shot after a day of playing Student Bowl (think of hardcore, intense Jeopardy). I said I wanted to further the efforts of the Student Forum because they've done a great job. I said I wanted to get things done. As a team, we could all get stuff done. I said some more things and then I told them how the CLS profession needs licensure. Only 14 states have it and Texas needs it. "It infuriates me that we work our buns off in school and work and we aren't even licensed! Beauticians are licensed! The people that do your nails are licensed and yet Scientists are not?? It makes no sense!" I got a little riled up. At the end I said "I know you will all probably vote for your school but I just thought I'd do my thing and give it a shot. Thank you!" You know, just very fun and friendly. People kept commenting on things I said and how they liked my ideas and I just felt sooo good! I'm not big-headed my any means and I've never run for anything. I really just tend to fade into the background. I don't think I'm a very influential person so it's safe to say this day changed my life.
The next morning I saw my name on the poster board with the new chair, my classmate, and the new secretary, the only nice girl from the competing school that was running for a position. A girl from the other university came up and hugged me! One of the girls counting the ballots came up and told me that some one wrote on the ballot next to my name "Is she seeing anyone?". That gave me a good laugh.
Anyway, so I'm done gloating. Back to studying, I guess!! yuck.
Oh my goodness have I had a busy day or what?! Today the pathologist took me with him to help out with another bone marrow biopsy. I probably would have done more to help had the patient been a little more lucid and easy to handle. Instead, I helped keep the patient, an 80 year old with one broken hip and a neutrophil % of .1, from touching the site of injection which the doctor had sterilized. I also handed the doctor things but that's boring. The patient was in a lot of pain from the hip and she was on lots of morphine so she wasn't exactly all there. When the doctor was rubbing the iodine on the site of injection, she said "oooh rub some of that over on this side. That stuff feels good." haha poor lady, it only got worse from there. The biopsy wasn't hurting her so much but the way she had to lay wasn't too comfortable. It also didn't help that she tore out her IV with the morphine in it. Oh well, the pathologist got it done but it was mostly a dry tap.
Today I also hunted down someone to draw my blood and it took 3 people before we had a successful draw! I do have veins!!! My results were fabulous and normal and my cells were all pretty. Another CLS did a chemistry profile on the other vial, but I guess I left before the results printed.
OH yeah and I saw a placenta today. After the biopsy, I went with another girl to take the slides to Histology and lo and behold there was a girl washing a placenta in the sink!!! I couldn't just sit back, I had to bother the poor girl and look at it. She didn't seem to mind.
I am soooo ready for the weekend!! My legs hurt from standing and doing the ridiculous squats the other morning. I thought it would be a good idea but it totally was not!
Ugh, anyway I've got to hobble away now. Thank goodness for 2 whole days of rest...or something like it. A long bike ride is rest in a way right? I'm sitting down aren't I?
