Why did I buy a book?

According to our syllabus, the test next Friday is over chapters 9 and 10. I spent the last two weeks reading and rereading those chapters. I went to class expecting to be ahead and she fooled me again. My teacher spent most of the lecture talking about chapter 11 and it went way over my head. I looked at the study guide for the exam and realized I didn't recognize half of it. I'm a little frustrated, not by the misguidance of the syllabus, but by the fact that this class doesn't use the textbook for anything more than the pretty pictures. All of lecture is taught based on the study guide and all of the test is written based on the study guide. It just occurred to me that most of the people in the class just read the study guide and get by on that. If I spent a quarter of the time memorizing the study guide that I do reading the text, I could still ace the test. I don't have to understand a thing, just memorize two pages of notes. Why did we buy the textbooks? Forget it. I'm going to keep reading the text because I care more about understanding this stuff than getting an A.

Jason couldn't bring me lunch Friday because he was with Abby. My plan was to memorize this worksheet on cranial nerves and eat in the food area/place (I don't remember what they call it). As we were walking out, my friend Terri asked me about Jason and when I explained it she asked if I wanted to go get something with her. We ended up across the street at Los Bravos. It was great. Casually going out to eat with a friend and no kids is a dream of many a stay-at-home mom. Unfortunately the service was slower than usual (food just as awesome as usual) and when we walked out it was 11:47. Lab begin at 12 with a lab quiz. So we had to hurry back, cross a busy 1st avenue, go to the far side of the parking lot and get our bags and then get back to the other side of the building and up three flights of stairs before 12. We hurried up the last few stairs and around the corner and found all of our class still sitting in the hallway. Funny.

That worksheet I needed to study ended up not being on the quiz anyway. I got 8 out of 5. (Jason questions the math at Ivy Tech.) We had the opportunity to dissect a sheep brain if we wanted to. Well, yeah. That's why I'm here. All we really had to do was a mid-sagittal cut (down the middle, front to back). Somehow I screwed that up. I couldn't recognize much. It looked like I had cut it with a hammer. Fortunately, a girl at our table named Jenny had pretty brains and we studied hers (her sheep brains). Maybe I should reconsider my idea of doing surgery.

Bland week

There's not much going on this week since the test is not until next week. I've read and reread the chapter on the nervous system. It's a bit complicated, but reading it twice helped immensely. It's funny how grown-ups told us to do that when we were kids, but few actually did it (and nobody liked those kids). Now I see that it works. I also see that keeping up means I don't need to cram at the end. It all makes sense now. It's one of those "if I only knew back then what I know now" things.

Abigail gets out of school Friday at 11am. I have class that day so I was very tempted to just not send her to school at all, but what kind of message would I be sending her? It just felt wrong. Jason said he would work from home until she got there and then they would have some one-on-one time for lunch before he took her to my sister's house. So it all works out. We are gradually easing our way into the more complicated schedule to come when I am gone 4 days a week and Jason will be working from home more often. I'm anxious (in a good and bad way) to get to that point. I'm so thankful that Jason has that kind of good job with some flexibility or all of this would come to a dead end. I will go into more detail about that schedule when we get there. That will be January 2010. Wow, that sounds like a long way away.

The self-rebuke worked

My last two days of studying have been much improved. I read all of chapter 9 and then reread all the parts I didn't understand until they made sense. It's hard and I'm still not interested, but I care again. So the wall I hit only lasted a day or so. That's good news, especially if it was just a mid-semester hump and won't come back.

Willow is still a major distraction. She yells at me until I put her in the seat next to me. Then I have to watch her to make sure she's not falling out of the seat. She used to just go play or read. I blame myself for picking her up so many weeks ago. She wants food and drink and up and help and down and on my lap and book and my book and on top of the table and down to get the food she dropped on the floor and back up and grab my nose and get mad and on and on. Is she too young for kindergarten?

Six classes left.

Cocky

I took it easy last week and paid the price. I got over confident and spent a lot less time studying and lot more time being distracted. I had a big lab practical Friday with lots of labeling. Every time I looked through my books leading up to Friday I thought I had it so I quit studying. I didn't draw anything. I didn't write much down. I didn't even sit at the table quietly the entire week. I sat at the desk with one eye on the book and one eye on the computer. I thought that was plenty because I'm smart and this class is easy (blah blah blah). I promised myself in the beginning of the class that 12:30-2 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays is for this class and nothing else, not even restarting the dryer. I totally blew that promise this week.

Then I got to the lab and started to forget things. There was one muscle I completely missed in all my "studying" and it made it onto the practical. I just wasn't sure of my answers on several. I don't know what I missed yet, but according to the website I missed three. That may not sound terrible, but I could have done better and, if you read the first paragraph, you understand why I should be a little mad at myself.

So this week, I am back to the basics. I don't have a test until November 21st, but I have two big chapters to read and understand. So I am going to try to focus. The problem is that I hit a sort of wall yesterday. After being lazy and still getting a 99%, it's difficult to go back to the effort I was putting in before. And this chapter is tough. I'm back to that ATP crap and how muscles work. It's more in depth than anything I've learned about muscles before and it's boring to me. For the first time this semester I sat down and began whining, "I don't want to read. I don't want to have homework. I don't feel like learning anything right now." I lost my momentum and it's going to be tough to build it back up again. I've got to set some rules. I'm back at the table. I turn the computer off complete before I take Luke to school so I won't be tempted. I try to ignore Willow and not let her sit on my lap. No other work is to be done during that time. I will answer the questions in the text and try to understand it as I go, not just read it to get done.

I'll let you know how I do.