And then it was over.

I was having a hard time last week getting focused on studying for my final Friday. On Thursday night, I babysat at a friends house until 6am. With the kids asleep and nothing else to do it was much easier putting in the extra study time. I only got a few hours of pieced together sleep but Angela brought me a big Frappuchino and I was wide awake. I started crashing just before the test so I downed a Dr. Pepper. The test took less than 10 minutes going slowly, but I was over-caffeinated so I had a skewed concept of time. I normally spend an extra five minutes rereading the entire test since I have nothing better to do. This time, however, I just wanted to get out of there so I finished and left. It turns out I was the first one done. That's always awkward but, like I said, I was over-caffeinated so I had chemically-induced confidence.

I'm a little sad that I have to erase all my points and start over. I also think I'm going to miss Mrs. Puckett. She's a little intimidating but she grew on me.

I may not write anything until the next semester so Merry Christmas to both of you who actually read this blog.

PS: 124 out of 120. I missed one of the bonus, I think it was about being near-sighted or something.

Finals Week

I can't believe the final is already here. About 50% of it will be new stuff and the rest comprehensive from all the other chapters I already dominated. I'm not worried about it at all, which is a bad sign. The last time I didn't worry about a test I missed a few. I'll try to stick with my routine but I'm feeling some apathy coming on. Last weeks lab practical was really easy and it put me over the A mark. I could not show up for the final and still get an A in the class. I think they may be giving out too many bonus points, not that I'm complaining.

So after my final next week, everything changes...well, not really. My next class, Anatomy 102, is just a continuation of 101. I have the same books and I think the teachers all use the same tests and study guides. I hope. My schedule is pretty much the same only an hour later. I'll have several of the same classmates. I'm not sure who my teacher will be. The schedule still says TBA. That seems odd to me that they wouldn't just schedule all the teachers for the fall and spring courses at the same time. I just know that my teacher next semester is different than this semester because Anatomy 101 next semester will be taught by my 101 teacher in those classrooms at the same time. I know my classroom will be a smaller room across the hall. Maybe that means fewer people will walk in 20 minutes into lecture. I also know that my lab is in a different part of the hallway. It looks like a regular classroom instead of a lab. I'm not sure what's going on there.

My mom is going to stay with Luke and Willow at my house this semester. Jenny has been great but I definitely don't want to overstay my welcome there. I'm going to need her a lot in the future. So my mom will come here when she is feeling well enough. If she doesn't feel well, I can take the kids to Jenny on my way to school. No problem. This is one huge advantage of living near family and I'm grateful.

I'll post the results of my final next week.

A Little Vacation

I just realized how long it has been since I last posted. Not much happened at my last class. We took our test the week before so we got that back and had some new lecture. "Laura 125" returned, at least that's what Jason calls me when I get 125 out of 120 on my lecture exams. I also got 8 out of 5 on the lab quiz somehow. I wasn't prepared for that one, she just asked the right questions.

In the lab we were working on the senses. In one experiment we had lab partners who at one point had to touch some pointy things to our calves which meant I had to pull up the leg of my jeans for him. Thank God I shaved the day before (because that doesn't always happen). That was almost as a big a relief as getting the A on the test. So that was my highlight of the otherwise bland day.

Even though I only have class on Friday, I felt like I had the whole week off for Thanksgiving because I didn't have to spend a minute studying or even thinking about the class. So for my week off I painted our hallway. It was the last piece to connect the painted entryway and the painted bedrooms. That part of the house feels much more complete to me now without all the ugly brown trim.

Thanksgiving was good, not much to write about.

This week I am back to my studying. I finished reading chapter 11 but I think I wasted my time, as I don't think it will be on the test other than the comprehensive part of the final. So I'm on to the last chapter of the semester and it is an interesting one about the senses. I learned about synesthesia where the nerves in some peoples brains send signals to the wrong places so they associate unusual things like numbers have colors and music has smells and such. I think that's cool.

So I have two more lectures and then the final on the 19th (half chapter 12, half comprehensive). I have one more lab and then the final lab practical on the 12th.

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.