5/31/2012

Last official day of class! Wahoo! I still have to go in tomorrow and all next week to study but no more lectures this semester! Now I know what you're thinking dead week for WVU always meant crazy parties and lots of drunk people. Luckily for me we don't have dead week, here it's SWATVAC. I don't know what that stands for. However, all of the non-Physio students were done last week so they actually start exams on Monday and we have so much to study that I will actually be busier next week than I have been during the semester. Other exciting things from today include my research and evidence grade. I passes!!! Yay! No remedial paper for maddie! I am unbelievably thrilled. I didn't just pass either, we received high honors on our presentation:)
I got to be a triathlete again today. I swam 1.5 biked 30 and ran 10 kilometers. I feel.... Surprisingly lazy for don't that much work. It must have been the extra large chocolate bar that my study group shared at lunch.
I keep trying to study with people but I need to learn a bit more on my own first so that I can get the most out of the review sessions. Tonight at footie training they made a taco dinner. I was sad to miss it but Katie had bought me Asian noodles so I had to go home. As expected I got absolutely plain noodles with no sauce, garlic, and broccoli. Then Katie complained that it was too plain. It's my dinner and I like plain! And by plain I mean garlic. Now it's off to study a bit before I go to bed to prepare for tomorrow.

5/30/2012

This morning we had our last class in the cadaver lab.  It was very helpful to look at everything again and be reminded of just how much we have covered this semester.  Then we went down to the lecture hall for a pharmacology lecture and a physiology lecture.  I was supposed to go swimming after class but Steph forgot her bathers(swimsuit). So instead of going swimming I went to the library with Angela. We met up with Drew, Jamie, Brian, Ally and Rainer and studied for 6 hours.  There were 5 lectures that I was supposed to go over today.  I made it through 1/2 of 1 but I do have a much better understanding of several other topics.

I think that it's really helpful to study with other people because we pick different things out of the lecture.  We studied until the library closed and I was ready for dinner.  If you remember about a month ago I was talking about wanting to go to burger's edge.  Since we had be studying anemia and energy usage in endurance exercise I decided that I would get a burger to ward off anemia just incase I was at risk.  I would say that the burger was nothing to write home about....but since I'm clearly writing home, I'll just say that I was largely unimpressed and don't see myself ever going back.  At least I know that when I want a burger, Grill'd is much better and also more convenient.

5/29/2012

Today was research and evidence presentation day. I think the presentation went well. We were the first in the class to present and we satisfactorily answered all the questions and were not confronted with any major flaws in the study that we presented. We sat around for the rest of the day trying hard to pay attention to the other groups. After the presentation I met with the instructor and she assured me that no one failed their presentations. Yay! She was a bit stuck up and told me that I am below the standard for the class but offered absolutely no help or guidance. With any luck I passed my presentation and no longer have to deal with her. I had footie training tonight where they finally paid me. Yay! And we hung a flat screen tv on the wall. I also worked a bit. But just a tad. I really want to share my presentation but I haven't figured out a way to do that yet.

5/28/2012

I'm sorry to say that we have our first causality in the Maddie V. exam schedule battle.  He fought valiantly but alas succumbed to the power and magnitude of the blood pressure notes and dried up.







With no official class today I was very productive.  I went into uni(by train, cause my tire was flat) at 9 and studied theory questions with Angela for 3 hours.  We went through the basics and decided that we still needed to expand on our answers.  I worked a bit more on the practical questions I think I have now answered 5/77 and I'm up to 10 pages.  After that I went for a swim. 2.5km later I headed into the city to buy a patch kit and a new tire for my bike. Since I was already in the city I took the train home.  Then I had a quiet night of fixing my bike, eating leftovers, outlining lectures, and practicing for my presentation tomorrow.

5/27/2012

Happy Birthday Abbie!
I got right into my normal Sunday routine of laundry, cleaning, studying and running.  After listening to a couple of lectures and spending an hour on an@omedia I decided to procrastinate by looking at the specifics of the practical exam.  Much to my surprise it is much more involved that I had originally realized. We got the question bank of 77 questions. We will be asked 4 but each question will be used on at least one student.  The questions are easy but the answers are quite complex.  They expect you to need 5 minutes to preform the task.  For example the one I did this morning was palpate the elbow flexors.  The answer is biceps, brachialis, and brachioradialis.  While trying to correctly find the borders of these muscles I will also need to be talking about the origin, insertion, accessory action, and innervation of each muscle.  Every time the muscle attaches to a common site I need to name the other muscles as well, so for biceps I need to say that it the long head originates on the supraglenoid tubercle, runs through the joint capsule and into the bicepital groove of the humerus.  The short head attaches to the corocoid process along with pec minor and coricobrachialis the muscle then follows down the front of the arm...and so on.  Anyway I suppose I need to make sure I have a very solid knowledge of every muscle in the body and it's attachments. At about 3pm I went out for a 20 mile run.  It was lovely but I started to get sore at the end.  I want to be a bit faster, right now I'm running at 9-9:50 pace.  When I got back Katie had made soup for our dinner and discussion session.  Sometimes it is good to talk to her but today northing that she was saying sounded reasonable.  She wanted to make some plans for the next few months, which is fine but she's basing these plans on her gut feeling that the Australian economy is going to hit a major recession in the September.  She is concerned, as she should be owning multiple rental properties, but she doesn't actually look at economic figures or facts.  She has a distrust of economists and doesn't have an interest in the stock market.  I didn't know what to say, plus I was exhausted from my run.  After dinner I got back to studying.  I'm working on outlining my answers for the practical exam so that I will be able to start practicing soon.  Luckily tomorrow is a pretty chill day with only independent study.  I'm meeting with a couple different groups throughout the day and will hopefully be very productive.
Everyone have a fantastic Abbie's birthday!

5/26/2012

I spent the day at footie. We had 3 wins and a loss. I wasn't at the loosing game so I had all wins:) the first game was 137-9 the second game was by less but it was good none the less. This is the seniors team.

Sorry I couldn't get a better angle. I'm short. It was my friend Angela's birthday so we went out to celebrate. I rode my bike since I've been less active the past few days. It was a nice ride a fun pub and a good time. I really like my grad school friends they are responsible drinkers that can have fun without getting overly intoxicated. I didn't want to get hit by a taxi on my way home so I wasn't drinking and I was pleasantly surprised that I could have intelligent conversations with everyone.

5/25/2012

So Friday was our community engagement conference. Each group presented their community in a comparative format to the class and community liaisons.  I got dressed up in my fabulous suit which unfortunately meant that I had to take the tram instead of biking.  On the bright side I looked good and had a fantastic presentation.  The director marked us as most exciting group.  It could have been that we had the most unique experience but I'm pretty sure we presented nicely as well. Actually all of the presentations were very interesting and I really enjoyed the conference.  If you remember I made cake which was a huge hit.  I was also able to barter for other goodies which made the day even better.   After the presentations we all went to the pub for dinner.  We looked pretty impressive  in our business attire.  Unfortunately, I got my research grade back yesterday as well.  She really disliked my paper. I asked to meet with her to better understand my error, since she just gave me a grade with no feedback.... and she refused.   Which is why I was a bit grumpy last night.  Sorry.  Friday was a fantastic day and I was really proud of our project.