Sunday Evening

For anyone still interested in this particular blog...

Today I read a bunch of pages in a couple of my books. I spent a whole lot of time trying to figure out what I needed to do and when I needed to do it. I picked up a free planner from the student association tent on Friday and today I started filling out assignments when they were due. My goal was to visualize the assignments per week. For instance, this week I have:

*a quiz on Wednesday (worth 10% of the final grade for this 1/3 of the course)
*4 chapters to read in the Peds text
*50 pages to read in the Clinical Nursing Skills & Technique book before lab on Thursday afternoon
*8 chapters to read in the Physical Examination text
*8 chapters to do in the P.E. workbook (due for last week)
*plus two more chapters in both of these books for this week's assignment
*Fundamentals of Nursing, 30 pages
*I'm not positive, but I think there is still more to do that I haven't found or figured out yet. I remember something being said about mandatory videos that must be watched in a tech lab somewhere, but I can't find where I wrote it down and I don't remember which class it is for either.

And oh, I forgot to mention, we have been signed up for ATI's nursing assessment course. Like I need another course. Evidently, this is a computer based course with NINE (9) separate books and nine (9) separate web based tests that MUST be passed to pass the course, and worth 20% of the final grade. Not that the 1664 page textbook was skinny or anything! We haven't been given our books yet (they were all shipped to the school) or any of the info on how to proceed from here. I guess I'll find out next week. yippee.
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I did download most of the notes for the classes from WebCT, so I can pay more attention to what is said and not spend the whole time taking notes. This has been the biggest difference I've seen in going back to college a billions years from the first time. Then we didn't have personal computers or printers. We didn't even have much access to copy machines. Most of the time we wrote tons of notes. My left hand would become blue with ink as I wrote. And it would cramp! Now I just follow the power points for the lecture on the screen and on my printout. Did you know you could print out power point as a handout with 6 screens per page? I didn't. Thank you whoever it was in class that told us how to do this!

I also figured out how to get on Evolve, which is the publisher's supplemental material for two of my textbooks. This is interesting. I can go and watch a video demo of the skill I am supposed to be learning. However, I can't say that I enjoy watching a demo of how to insert a rectal thermometer! Are these people actors? patients? Ugh. Not a job I would want. But then, I hope I don't have to take too many rectal temps, either.

Well, that's enough for now. J's soccer team came in 3rd place in the tournament, which sucks because the team that came in 2nd they beat. Some of J's friends are on that team. I'm not sure how the masters of the tournaments figure that a team that lost to you can get a higher place and the only team we lost to was the 1st place team. It's a bit confusing to me! I guess the 2nd place team beat the 1st place team, so we are in 3rd place, even though we beat the 2nd place team? We did lose to the 1st place team, but that was our only loss, and the score was pretty close. Oh well, it was beautiful weather this weekend. If I just hadn't gotten bitten by so many mosquitoes I would be happy now.