The semester has started...

...which would explain the long radio silence. Classes began a week ago Monday. I would have caught up over Labor Day, but got sucked into doing a giant work project that ensured I had not one free second to crack open a book all weekend.

My alarm now goes off at 5:30 AM. This results in wearing a headlamp to walk the dogs in the morning before class (when it is pitch black out) and afternoons where I either take a nap or sit like an inert lump of tapioca mainlining episodes of Scrubs on the computer.

I am taking three classes: Biological Structure and Function, which is basically A&P, but they didn't want to call it that for some reason, Medical Terminology, and Human Growth and Development for Health Professionals, which is way too long, ergo that class shall henceforth be known as Lifespan.

A&P is a classic auditorium class with 280 students, and yet it manages to not only not suck, but actually be good. I am impressed with just how chirpy and sunny our instructor can manage to be at the crack of dawn. And she even takes questions while she's lecturing, which is not so simple when there are more people in your class than in most airliners. There are free supplemental sessions and on-line this and that--all the bells and whistles! And of course there is lab. Lab met for the first time today. My lab TA is this guy with an impenetrable Indian accent. He talks like he has a tennis ball stuck halfway down his throat. His name is unpronounceable, and when he said it and I asked him how to spell it, he just said, "It's on the syllabus." He's actually a vet by training. My new lab partner, whom I picked based on the fact that she was sitting next to me and seemed to basically have it together, agreed we'll come earlier next week so we can sit closer to the front, in the hope that we'll better understand what this guy is saying. He mispronounces some of the anatomical names, which is sort of ridiculous, but whatever.

I have no complaints about Medical Terminology. It's an on-line class, and although I think we technically have an instructor, he or she does not really have anything to do. We have on-line pretests and tests that we take when we feel like we're ready and work through the exercises in the book at our own pace. Pretty straightforward.

Lifespan was a nasty surprise. It's another huge class with 120 people in it, and the contrast between this class and A&P could not be more crass. The instructor is an older lady who copies sentences, and often entire paragraphs, word-for-word from the textbook, slaps them up on PowerPoint slides, and reads them. She occasionally injects comments, but 98% of class time is her voice reading off the slides. To keep myself from falling asleep, I highlight the words in the textbook as she reads them. There are pages in my text that are 90% highlighted. We also have to use this stupid thing called a clicker. It's like those little keypads they use on the Ask the Audience part of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" The teacher puts up a multiple choice question and you have to answer it using the clicker. She did one yesterday, and by the time I pulled my unit out and had it ready to operate, she had closed the polling and my answer didn't count. And yes, I went up and bitched about it after class because these questions are part of our grade. The instructor seems like a nice enough person, but her instructional "style" is coma-inducing. The material is pretty dry to begin with, and she's not helping matters. I can only hope it gets better once we get out of the stupid theory crap that every field seems to front-load its textbooks with and into actual, y'know, development stages.

Life has pretty much shrunk to sleeping (not nearly enough), walking to and from class listening to lectures on my headphones (I tape all my lectures), actually attending class, walking dogs, procrastinating about doing homework, and actually doing homework. Other less-urgent items like cleaning, laundry, cooking, and the like have been almost wholly ignored. So far, I am always a step behind where I would like to be, and sometimes a step behind where I genuinely need to be.

Fortunately, I have a little more time before my first exams.

Abnormal Psych: 1 Exam Down, 2 to Go

So the prof walks in on Friday and says, "I have your exams graded." Most of the students look stiffly away or down at their feet, like he just said, "I have your AIDS test results back!"

"I guess I made this test a little harder than I should have," he continues, and I blink. What? I studied for a 10, and his exam was a 3. Totally un-sneaky, straightforward questions covering exactly what he said he was going to cover. We had an hour to finish, and I was done in 20 minutes. Maybe there were backs to the pages and I didn't see the questions on them, so I only did half the test? Christ, that would be just the kind of boneheaded thing I would do!

"The grades were really kind of all over the place," he says apologetically, like it's his fault, "so I did curve the exam."

Uh-oh. If he had to curve it, we didn't do very well. Maybe he nailed me on my short essay. I knew I shouldn't have said the therapist was implanting false memories!

He stands at the front of the room holding a big stack of papers. "OK, I'll hand these back now. Add fifteen points to the score marked on your paper."

"FIFTEEN points?!" I blurt out. "That means we sucked!" Panic mode!

"Well, no, actually two people aced it," he says, looking directly at me, and I immediately feel better. My money is on me and the ex-cop. He and I studied together for two and a half hours the day before the exam, and we eventually got to the point where we couldn't stump each other any more no matter how hard we tried.

"You might be wondering if your score is capped at 100 with the curve," he continues, looking back at the class, "and the answer is no. So if the curve puts you over 100 points, just think of it as getting a little ahead on your next exam." Boy, that would be sweet to get a 105 or 107 or something like that.

I finally get my paper back and glance hastily at the top of the first page. It's the only red ink on the entire exam: one word, underlined twice. It says perfect!

That means I got a 115 on my first exam.

There are not enough smilies on the Internet to express my delight.

Cute OT Joke

Q: How many OTs does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. They teach the lightbulb to change itself.

She's a super geek...super geek (she's super geeky)

I am the biggest geek ever. (Just thought I'd warn you now.)

Since my class starts in less than a week (aaagghhh!), I went up to Local College today to get my Student ID, an item I have not possessed in more than a decade. Technology has made this chore much easier than it used to be, although the pictures still suck. They just suck a lot faster now.

Then I...went and found my Abnormal Psych classroom. I'm so embarrassed to admit I did that. I can't remember the last time I went somewhere in advance just so I was sure I knew where it was. But yes, this Super Geek did just that. It is a windowless room with no notable qualities whatsoever. I've seen coffins with more personality than this place. However, I did notice that just behind it, there is a closet-looking thing. I couldn't help but wonder if our class will be secretly observed or experimented on in some weird way. We are in the Psych building, after all.

To top off my geekery, I am printing out directions and gathering business cards for a half-day seminar I'm going to tomorrow. When I saw the title, I knew I had to go. It's called "Brain Injury 101." How awesome is that?! The only way you could make it any more welcoming is if you called it "Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Brain Injuries But Were Afraid To Ask." (Although that wouldn't fit on a poster very well.)

I expect I will be doing a lot of scribbling and post-seminar clarification since I had to look up half the initials after the presenter's name, but eeeeeeeeee! I am excited to go learn about brain injuries!