Orchids & Onions, take 1!

Welcome to the first edition of Orchids and Onions! Without further ado, let’s see who this week’s winners are!

Onions to: stupid advisors who screw up your Master’s graduation clearance and then get pissed that you would dare question whether everything is still in order...Two. Months. Later. By the way, useless advisor, I don't care what women-oppressed country you are from OR that you purport to be a MD. (my old school)

Orchids to: wonderful staff in student records offices who realize that advisors are as stupid as you suspected. (my old school)

Onions to: podunk universities that offer must-have classes for admission into highly competitive programs only one semester a year. And who don't accept my Stats class from the old school. (my new school)

Orchids to: advisors who help you find other universities from which to take the missing courses. And advise you to CLEP out of Sociology. (my new school)

Onions to: advisors who didn’t advise you last semester and now feel bad and have to help you find missing courses at competing universities. And forgot to tell you that your US History class was one you could CLEP out of. (again, the new school)

Orchids to: the sun. It is our first sunny day in about 2 weeks. 

Onions to: neighbors that purposefully look the other way when you wave as they drive by.

Orchids to: redneck neighbors that park their 4x4 Dually truck in the middle of the road, blocking traffic to say hi. I’ll take any kind of friendly neighbor as opposed to a snot any ol’ day.

Onions to: my local Podunk university for having more prerequisites than some well-known-teaching-hospital-university’s Accelerated BSN program. If they don’t need it, Podunk U surely doesn’t either.

Orchids to: Tater and Twinkie, the two best bichon kids ever!

Onions to: my very disorganized US History teacher. (yet ANOTHER prereq that my two previous degrees didn’t require, and I’m required to have for Po-Dunk U.)

Orchids to: the hubby for cooking and running the vacuum today.

Okay, back to Microbiology! I have a test coming up on disease transmission and antibiotics—love it!

Time Flies…

Time is flying by, fa real. Midterms are SO 2 weeks ago, of which I am sporting all shiny ‘A’s in every class, thankyouverymuch. ;)

So the updates. I really didn’t realize that I was actually learning stuff, let alone meaningful stuff until I watched “Monsters Inside Me” on Discovery Health this morning. Not for the squeamish, indeed, but nothing in the health world is, I suppose. This med student came down with terrible headaches, they did an LP on him and his cerebral spinal fluid pressure was off the chart. Then they did blood work and said that his eosinophils were off the charts. Eosinophils, you say? Why I just learned that those are the bad-boy-white-cells that go to work on a parasite infestation. Eureka! Said med student and 9 of his mates had been in Jamaica and contracted a rat-lung worm. Ew.

But I knew what they heck they were talking about on the show! Neato. I really like ‘Microbio for Allied Health’ which is the BS name they’ve given the class at my university to denote Microbio for Nurses. I really like the course—no BS that doesn’t pertain to me and my ultimate goal of becoming a nurse.

A&P is going very well, too. I don’t know if I like the ‘crash’ way I’m having to study for the class, because I actually NEED to know this shit for, I dunno, the rest of my life/career. We will go over 3 little ‘uncomplicated’ sections, like, Skin, Bones, AND Joints and have a test encompassing all three. That. Is. A. Lot. At. Once. And I really do want to know this stuff. My future patients hope I do too. Why we don’t do a topic, test, topic, test, is beyond me, but I like the class in spite of the instructors way of testing.

MicroBio lab is fun. We’ve done about 8 tests now on our Pet Bacteria. Things are looking very favorable for me to be toting around Salmonella. *Patting suspected-Salmonella on the head, “Good little Gram-Negative bacteria. Does the good little bac want a treat? He does? Awww, how ‘bout a nice EMB plate to grow your colony-wolony on?”

These are fa real pathogens. Lab friend has probably got E. coli. And does the disinfectant we use ever STINK. My backpack and lab book and notebook are permanently impregnated with the stench. Ah well, stench is preferable to live pathogens.

So it is all VERY interesting to me right now, even though my education is not yet “nurse-ly” in nature.

Offhandedly, I try to speak with ‘those-who-wear-coveted-white-and-black-scrubs’ as often as possible. They are the ones who look constantly overwhelmed and tired, and wear aforementioned white scrub tops and black scrub bottoms to class 3 days a week. Everyone I see is in the traditional 4 year nursing program. Accelerated Nursing students wouldn’t be in my MicroBio class with me—they’ve already taken the course, like I’m doing now. (my own personal lightbulb just went off on why I’ve only been speaking to 4-year-plan folks. I digress.) At any rate, all of the 4-year-ers are incredulous to the fact that I am willingly setting myself up for an accelerated program. That I am TRYING to get IN to that program. It is a bit alarming I guess, but the way I see it, I have all of the book classes done. The lacking sci classes, I’m taking. So it really isn’t different, it is just I’m doing a front-loaded program of my own tailoring and next year, I’ll be doing almost exclusively clinicals. As I understand, that’s how a lot of advanced practice nursing programs work.

Well, it is the rare weekend that I do not have 3 tests in the next week, so my husband and I are about to take a nice late lunch at the local wonderful (albeit non-alcohol serving) Italian joint. Amore!