Another Thing

So I'm still alive. Barely.

I never realized school would be so intensive. I knew it would be tricky and moderately hard (especially working full time), but I never knew there would be so much testing involved.

So on my On-week this is how it goes: I wake up at 730 (which is later than I should, but I can't make myself get out of bed before then, whether I'm awake or not). So I get up and rush to get ready in the morning so that I can drive to work and catch the 8 am shuttle to school. School goes from 830 am to 230-330 usually, and till noon on Thursday/Friday, but regardless of the day I go straight to work afterwards on the shuttle. On days that I get out later I'm behind in hours, and on the two days I get off early I'm making up work for those hours I didn't get...and so all said and done I get off from work at about 1230 am every day I work. Then I go home and take a shower, then I pass out and wake up in 6 or so hours for the next day of school.

I have no time to myself to even think. I don't have time to study, to hang out, to read my scriptures (I listen to them at work on my ipod), to run (I have a half marathon coming up in October that should be interesting)... And they're cross training me at work, which wouldn't be a big deal if they had people to cover the up front stuff I don't have time to do while training. As it is, there are two of us at night to run our respective instruments and to split the remainder of our time bringing in samples to lab, splitting tubes of samples that have different tests on them, sending samples to storage, and filing SPEPS. It's a lot more work than it sounds like, and the person I work with at night is a total greenie. I think that's what I'll name him. He's awesome, but he's new and can only do so much given that. He's actually awesome, but the old night person who is now the day person on his/our instrument, is a total slacker. He does what he has to, and nothing more. It drives me crazy. So I'm trying to help Greenie, train, and we're both doing all this stuff that they really should hire a third person to do at night which is frustrating. I need to talk to my supervisor.

School is another thing. We have 2-4 tests a week. This is not easy material either. Hematology, Immunology, Microbiology...We're accountable for everything mentioned or even eluded to. Plus we have labs with all of them, which are time consuming. My Basic Immunology (I have a Clinical Immunology class as well) professor is an evil dictator (which I'll get into on another day). So on my On-weeks I struggle through, and on my Off-weeks I spend myself cramming for tests I have the next day and which it's the first time I've even looked at the material. Those rare days I have off with no school (saturday/sunday on my off-weeks) I spend studying for the tests I have on my on week. This is hard considering for some classes the material taught on the day before the test will still be covered on the test. So I've acquired a myriad of grades, none of them failing (I have to get C's to not fail out of the program), and we'll see how this all goes. Next year will be cake actually. It will be all clinical rotations and no testing, so the days will be long but not intellectually taxing. Just draining. I can live with that after this year so far. I can't believe it's only been less than a month. It feels like ages. I have my Clinical Immunology final on Wednesday. I think that's why so many tests. We have a bunch of classes that only go part of the semester, but to be certified at the end of our program we will be taking tests designed by the state, not our professors, which is why they're cramming so much knowledge into our courses.

Luckily I went into this program with two friends. Worm is on my on-week, so though I see both friends the same amount of time at school (which is a long amount of time), I'm actually able to study with him. Plus Steven is married and the little free time he has is spent with his newly pregnant wife. We're all happy to see each other suffer with us. Steven stresses out a lot, and has reason to with so much on his plate. He's kind of my opposite, so he has the same amount of crap to deal with as I, with the added problem of a family to worry about. Worm, who I will now refer to as "Guy" after finding out that this is his legitimate middle name, is the most lax person I've ever come across in all of my years. It's impossible to be stressed out around him much, because the concept is foreign to him. He's also super cynical, and is me essentially in guy form. We bring out the cynicism in each other, and are ultimately more cynicism than ever will be present in one room at the same time. We can say anything to each other without worry of the other taking it badly, and others are often baffled by how seemingly rude our humor is towards each other without any insult being taken. We also talk about stupid and random things that come into our heads suddenly, and It's altogether a refreshing thing. He's kind of keeping me sane right now. Plus it's just always good to have a study buddy to learn more. We generally go buy mass amounts of sugar and caffeine, then takes random breaks to reward ourselves while studying to places we feel like going on whims. Like the 7/11 for slurpees or Graywhales to buy myself cds. The best thing is that I have no romantic interests in him in the slightest. That I think is why it's so easy to talk to him. I LOVE guy friends like that. I don't have to be inhibited in any way in what I say, because there's not even a glimmer of a spark there. I did realize that I will not have a glimmer of a dating life for at least the next year, which is depressing. I'll live, but I'll come out of this whole experience very much isolated...more than I already was. I wish there were cute guys in this program, because we all spend so much time together, but there are only 32 people total, so the odds weren't good to begin with. Considering half are girls and many of the guys are married...not so much. I do have a slight crush on this one kid, but it is just that; slight. Most of the time I can't so much decide if I have a crush on him after all, and then sometimes I do. Whatever.

So that's my uneventful eventful life in a nut shell. A truly crappy nut. A walnut? I'm not a huge fan of walnuts in the shell. Or walnuts not incorporated into something with sugar in it actually. Man I should really go to sleep right now. I have a practical exam tomorrow I'm not studying for right now. Guy came over tonight to study, and we ended up taking brownies to people we know after we each consumed 3 of them. It was partially to be nice, partially so we wouldn't get hugely obese from our horrible newly acquired habits of eating nothing but junk, and partially to get out of studying. So basically it worked on all accounts. I think we've just needed a break lately though. After cramming for our 3rd test in a row this past week we reached delirium. He would ask me questions he knew I didn't know the answers to, I would make up my own snide definitions, he would respond snidely, and we would laugh with no control over it whatsoever. At one point I snorted and we laughed about it for 20 minutes. That's how burnt out we were at that point. I'm super excited for Fall Break incidentally.