My baby girl

I finally found the cable for the camera. So here is my baby girl on her first day of school.

Plodding along

Well I am nearing the end of week 3 and I am still alive (and relatively sane). Yes that is a huge acheivement!

Sarah (the girl from PBL) did end up dropping out. What a waste of time and effort getting in. We are going to get a new person. There was a pretty big waiting list and because we are still pretty early into the peice they have offered the place to someone else. His name is James and we should get to meet him tomorrow.

I am finding it all pretty interesting. This weeks PBL is on genetic disorders. It is about a grandmother whose 19yo daughter has a baby and it as down syndrome. So we had to learn all about genetics which is no small task for someone who has never done any biology. We actually have a day off today!!!! Well it is not totally off. there is a prac class for non-science students that I probably should have gone to because it is lab skills in micro/haem/histo labs which I have never done, but I rationalised it by saying that it is more for non science people and trying to get them used to and comfortable in labs. I am very comfortable in labs I just dont know WTF I am doing in regards to specific procedures. Oh well the decision is made now. I will probably benefit more from the study anyway (like the study I am doing right now).

In other news............
David starts back at uni on Monday. We had all of the childcare arrangements sorted even down to my mother minding them on one afternoon (which is no small feat considering she lives an hour and a half away) and thay go and change the timetable on us. Now it is really sucky. Either the kids have to go to before school care on Tuesdays which is a pain as it is not at the school like after school care or they have to go on Monday afternoons of which I will only sometimes be home in time to pick them up (david never will be). The day davids folks have them has had to change from Mondays to Tuesdays which they don't mind except it means that this week they already have plans and cant do it. I am at uni from 8-6 on Tuesday so I am no help and David is stuck there till 5:30. So we are pretty screwed and haven't figured out how to make it work yet.

There isn't that much news other than that. med school is a bit consuming at the moment so hopefully I will find the balance soon.

The first week.

OK for a round up of week one of med school.

Here we all are

I am at the front, 4th from the right, in the purple top. That photo was on the front page of the catholic weekly. I said to my nana 'I bet I was the last grandkid you expected to see in that paper'. She just grumbled. She likes to try and ignore the fact that I have an extremely different belief system to her.

I don't really know what one word descriptor I should use. I could say 'good' but that doesn't really say much. I won't say 'brilliant' because there was far too much work and freaking out involved. I think that I will have to stick with 'interesting', but said in that drawn out not so sure what to say way.

Monday and Tuesday were pretty routine boring kind of days but because everything was new and exciting I wasn't bored at the time. They were just introduction lectures, each new person coming in and explaining how their section was the most important. Things got more interesting from Wednesday as we started PBL (problem based learning). We have groups of 8 and we are in the group for a whole year. My group is 5 girls 3 boys and I am the 2nd oldest. Within the group there are several people who know sooo much more than me. They have really relevant past degrees and experience. I am finding that having a chemistry degree really does not help at all. I am going to need to do a lot of work to keep ahead of the 8 ball. We all walked away from this freaking out a little bit because we had lists of things that we had to research and investigate in order to present to the group on Friday. There was a lot to be done and not much time. One of our group members Sarah was really kinda freaked out afterwards saying that she didn't realise that it was going to be so much work or time. I didn't see her in the lectures that afternoon or the labs on Thursday and she wasn't in PBL on Friday so now I am worried that she got scared off. I hope she didn’t. It seems like a lot of work to put into getting into something only to quit as soon as it starts. I hope she comes back this week. Thursday was UTS day. The uni has an agreement with UTS so we have 1 day a week there in the labs and receiving lectures from their people. At first we were all told that we would need to be there at 8am which we were all dreading, luckily it was revised to 9am. The timetable had us in 'Orientation' from 9 till 1 then labs from 2 till 6. Orientation took 45 minutes. By 9:45am we were done and just had to 'hang' till 2pm for the labs. 4 hours to kill. I used some of this time to do the stuff I should have done when I was in my procrastination phase (see previous post). It was still annoying. I mean why not have just put the orientation lecture at 1pm? It was very basic, anyone could have done it. Friday was clinical skills, PBL and more lectures. I was sooo glad when the week was over because I was just buggered. I have to start it all again tomorrow.

I CAN do this it is just going to take a lot of retraining myself with my study habits and I will need to start using my time more wisely. I should get to studying.

Let the procrastination begin!

I should be studying. I have soooo much to do. Yet here I am. Today I came home from uni had a nap, had some dinner watched some TV then have been fucking around on the internet. I better get my arse into gear before I get too far behind. I hate trying to catch up. The stuff I need to do doesn't have to be done till Friday, but tomorrow is a long day and I really should have gotten it done. I am very disappointed with myself. I started up very good yesterday but today it crashed. Not very good for just 3 days in. I'll have to do better tomorrow.

A little suprise.

I don't really know how to feel right now.

I just had a miscarriage.

I was about 8 weeks. I hadn't done a test, so I didn't really 'know' but I kind of figured. I was late, very late and I had several other tell tale signs that I chose to ignore because I had other things to concentrate on. I start medical school tomorrow.

I feel a few things. I feel sad, I mean that baby could have been a James or an Emily. I feel relieved, a baby was not what I had on the cards right now. I feel guilty, did I do this? Did me wanting not to be pregnant somehow make this happen?

It wasn't really the start to medical school I wanted. It started on Friday when I was at enrolment. Very heavy bleeding, I had to go to the bathroom every 20-30 minutes. I knew what was happening yet I had to sit there and chat to all the other new students like it wasn't happening. I'm not quite sure how I managed. The baby came out tonight.

I have to be at uni at 9:30 tomorrow.

Should I tell mum and stuff? It seems a little strange to say, 'hey mum I was pregnant but I'm not now' It’s almost like it didn't happen.

Oh well.

Here's to a better day tomorrow.

A Weekend

I just don't get the whole facebook thing. I have been resisting getting one for yonks despite people sending me those invitations, however yesterday I decided to give in. The medical school in ND has set up a facebook thing so I thought that I should finally join. I have just spent like an hour trying to work out what the f**k to do. I signed up, then I put in a few bit and pieces about me as I figured I shouldn't leave my profile blank like I did when I took the same step in myspace (until my sister decided to put stuff in it for me as she didn't like having such a bare page in her friends list) Then I went about the annoying task of trying to find the und page or profile or whatever it is I need to find to join the group I wanted to join and I could find nothing. The search functions are ridiculous, I couldn’t find anything I wanted to (It probably has more to do with me than the search engines). So I gave up and came to blog instead. I now have a poor lonely facebook page that is only half done LOL.

You may ask why I am spending my time stuffing around on the computer well it is because I have a weekend!!!! Yes I know that it doesn't sound that extraordinary but I haven't experienced one of these strange availabilities of time in over 6 months. I no longer work for my mother because of med, thus I no longer have to make the long trek down to Gerringong every weekend. I don't really know what to do with myself.

We went to the farmers market this morning to get some nice fresh fruit and veg, and I lost an envelope with over $200 in it. It is very upsetting as that money was supposed to cover lots of thing (more things than there was money unfortunately) now we are pretty screwed and I am not sure what to do.