August 28, 2011.

Weather the Weather be: 64 (F) Foggy, at first, giving away to sun. 80 (F)-Hot, further inland
Events of Note: Day 1 of Clinical Rotations (CC1 Skills)
In the News: Hurricane Irene heads toward the U.S. East Coast.

Well, as my "Events of Note" sub-section notes, today was the beginning of my Clinical Rotations as a student MA. My Clinical site is at a rural health clinic, in an underserved area. Mostly, it was site orientation, although, I got to do some observing of clinical skills, and do some hands-on of my own, including preparing an injectable medication, and a bit of practice wrapping and autoclaving a surgical suture kit. I was given some supplies so that I could continue to practice and perfect my skills at home. My next day there will be September 7th, and in the interim, I have to study for my CC2 Pre-Clinical Exam, which co-incides with my first full week at my clinical site. I also need to work ahead in my full-time study workload as much as possible. I'm a little surprised by how tired I am tonight, but I think that the next couple of weeks are going to be particularly interesting and rewarding. I'll try to blog more regularly here during that time, as a way of, in very general terms, documenting how I'm finding clinical rotations to be.

May 20, 2011

Whether the Weather be: 52 (F) Cloudy
Events of Note: Unit 1 DB Initial Posts
In the News: Dunno-haven't gotten that far, today.

*  Most of today has mainly been a combination of my nursing my daughter (who's home sick from school for the day), together with writing up my initial posts for DBs, this week. I took some Clinical Leave, last Term, so it's taking me a while to get back into synch with writing up discussion posts, particularly with APA format. Last night, I caught up on reading, note-taking and looking over workbook materials. My husband is home from work today-he'll be working for this whole upcoming weekend, so it's been pleasant to have him around. Our daughter seems to be perfectly contented with amusing herself on my laptop, with some online educational games.

Weekend plans?. Schoolwork!. Eep!.

May 19, 2011

Whether the Weather be: 50 (F) Cloudy
Events of Note: Unit 1, May 2011 Term (A Track)
In the News: IMF head resigns following rape charges/allegations.

* I've re-activated this blog now that I'm resuming my Kaplan studies (as of yesterday). This Term, I begin the first of three Clinical Rotation courses: Clinical Competencies 1, together with another elective paper (General Biology 1: Human Perspectives). To that end, since it's shaping up to be quite a demanding Term, in lots of different ways, I thought that it might be useful to re-engage and re-activate this space and resource, as a 'filter' for charting my academic, clinical and personal progress. At the moment, the workload and requirements all look quite daunting, but, I know from past experience (and plenty of it) that it's largely a matter of developing a routine and timetable and following through and sticking with it, come what may. Yesterday was mostly administrative details, like ordering my uniform and clinical kit. Attended my first Bio Seminar, which was fairly 'light and fluffy'-mostly students asking half a hundred, fine-print sorts of questions...My Venitech trainer kit also arrived, however, I'm still waiting on the hard copy of my textbooks to arrive. Once that happens, I'll likely feel a little more settled.

* Was woken by the "Alarm Cat" this morning: a literal and figurative timely reminder that gone are the days that I can simply snooze my early morning away in bed, obliviously, much as I may wish to do otherwise!.

* Our daughter turns 6 on June 6. She wants a "Hello Kitty" party with all of the trimmings. Always something...