I’m a slacker

13 days left till the semester ends. 🙂

I need to move somewhere new, where no one knows me and I don’t know anyone.  Sure, I might be running away from my problems and past, but at least I’ll get a head start on them..

Just Breathe

Is it… a cold?  Or just really nasty allergies?  It’s hard to differentiate when you haven’t been sick in a couple years.

I think I’m going with A Cold.  My immune system and body haven’t been liking the beatings I’ve been giving them.  Morale is definitely plummeting.  Lame.

8 hours of sleep would help tremendously.

Mark 7 has been an interesting read the last couple days.. more on that later.

My first spam comment!

I feel special. 🙂

Man, I was kind of feeling bitter towards Christians last time I blogged.  I should apologize to the next one I run across.  *cough*

The last 16 days have been crazy!  Spring break did not go at all like I had expected.  It was pretty miserable after Day #2.  I’ve been having some health issues that are hard to get under control.  It’s very frustrating.  However, I did manage to watch several of the movies on my long, long, long list.  Some of them were pretty good.  Some of them weren’t.  It Happened One Night was probably my favorite.  🙂  Clark Gable is so dreamy!  High Society was a little cheesy, but the combined talents of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong and Grace Kelly… total dynamite, in my opinion!  Saw Gone With The Wind for the very first time.  Still not sure how I feel about that one.  It was definitely worth my time.. all 4 hours of it.. you really get invested in the characters and watching their development, cheering them on, silently berating them, crying and laughing for them, even when you know that the ending is going to be awful.  Again, Clark Gable… *swoons*  Why did she have to be so idiotic and not realize that she had something great till it was too late?  I guess that mirrors my life pretty well, though… so I can’t judge her. 😛

I’ve gone almost 24 hours without sleep.  Over spring break, I made a new record for myself at 39 hours.  Not by choice.  My body is exhausted.

I want to hug somebody.  Anyone.  Lots of people need hugs. 🙂

Lack of sleep

Took my drugs around midnight.

Talked with a friend on Skype for an hour and a half, discussing the 50 movies I plan on watching during spring break (woohoo!).  And the dozen books I need to finish.

Crashed around 2 (bad college student BAD).

Woke up at 4:30am.

Headed upstairs to go to the bathroom, remembered halfway up that there’s been some break-ins in the neighborhood this week.  Froze for 60 seconds, then made a mad dash the rest of the way up.  I’m not sure what I was trying to do there.  Maybe it was an attempt to startle whoever may or may not have been up there? 🙂

Woke up at 6:30am.

Woke up at 7:45am.  Stayed up.

Earthquake + all the other weird events that have been going on the last couple months = impending apocalypse, apparently.  Good news though, my normal heart rate of >100 was 82 as of ten minutes ago.  Them anxiety meds must be workin’.  Life is scary without a guiding compass.  I envy Christians, and dislike them at the same time.  Sanctimonious jerks.  But happy sanctimonious jerks.

The Bible is so long…

I haven’t even read all of it, despite being an ex-PK.  BAD PK.

God seems really distant right now, most of it is my fault.  I’m so darn apathetic right now..

shish kebob

Am I a loser for unknowingly spending 2.5 hours on a Saturday “briefly” reviewing muscle tissue?  It’s quite possible.  I thought FOR SURE it’d only been one hour since the studying began.

4 more sections (10 hours?) and 48 hours left till The Exam.  Maybe I’ll get around to the actual studying part by Monday morning.  Maybe.

*ominous music starts playing in the background, emphasized by the mad skills of an eerie organist*

I am in the process of being stood up again

Fortunately, my relationship status does not have a positive correlation with my level of happiness.  But… I am rather irked that this is the second time in 24 hours that he’s stood me up.

Whatever happened to simple dating?  Hey, I like you, I think you like me, let’s go out to eat and see where the conversation leads us (hopefully not down a dark alley where there is a mob waiting to beat you up).  Something that does not involve making vague plans, then sitting around watching your cell phone, twiddling your thumbs, contemplating your sparse but widespread eyebrows, finally realizing an hour later that he decided to back out without informing you.

It’s cool.

My plans for tonight: memorize cranial nerves, possibly watch Schindler’s List.

taking “awkward” to new heights

I usually end up feeling really stupid when I talk with people who are smarter than me.

No, really!  I was jabbering on about my first lab practical in a couple weeks, how I studied for six (almost) straight hours today, the teacher gave us three pages of bones and parts of bones to memorize!  I was ranting about a COMMUNITY COLLEGE anatomy class to a freaking MED STUDENT WHO GRADUATES IN TWO YEARS.

His comment: “Oh, it sounds like you’ve got a good head start then, you have a whole two weeks.”

About three seconds after I left, I already had the overwhelming sensation of my foot being placed directly in my mouth and SHOVED downwards.  Driving home, I decided to “fix” the situation a little, clarify how difficult the course really is.  I’m sure he’s still rolling his eyes.  He always tells me to text him when I make it home safely… here it is, word for word.

“Home!.. I almost drifted off into complacency when I thought about 2 wks being a long way off.. but… the 6 hours were just spent on general surface features of cranial bones, haha!  i haven’t made it to facial bones!  or anything else!  and the nerves.  study tips? :P”

It’s all true, but there are just so many lame and desperate things about this text.  Do I even have to point them out?

We’ve known each other for a year – he knows I’m motivated and he respects that.  We’re friends, but we’re not BFFs.  Maybe I’m just feeling insecure since he’s only two years older than me, a crazy cool med student with attractive friends, a bright future and an annoyingly nonchalant personality.  Another good example of me needing to impress people to feel like I’m worth something.  Especially since I just told him tonight that I’m going to be a music major.

At least when I was in nursing, we were on common ground – even if he was on a mountain peak and I was being squashed like a bug underneath said mountain (I wrote “muffin” the first time, apparently my mind is elsewhere..).

 

Happy Pancake Day!

Must it have a title? :)

Music therapy.  You’d think there’d be a program at one of the colleges in Tennessee.  Nope!  *poing*  Another lifetime wish bubble popped.  Darn.  Deep down inside, I also had this longing for Alaska or Hawaii … *DOUBLE POING*  Why on earth do I always visualize my thoughts and ideas as glowy bubbles floating around in my cranium?

I feel like I need to make a decision soon.  “Soon” being a relative term.  Sometime in the next 10 years, preferably.  I don’t want to be the 30-some year-old hanging out in the community college student center listening to motivational cassette tapes on my ultra classy walkman, my eyes glazing over every term when the teacher asks the class to introduce themselves the first day of class by stating their names (no need for that, since I‘ve been there for years, everyone‘s older sister or brother knew me… I’m near legendary), major (major.. I used to have one of those..), and favorite pair of singing potatoes (…oops, wait, what?  I vegged out there for a minute.).

My friends are now in the marriage/dignified career/baby-making stages of life, and I’m still in the same place I was (literally) 4 years ago.  I took a mammoth leap by going back to college.  At first, I was embarrassed that I was the 20-ish year old who didn’t finish high school.  The only accomplishment I had ever achieved was obtaining my GED.  Chemistry, geometry, statistics, government, politics?  Absolutely no knowledge in any of those subjects.  My 17 and 18 year-old classmates were geniuses, in my mind’s eye.

After first semester final exams, I sat on my floor and cried because I knew for SURE that I had failed – again.  My eyeballs almost popped out when I received my scores and had a 2.53 GPA for that term.  2 C’s, 2 B’s, and an A (which, in my opinion, doesn‘t count – applied piano lessons).  O.  M.  G.  About 75% of students would be considerably upset over a 2.53 GPA.  Apparently 4.0 is the ideal.  But not me!  I was elated, over the moon, on cloud nine!

That is, until I realized that my cumulative GPA was 1.5.  What the heck (my verbal usage was a little harsher than that).. Oh yeah!  3 years ago I was at the same college, but in a medicated bipolar haze.  I stopped going to classes and didn’t drop them.  They stay on your record as a big fat “F”.  I couldn’t appeal and get them cleared – it hadn’t been 5 years.  (To my three readers, I’m sorry about my extravagant use of numbers in this particular blog.  I don’t like them either.  But I digress.)  I found out that the classes had to be taken over again to remove and replace the “F”.  GOSHDARNIT.  Back to the crying-fest on my floor.  I’m not sure why I was crying – it’s not that big of a deal.  So what?  It’s in the past, and I actually had a chance to change it.

Occasionally, I still find myself on the floor, hyperventilating.  This time, for the most part, because I’m shocking myself every day.  Example:  I passed my first anatomy exam with an 86… the second highest score in the class.  Our professor is brutal – he writes scores down on the board so we can see how many people got A’s, F’s, etc (there‘s almost no middle ground in anatomy or physiology).  There were three A’s on the board and 9 F’s when I walked in the door.  A couple in between – I figured I was lumped into that category.  He handed us our tests.  I almost fell out of my chair.  It was all I could do to keep from crowing and jumping up on the table and stuffing my paper in one of the cocky highschoolers’ faces.  I know that gloating is bad, but… that’s the first A I have ever received in college, or high school, now that I think about it, (with the exception of piano, but once again, that doesn’t count!), and it was in a class of moderate difficulty with the toughest science professor in the college!  Exclamation point!  Bad thing about it is that I have set the standard outrageously high for myself early on in the semester, and I have this annoying tendency to sprint and burn out rapidly.

I could ramble on and on about this.  Young(er) people don’t value education as highly as they ought to.  They settle for mediocre jobs that only require a diploma or GED.  I’m not trying to generalize anyone, there are highly successful people who never had a chance to go to school.  And the ones who can’t afford higher education – that saddens me.  BUT, I think, if I can pull myself out of a pit like the one I was in and start to make something out of myself, anyone can.

There I go rambling again.

I wanted to be a doctor when I was 5, a nurse when I was 14, nurse-midwife when I was 18, a paramedic when I was 20.  I had a short stint in a nursing program at a private university, and decided that while the medical aspects of it intrigued me, that particular career wasn’t a good fit.  One of my multiple issues concerns me wanting people to like me.  Actually, I don’t care as much about them liking me as I do about them NEEDING me.  I want to be important and do important things.  How selfish.  Once I let go of that… and started considering what I’m good at… and what I genuinely like… it was startling.  All my prior career ambitions disappeared and I was left with nothing.

But I love music.  I’ve played the piano since I was 4.  I love anything – flute, clarinet, banjo, ukelele, guitar, violin, cello, bass cello.  I love working as a nurse’s aide with those suffering from Alzheimer’s and those who are at death’s door in hospice.  They’re alone and they need someone to be with them.  I step out of my selfish zone when it comes to my current job.  I love little people.  I’ve been through abuse.  I hate abuse.  I hate the thought of any little person or big person suffering like that without someone there to protect them, or help them heal.  I don’t want an office job.  I don’t want to spend two hours analyzing and charting someone’s bowel movement.  I like hands on work.  I get thrills of happiness when I watch a toddler banging keys on a piano, or causing chaos in church when they get ahold of the drumsticks *ahem*!  My heart melts when I hear an old lady with severe dementia singing “Blessed Assurance”.  Music can be used to encourage during challenging therapy sessions (whether it be physical or “talk”), it can help someone express themselves and their emotions in ways they are incapable of doing verbally or written, it can be used as occupational therapy by teaching rhythm and the physical task of motor coordination, you can lose yourself in the music and come out remarkably de-stressed.  It has a powerful healing force that most people underestimate.

My piano teacher (professor?  What are they called in colleges?) and I have had multiple conversations regarding this.  Music is something I crave and throw myself into, and I have a passion for helping people who are disadvantaged (when I‘m not in touch with Selfish ME).  This career sounds highly fascinating, maybe even a perfect fit.  I’ve had several uninformed people ask me why I want to go into something that sounds phony, like a type of pseudo psychology, an absolute sham.  “BECAUSE.”  Generally, I don’t get any further than that, haha.  I’m terrible when it comes to arguing and differing opinions.  I’d rather everyone get along, no friction, even if it’s something silly like who gets the last maraschino cherry or which singing potato gets to serenade me first (C’mon Fred, give Roger a chance.. you’re a mean potato… awww, I love all you guys!  Group hug!).

What does concern me about heading into music therapy is how little you can do with a music degree if you decide to switch to something else later in life.  It has to be a solid commitment.  Commitments aren’t my strong point.  But I guess they’re not anyone’s strong point, really.  5 years at an AMTA accredited college, majoring in music, while fulfilling the music therapy requirements (I’d be going on the clinical track), a 6-12 month internship, then successfully passing the Board Certification Examination in Music Therapy (eek!).  Yeah, I guess that’d require a certain level of commitment!  And money, oof, I’ll be paying off student loans for the next couple hundred years.

In the next couple months, I’m going to set up college visits at the only two accredited schools in my state and see what happens.  Just go with the flow.  A year from now, I could be living in an entirely different city, entirely different state, entirely different atmosphere, entirely different major, entirely different everything.  Wow.  I hate the word “entirely”.

I don’t know how anyone decides what they want to do with their life!  Life is Craaazy.

I’ve spent an hour and a half dinking around and writing this blog, so I guess I should go finish some homework… working a 2-10 tomorrow, not much time to chillax this weekend!  Is it wrong that I look forward to Mondays?  I’m all perky and chirping “TGIM!!”