I just signed up for the “one free month” thing on Netflix… (It just got released over here so they’re offering the first month free)
I have now discovered Ouran High School Host Club.
OMG HOW DID IT TAKE ME SO LONG TO FIND THIS?!?!
I think I’m hooked.
~K
I have 2 assignments due next week, one on Monday and one on Tuesday. The one for Monday is pretty easy, I’m halfway done on it and I did that in the 3 hrs before my lectures yesterday.
The other one is the DREADED group assignment :S Thankfully, the issues associated with that have now cleared up – the member who was not participating transferred to a different class, and therefore a different group (YAY!) so now we just have the 4 of us, and it’s all working very nicely now.
And since I’ve got those two assignments, what do you think I’m doing? Certainly not working on them :S
I got a migraine yesterday at uni, which also conspired with my lingering sinus/cold thing from last weekend to give me a sore throat so I couldn’t swallow the painkillers I’d usually take (I tried and nearly threw up. Was not going to try that again, I already felt terrible enough). So once I got home I spent a good 2 hours with a heat pack on my head until the pain subsided sufficiently for me to sleep, and I went to bed. Woke up at 7 this morning feeling MUCH better 🙂
So far today, I’ve one done about 1hr of assignment work – I downloaded a couple of articles for further info on the group assignment, and edited the first part of my other assignment. This occurred while I was having my coffee.
Since then, I’ve put 2 loads of dishes through the dishwasher, 2 loads of clothes through the wash (ready to add to the 4 baskets that are still sitting on the couch awaiting folding), and got caught up on reading all the blogs I’ve fallen behind in.
I also prepped 2kg of apples and made stewed apples. The house now smells like apples and cinnamon, and it’s AWESOME. The recipe will be up (hopefully) for this coming Foodie Friday. I might even get the post sorted now, for a little more procrastination…
I haven’t gotten as far as procrastibaking just yet, but it may come later tonight.
I’m still not 100% from being sick last weekend, I think I probably should have taken an extra day off from uni and stayed in bed, but I didn’t. I figure I’ll just battle through this week and then make the most of the easter long weekend and uni vacation week.
Lemon & ginger tea is my best friend right now, along with tomato soup. Tomato soup burns like nothing else on the way down, but it always seems to make me feel better so I’ll keep eating it 🙂
I should really try and actually do some of those assignments now…
~K
It would be nice if when the school says “We want you to use APA 6th style for referencing and formatting” that they actually MEANT they wanted full, proper APA 6th style.
So, do they ACTUALLY want APA 6th style, as per the Publication Manual? NO.
They want us to follow their little “School of Nursing” APA guide. Which asks for DOIs to be written as “http://dx.doi.org/xx.xx etc”, which ISN’T APA6th as per the book & APA website (I know this because I just checked).
The even more annoying part of this is that the university library “Referencing Guide” website actually does it the way it says in the book.
When I asked about it today in the lecture, I was told that “there had been discussions and that this was the NEW way that APA6th was displaying DOIs”, and when I asked if my Publishing guide was therefore defunct (despite being only 2 years old), I was told that it was now incorrect.
Which quite obviously, it is not. I don’t have a problem with them using a modified APA referencing style, but don’t try to tell me that APA6th has been edited when a search through the official APA website shows nothing of the sort, and it isn’t even a consistent change across the whole university.
I think I still need to speak to my lecturer again about this, because I just need to be clear (for my own sanity). Also, the “Referencing Guide” they give us on the School of Nursing website only has a limited number of options for things – it doesn’t cover any referencing oddities that can come up when getting information from something other than a journal article/book, so if I need to reference something like that, should I be using the Publishing Guide format, or something different?
Now I’m worrying about this, because what if they want us to use other different layout settings or something too? According to my lecturer, I’ll get marked down if I use “proper” APA style, because it’s not what is on the referencing guide they’ve made.
UGH. Rant over.
~K
Firstly, whatever it was that was making me sick seems to have passed – I’m feeling mich better now, with just a bit of a cough leftover and feeling a little tired.
In other news, I got my stethescope today…and now I’m sitting here at my desk looking at the cat thinking “I wonder what purring sounds like? Would he let me listen without eating the stethescope?”
I will report back on the results…
~K
I have placed myself under quarantine.
I don’t know if this is a sinus infection, or whether I’ve actually picked up some flu/cold/bug thing, but either way I don’t want to risk giving this to anyone else (Hubby has the immune system of… well I don’t know really. But he never seems to catch anything that I end up with).
Hubby has just gone down to the shops to get me some cans of soup, because we didn’t have any in the house and solid food is a no-go at the moment (I almost choked on the piece of bread I tried to eat for breakfast – not toast, bread. Soft, fresh bread). Because we didn’t have any, so far today I’ve had 2 Lemsip, a cup of coffee, and 3 cups of very sweet tea. I am absolutely KILLING for something decent to put in my stomach, because that lovely post-nasal drip means I am still feeling horrendously nauseous.
Hubby will once again have to cook his own dinner. I’m not sure what he’ll make. I will try and ensure he makes some veges to go with whatever he has though, because he’s liable to just heat up a pie (nothing else, just the pie). NOT a healthy or substantial dinner by any account.
I was supposed to be having a Tupperware party this weekend (yay tupperware hehehe) but that has obviously been cancelled. I just hope I’m feeling a little better by Monday so I can go to uni – if I miss Monday as well as today, that’ll be 3 lectures missed and it will take me FOREVER to catch up.
~K
I have a killer post-nasal drip that is making me feel so nauseous it isn’t even funny. My throat hurts, and it’s hard to swallow, but that’s being caused by one of the glands in my neck being all swollen.
The same swollen gland seems to be stopping sinus drainage on that side too, because I feel like I’m essentially deaf in that ear. The other ear keeps popping :S
I also have a temperature, and I’ve had it since at least Wednesday, even though I felt OK then (I registered as 37.1° when we took temperatures in class, when I know that “normal” for me is about 36°). My teacher was like “oh that’s perfectly normal” and I was like “not for me it isn’t”. I was starting to feel “off” by Wednesday night, and now look at me…
I’d thought it was just that my antihistamines weren’t working properly this week, but…obviously not.
I was supposed to have 5hrs of back-to-back classes today, but I’ve elected to stay home and try to get better.
The most annoying thing right now is that I don’t have any soup left, so I’ll have to make more if I want to eat :S
I figure I’ll wait for all the medications to kick in and then at least TRY to do some of the work I’ll be missing today.
~K
Hubby is currently cooking dinner. !!!!
And I’m the one sitting on the couch….
This is different 🙂 good different! But the main reason it is happening is because I’m feeling a bit off, and I may have said “if you want dinner, you need to cook it.”
***
He just asked me what to put in mashed potatoes – he was going to do grated cheese and milk. While I’m sure that would be good, I don’t know if it would go that well with the onion gravy (we’re having bangers & mash).
Butter & sour cream is WAAAAAAY better.
***
He seems to be a little frazzled – obviously I make the whole “lining up everything so it’s ready at the same time” thing look easier than it is.
He’s waiting on the gravy now – and it isn’t thickening up.
***
Turns out he misread the container of gravy powder – it wanted 3 TABLESPOONS, not teaspoons. Gravy thickening up now this has been rectified.
***
Dinner finally done, and it was pretty good 🙂 yay!
I don’t think he’s realised that the dishes need to be done now though…
Meanwhile, I’m going to have a lemsip and hope I feel better.
~K
Today, we learned how to take vital signs in clinical lab class 🙂
We got to use all the fancy things, like the O2 sat machine, and stethescopes, and the sphygmomanometer….
I still can’t say “sphygmomanometer”, I get to “sphygmoma-” and then it all goes to crap haha.
In other news, I definitely need my own stethescope, the ones they give us in class are a bit out of whack and REALLY uncomfortable. Talk about ear ache :S
~K
Apparently, myself and one of my uni friends (let’s call her P) have been labeled the “know it alls”.
The reason for this? We sit up the front, we answer questions, we ask questions, we interact with the lecturers. Apparently, making sure I read the content and semi-understand it before the lecture makes me a “know it all”.
I thought it just made me a good student?
They are also saying that we are always “jumping in” and never letting anyone else answer. Well, how about you (who is complaining) speak up and put in your comment/answer? We don’t answer straight away, we wait a little to see if anyone else is going to say something. If they don’t, that’s when we speak up.
I’m finding the differing reactions to this rather interesting though – P is several years younger than me (almost straight out school) and she just can’t seem to get past it. Every day since we were told on Thursday what was being said, she’s been ranting about how she’s going to “show those girls” by getting really good marks. Meanwhile, I was more like “oh well, haters gonna hate” and that was the end of it for me.
Except that P won’t let it go. She still seems particularly pissed off by it, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing – let what they say affect you, and you give them power. By being so determined to “show them”, she’s letting them dictate how she behaves. It’s somewhat interesting to observe from a Psych perspective, but I am getting a little over the repetition. We haven’t personally heard the things they’re saying – it’s all second-hand info. Maybe it’s not as bad as we’ve heard, maybe it’s worse. Either way, I see no reason to dwell on it – we can’t change how those people see us without changing who we are as people, so why should we bother with what they think? Our lecturers seem to like us, and we have quite a lot of friends who don’t mind the “know it all”-ness – in fact, we’ve made several friends by being knowledgable and being able to help them understand concepts etc. So, there could be a thousand reasons for those girls saying the things they do, but it all comes down to the basis of all bullying – trying to make others feel small so you feel better in comparison. Clearly, nothing has changed since high school. I had really hoped that the bitchiness would reduce as we got older :S
In other news – Group work. FUCKING GROUP WORK.
We have this one girl in the group who is just NOT getting involved. Our presentation is happening in less than 2 weeks, so we are having to work very quickly to get it done, and she is not doing ANY work at all. She didn’t turn up to our group meeting last week, after being reminded about it only the day before and having an email about it from the previous week when we planned the meeting. I then sent an email with a summary of what we discussed in the meeting, along with the topic divisions and what we were planning on doing at the following group meeting, along with the time, date and location of the next meeting (this was sent on Thursday arvo, just after our first group meeting). She hadn’t contacted anyone in the group between Thursday and Monday, so I spoke to her when I saw her at one of our Monday lectures. SHE HADN’T EVEN READ THE EMAIL YET! Even after I’d told her on Thursday arvo (after meeting, saw her in another lecture) that there was an email about what we did in the meeting and that she should read it and get in contact with her respective topic person ASAP. Her overall approach to the topic seems to be very blasé, and she just doesn’t seem to get that the rest of the group is not going to let her get away with doing nothing and taking our mark.
I have therefore had to do the dreaded thing for a uni student – I had to tell the teacher :S
I spoke to the lecturer on Monday after our lecture about it, because as much as I want to give this girl a chance, I’m not going to let her get away with nothing just because we didn’t advise the lecturer early enough about what is happening. The lecturer was really good about it, and I said that we were trying to sort it out ourselves, but because we are presenting quite early we can’t let it go on – we need to take decisive action. The next step is that if this girl doesn’t turn up to the meeting on Thursday, we will notify the lecturer and she will help sort it out. I hope, for the sake of her marks, that she DOES turn up and do the work, but the impression I’ve gotten about her personality is that this is rather unlikely (like, pigs might fly unlikely). Yes, this is assumption along the lines of what I was complaining about earlier – but in this case, I’d say that my assumptions are actually backed up by the evidence that has already been presented (i.e. she’s late for every lecture, she didn’t read the emails, she says she’s done research but won’t give us the details of the articles, and she missed last week’s tutorial as well as the group meeting. Not a good track record).
I just find it so funny that people say “oh, group work is good preparation for working in teams in the workplace”. I call BS. Teamwork in a workplace is significantly different from group work in a uni setting. For one, generally the stakes are higher – in uni, you just get a crappy mark (it’s hardly ever enough to make you fail a course overall – and heck, you might actually do well), but in the workplace you might lose an account, or have a patient die if you cock up (or various other outcomes, many of which could result in sacking or at least disciplinary action). Therefore, there is a little more motivation to actually put in the hard work. Secondly, a team in the workplace is usually made up of people who have different areas of expertise, so each person’s role in the group is very clear, and as a general rule that expertise is respected. That is often not the case in uni group work assignments – generally, everyone is on the same level of “know nothing”, or if someone does know more they often get ignored (because of the aforementioned equivalent knowledge assumption).
Rant over. Sorry, had to vent somewhere so I don’t smack someone in the head with a textbook.
Positive from today though – I got asked if I was straight out of school. When I said how old I was and that I’d already done another degree, they were like “No way! You look far to young for that!” I will take this as a compliment 🙂 It’s always nice to hear you look younger than you are haha
Everyone is always surprised to realise that I’m married, and that revelation is usually followed by the usual “Wait – how old are you?” line of questioning. Yay for good aging genes!
Apologies for the lack of a Tutorial Tuesday post, I haven’t had time to finish the one I’ve got in drafts atm (because of STUPID GROUP WORK). It looks like there will not be a Foodie Friday post this week either, for the same reason. Hopefully I should be able to get back on track with them once the group assignment is done (yay Easter break!), but I’ll see how things go – no promises of anything at this point.
~K
randomly pay attention to what I’m actually listening to, because I swear I just hear “Higgs Boson Blues” in the lyrics.
Yes, yes I did.
“Higgs Boson Blues” – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
~K
Thoughts of My Mad Life 