Call me La-Z-Boy

I suspect I'm channeling that lumpy old recliner with the floppy footrest that's been retired to the frat house. After surviving my work week last Thursday and with my A&P course deadline screeching up at full speed, I hit the books hard. Spent over 36 hours solid (yes, I napped a couple hours here and there) reviewing everything--the workbook exercises, then textbook exercises, the online lessons and all those little rabbit trails they link you to, the chapter tests, the word lists, and on and on in circles until I had anatomy coming out of my ears. It was a flashback to my college years, when we'd spend that last finals week pulling all-nighters in the hopes of making up for not paying attention in all those lectures, only with considerably less silliness and no chocolate chip cookie dough (Julie B's mom was the BEST).

The course was HARD--the hardest class I think I've ever taken. Still, for all the information to try to absorb in the chapters, the chapter tests were almost disappointingly sketchy--some only five to ten questions long. Surely, they were representative of what the final would be like, right? Twenty chapters crammed into 60 questions, so they would surely be hitting the highlights. This is a course taken not by med school hopefuls, after all, but geared toward coders, tumor registrars, and whoever else might feel the need to get a clue for their job on the periphery of patient care.

Holy cow. Big mistake right there. Whilst I was quizzing myself on organ systems and terminology, they were dredging up extremely specific questions about circulations, microscopic functions, and chemical bonds. What the heck? About four questions in and I was flirting with a panic attack because they gave me the wrong test. . . At the very least, they hit me with the gnarliest test in the arsenal. In the end, however, I persevered and made it through with just enough time to click my way back to the beginning and check my answers. Managed to trust my instincts on a couple that I shouldn't have and second guess a couple that I shouldn't have, but in the end, walked away with an A on the sucker. Not a high A--which in the past would've caused me about a week's worth of stomach upset and disappointment in myself--but in this case, it feels like I aced it.

Talk about relief. Bad enough I allowed myself to get sidetracked over the weeks and had to scramble so at the end, but even worse that my trip has been so public. Forget the tuition I'd have to cough up again if I'd failed--I would've had to slink back here to announce my failure. For someone who isn't crazy about the spotlight, this is a silly way to go about my studies.

So the lumpy recliner bit? That's what happened next. My brain wanted to come here and Woohoo! but the stress and lack of sleep made me feel like I'd had the stuffing knocked out of me by a couple of rambunctious toddlers and a semester's worth of frat keggers. I seem to recall getting groceries and surviving almost another week of work, but the brain is still not completely engaged. Spent a couple afternoons trying to find the perfect music video to convey my elation, but Devo's Whip It! has such a stupid video and I kept getting stuck on bagpipes, which I suspect not everyone loves like I do. Mostly, I found myself wandering off nonsensically into things like Shatner does the Beatles, which I couldn't explain away as remotely related to past or future jobs, studies, or healthcare forum in general, but good grief, it's hysterical. . . The gist of all this is that yay, I'm awfully pleased with myself, but lack the strength and discipline to convey it outside my head. I will probably need another week before the edges come back into focus and I'm firing on all cylinders again. With this in mind, I'm sure everyone will forgive me a few nonsensically mixed metaphors and general lack of coherence. Give me another week to clean the Doritos crumbs out of my cushions, replace that missing bolt in my frame (duh--no wonder my back went out!), and time for a good scrubbing and fluffing so I'm more presentable for Parents' Day.

Most silly of all is that it didn't even take me a day to ignore my promise to enjoy the break from studies and thoroughly deflate for a week or two to dive into the next course before I found myself sitting at the computer, looking for the best deals on my next group of textbooks. Any minute, I will probably be able to slobber over three classes' worth of tomes, with an eye toward starting the first class--computers, then medical terminology, then pharmacology. Sounds incredibly easy, given that these are things I've studied before and am immersed in with my job for the last few years.

Wait a minute. . . I thought anatomy & physiology was going to be a walkover, too! I think I'll give myself another week off, just to be safe.