What the fudge bucket am I going to do with my life?

I've started contemplating the different things I could do with next semester. It is partly fun and partly scary. 

My plans fall into three basic categories;

Category 1: Continue paramedics for another semester (groan).

Category 2: find a new direction and appropriate course and commence it in semester 2.

Category 3: find a new direction, start appropriate course next year if not available for semester 2 start and get to work on all those little things on my life "to do" list that I never get enough time for.

What I have learned so far from my researching is that there are a lot of very expensive, very wanky sounding graduate level qualifications out there that will do nothing to increase your employ-ability. 

I don't blame the universities. It has been a thousand years since they were adequately funded, so they create degrees that people want to study even though for every 100 students they accept, there is only one poorly paid entry level job for them all to compete for upon graduation . 

Most of them are basically graduate level, coursework based Arts degrees; interesting to study but shit all employment outcomes (as distinct from the actual Master of Arts, which is research based). Since I already have a "fun to study, but not all that useful" degree, I am not in the market for a second.

There are so many options out there. I wish I could skip off to Hogwarts, put on the sorting hat and have it tell me what I should be doing. 

However, Harry's encounter with the sorting hat was one of many moments where JK Rowling poignantly reminds us that it is the decisions we make that most shape our outcomes, not our genetics and not the things that happen to us.  

http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Sorting_Hat

There are so many things I want to and I don't like the idea of having to invest my time going in one direction knowing that as soon as I do that other possibilities will pass. However, I do know that if I don't properly channel my energies into something, I waste all my time agonising and I won't achieve anything like the level of success I so want for myself in any area at all. 

I am now starting to understand why in high school (especially snooty private schools like the ones I went to) they just tell you what to do. It is hard to work out where you fit in in the world and it is just easier if someone comes along and else tells you. 

In other news, my younger brother is currently in London on a tour of the UK with his school cricket team. It is meant to be a cricket tour however every match scheduled thus far has been washed out. He still seems to be having a fantastic time and today he will have an (indoor) net session at Lord's. Those of us back home are just a little bit jealous.

On the weekend I got a little gift from my Dad for no reason. I will admit to being a fan of receiving gifts for any reason, but there is something especially lovely about receiving a gift purely because the giver saw something and thought of you. 

Yay! Present 

So if anyone out there has any idea as to what I should be doing with my life, please let me know in a comment!

Wanker Chef: Homemade peanut butter cups!

On Friday I was feeling strangely productive. I have become somewhat addicted to being really busy and now I can't seem to wind down. There is no doubt it is taking me a little while to get back to normal after exams. I keep waking up trying to remember what I should be studying... 

On Friday I ran errands, did a very long session at the gym, had lunch and a long walk while avoiding the cleaners. Once I got back in the house, I couldn't bring myself to sit still, so I did some cooking. 


I made homemade peanut butter cups because I love them and thought they couldn't be too hard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reese's-PB-Cups-Wrapper-Small.jpg

I've had a few requests for the recipe so I thought I would share it here! However, since cooking  isn't a specialty of mine I don't anticipate this becoming a regular segment.


Homemade Peanut Butter Cups!

This recipe is roughly based around ones I read on  http://www.joyofbaking.com/candy/PeanutButterCups.html and  http://www.sweetestkitchen.com/2009/04/homemade-peanut-butter-cups/#.T-XBvbUe4_c. 

Ingredients:

Cooking chocolate (I used milk, 1 big bag - adjust to your preference / desired quantity) 
Kraft whipped peanut butter - 1/2 a jar
Icing sugar - 1 bag
Margarine - 1 tablespoon
Canola oil
Mini muffin tin/ patty pans

Method:

I used a mini muffin tin as a mould and it worked really well. Before you start, grease it really lightly with margarine. You could use foil patty pans instead if you don't have a mini muffin tin.

Scoop half a jar of whipped peanut butter into a mixing bowl.

You can use ordinary peanut butter but it is tougher to mix. Kraft make a "whipped" variety (what drugs were the product development  department on when this came into fruition?) the mousse-like texture works really well.

Add icing sugar, sifting in about 2 table spoons at a time, keep adding until the peanut butter is as sweet as you want it. Mix through with a wooden spoon until the mixture is doughy (it's tough work, my arm got really sore!). 

The icing sugar and peanut butter dough

Melt your cooking chocolate. You could do it on the stove but I did it in the microwave, stopping every 30 seconds to stir. If you are feeling particularly clever, you can melt through a teaspoons of the peanut butter mix to the chocolate to give it a hint of peanut buttery deliciousness. 


Once the chocolate is melted, add a little dash of oil (say a teaspoon full) and stir through. The chocolate needs to pour quite easily, but shouldn't be too runny. 

Next, fill the bottom half of your patty pans/ tins with chocolate to just under halfway. Put the pans/ tins in the fridge until the chocolate is half set (you should be able to put a deep thumb print in the chocolate). This will only take a few minutes.

Once you've got the tin out of the fridge, roll the peanut butter mixture into little balls and place them on the chocolate bases. Make sure the peanut butter mixture does not touch the sides of the tin if you want it to be fully encased by chocolate.

Finally, cover with melted chocolate and put in the fridge to set (or the freezer if you're impatient!). Mine only took about 20 minutes to set completely but that will depend on the size of your peanut butter cups and the temperature in your fridge/freezer.


Once they have set, turn the little beauties out of the tin. This might take a little bit of bashing... then, get nomming! 

Om nom nom!

I thought the finished product turned out tasting slightly better than the commercially available ones. I think this is because you can adjust the sweetness of the peanut butter filling and the oil content of the chocolate to your taste preference. I haven't included specific measurements for the ingredients,I surveyed by eye based on how many I PBCs I wanted. The only thing I would say is unless you are feeding an army, don't use more than 1/2 the jar of peanut butter. 

Give them a go and let me know how they turned out!

Exams: SURVIVED!

It is hard to believe that exam period is finally over. After exactly three weeks of studying like crazy, not studying enough, worrying about exams, doing exams and eating everything in sight they are over. The worst part most definitely was the roller coaster effect of studying like mad for an exam, getting nervous for the exam, the relief of the exam being over then being really tired and not wanting to do any study for the next one.

I found this exam period to be unrelenting. For a start there were 6 of the damn things, all but one focused on familiarity/ memorisation of content rather than grasping and explanation of concepts. This was a completely different experience for me having spent the last 3 years writing essays and doing exams that were rarely worth more than 25%. 

Even though I have done well in my course work throughout the semester, the exams were worth between 30-80% of the total mark. 


My first written exam was for anatomy and physiology. A&P was the most content heavy subject by a mile and given that it has been 5 years since I did biology, the sheer volume of information that I needed to memorise was very daunting. Just to give you some idea of that volume, for the one week of classes on the endocrine system we had to know the name, function and effect of hypo and hyper-secretion of about 20 different hormones. That was on top of understanding all the structures of the endocrine system and their function. Times that by 11 weeks and you get the picture. 


Subsequently, I didn't study anything else other subject in my swotvac week and I know many others who did the same. I found the written exam tough but more doable than expected. This was certainly an exam where those with a background in science were at a significant advantage. 

My second exam was for IPE, the "fluffy" subject about interprofessional communication taught by the scary "mutton dressed as lamb" lady. This exam was all multiple choice and only worth 30%. I was already sitting on a 61 before the exam so I didn't intend to do anything more than quickly revisit my lecture notes. This was the only subject where the "airy fairy arts bullshit" background worked in my favour. 


The "human development and health across the lifespan" exam was on Thursday afternoon. I had spent so much time focusing on A&P that it felt weird to think about anything else. The title of the unit pretty well says it; we had to know the physical, cognitive and psychosocial changes that occur at each stage in the lifespan. It was a really interesting subject and my classmates and I did find it amusing to learn how the development of the brain impacts every part of your being at every stage of your life. This exam was the most unpredictable. The assessment tasks we'd previously completed ranged from rediculously easy to impossibly hard, so noone knew what to expect. In the end, I was relieved that it was fairly reasonable. 


After lifespan it was back to studying A&P again. The second exam was a test in the lab known as the "flag race". The lab was partitioned into stations each with a model of a heart, muscle or bone or a set of test tubes. We had exactly 2 minutes at each station to answer the 4-5 questions on the corresponding worksheet. We had to know the names of the bones and muscle as well as key bone landmarks. We also had to know the origin and insertion points of each muscle. 


The actual paramedics subject was assessed over the last two exams. The written one was just plain nasty; if you hadn't done the memorising, you were screwed. That exam was worth 50% and was a hurdle meaning that you have to get a pass mark for the exam to be eligible to pass the unit, regardless of how many marks you've already accrued. The mid semester exam for that subject wasn't too bad, so I prepared for a similar level of difficulty. That proved somewhat of a mistake. I was not at all confident when I left that exam. 


The practical assessment is call an OSCE - objective structured clinical examination. In this particularly delightful form of assessment we get to pretend to be a real paramedic and fulfill a long list of criteria whilst surveying a pretend patient third year student. It was a pass/fail hurdle. The thing that had me most worried was the 8 minute time limit. Thankfully my assessor was really nice and my pretend patient was being an 88 year old with an injury to his right wrist. This kind of assessment is so nerve wracking but at least you do get to know straight away whether you passed, which I did. 


It was a real team effort studying for that one. My family were great and tolerated having their blood pressure taken often and volunteered their time to act as patients. When ever I saw an exposed arm, in a few seconds a cuff would be on it. I got together with some pals from uni to practice, too, which was a lot of fun. Pretending to be the patient is so much fun! 


During exams my Mum went away on a big business trip and my sister had surgery, which added additional stressors, but that's family life for you. 


I have not felt so drained in a long time. 


Thinking back to some of the early weeks of this course, I can't believe that I made it through. It has been such a steep learning curve in so many ways. I was presented with challenges that I certainly did not anticipate and I have met some wonderful and interesting people whom I hope will stay my friends regardless of whether I pursue paramedics.


Now I finally have some time to contemplate my path forward for next semester. Once I decided that I was going see out the semester, I put my head down and did not allow myself to entertain alternate paths. I knew that it was going to take all of my focus to keep on top of my work and I knew that if I allowed my focus to wander too far into the future, my expectations of my work in the present might slip. 


At this point I have many ideas about what I might like to do next semester and I haven't definitively ruled out continuing with the course. I feel certain at this point that whilst I have so much respect for the paramedic field, it is not my vocational calling. 


I have a lot of thinking to do, just for a change. Thankfully with a 5 week break, I finally have time on my side. 

Exams: not yet survived

This is my fifth attempt to write a post in about a week.

I am now through four of the six of my exams in my seemingly never ending exam period. I had an exam out in Frankston at 9am this morning. I bet you can't imagine a better way to spend your Queen's Birthday Monday than with the second anatomy and physiology exam.

Highlights of exams thus far include a girl from my course turning up to an exam in a zebra suit and me eating just about everything in the house.

My poor little brain is not used to all this studying and I most definitely have been going mad over the past few weeks. Subsequently, I'm very glad I didn't actually publish any of my previous attempts to blog. 

One was a crazed rant about how much of a shit a particular friend has been lately. Another contained an elaborate theory about why my siblings were apparently conspiring against me complete with explanatory pop-psychobabble. Finally, a large amount of waffle about how I felt like my brain was oozing out my ears...

In a much more balanced state I have concluded that said friend is in fact being a shit but writing about it (even anonymously) in a public forum probably isn't going to help. My brain has certainly been oozing out ears. However, my siblings don't seem to be out to get me any more than can be considered an acceptable sibling amount.

Being stressed about exams is a strange and new experience for me. One I am not enjoying a whole lot.

So this post really just serves as a progress report to let you know that I am still alive. However, it has been so long since I've had decent exposure to sunlight that my skin is just about transparent. 

link to owner of picture's sight

I have two exams left. One is of the ordinary written variety, the other is a practical hurdle assessment. The hurdle is not worth any points itself, but if you fail it you fail the entire unit. 

No pressure. 

Aims for this week include;

• survive
• eat less (not in a crazy diet way, but in a way that means I won't resemble Michelin Man by the end of exams)
• spend time in the sun (just to check that I haven't turned into a vampire)
• study (eugh)

Watch out, here I come!

 

Locked in for a month.

At the moment I'm thinking about VULNERABILITY.


I know. Light subject matter.


I'm fresh from a month of placement so that tends to get me thinking. I was on the hospital's only locked ward, Acute Medical (locked because some of the elderly patients have dementia thus  try to escape hospital grounds and get lost). Being exposed to different people with varying responses to the situations they find themselves in is really interesting to be a part of. It can also be exhausting. 


What I've found is that despite so many differences in patient's conditions, families and beliefs one thing can be said for all of them. When they're admitted to hospital, they are vulnerable. No doubt about it. Most of the power that may well usually be the patients' is in the hands of other people. Right down to when you have your dinner.


There tend to be three main responses to this loss of power by either the patients or those supporting them. 


Anger is one of them. People can often become very different versions of their usual selves when they're stuck in hospital, feeling like they've lost all control over what is happening to them. A great deal of the time, taking some time to listen to how the patient or the supporter is feeling takes a significant edge off the anger. It gives some of the power back. Being a student, asking the patient whether you can give them their IV drugs or their injection, and genuinely appreciating the opportunity to do so, can have the same effect. Because it is entirely their choice to let me do something to or for them, or to refuse. 
Relatives and friends can also be angry about the situation on behalf of the patient. Some become demanding, even abusive. Sometimes there isn't enough active listening, cups of coffee or extra linen that can satisfy the onlooker of the patient's comfortability. There are times when you have to do your job then walk away.           


Dependence is another. Some people can become attached to you and seem to perceive you as more of a friend. Some try to search for personal information to identify with. For the people you get along with it can be difficult not to talk to them like you've met on the street rather than when they're lying in a bed waiting for you to give them tablets. I get wary of telling patients and family too much, because at the end of the day I disappear back to my life and back to uni. They can't call me if they need me when they're discharged. Particularly those patients who are elderly and isolated, it feels almost cruel to let them like you too much, because that connection isn't going to be there for long. The relationship I have with them will end the second they exit the hospital.


This can be a challenge for both parties when you experience something very intimate with people. An example was when I was with a patient and her adult children when she died last week. The family were friendly, courteous people, who were a delight to have around the ward and had a very solid rapport with the nurses.  It was very difficult, hours later for the daughter to leave when her mother's body was being taken from the hospital, as there was tensions within the family. We had been her support base for two months. It had been my supervisor nurse and I who had answered her questions when it was clear that things were not looking good. When it was confirmed that her mother had indeed died, I was the one who held her and prevented her from falling to the floor overwhelmed by grief. It's a choice not to take that home with you, because I know however hard it is for me, it's harder for the people whose lives and deaths it is. I didn't go home and cry about it, which confused some people, even myself, because I didn't feel it like it was someone I was personally connected to. I felt some sadness but I didn't go through any grief, because she was my patient. A lovely lady, but my patient.


Optimism is the other. Not optimism to the point of denial, but the patients who are truly hopeful for the best realistic outcome for them, make up for the ugly sides you often see from people. The patients who are happy to have a student poke around with their medications, surgical site or just take their blood pressure. And then tell you how good a job they think you're doing gives you satisfaction makes the feelings of inadequacy from the negative experiences almost disappear. I admire these people, who  often have multiple chronic illnesses or serious diseases, manage to take the terrible things they are going through as a learning experience for them and me. The wife of a patient I met was recently diagnosed with leukaemia and was telling me how lucky she was. I don't know how these people don't become engulfed in the sympathy, sadness and the fear that surrounds them. But I certainly admire them. 


Because really, underneath any of these responses, is fear. Uncertainty and loss of control make fear in bucketloads. It can even give you insight into how you personally deal with being vulnerable. Learning how to help people who are dealing with situations where they have every right to be fearful, without making it personal, takes time. But now after a month of what felt like living at that hospital, I'm at least getting somewhere.        


It's going to be nice not to have to clean up any poo for a while either. Ha ha


K x

Life tastes better with gluten/ Paramedics week 12

My sister has been on a month long clinical placement at our local hospital for her course which finished this Friday. Because of this she has been keeping some somewhat irregular hours and often missing dinner at home. 

Our family is a little bit special when it comes to food. I have anaphylactic allergies. I've known about this since I was about seven after an unfortunate incident involving a cup of sesame seeds being added to a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies. Whilst my allergies are somewhat severe (I'm meant to take an Epipen with me everywhere), awareness these days is pretty good and I'm used to having avoid the things that will kill me.

After becoming very ill a couple of years ago Katie was diagnosed as fructose and lactose intolerant. A food intolerance means that someone cannot digest a certain chemical properly. If the intolerant person continues to eat foods containing that chemical, it will simply sit in their intestines unabsorbed and over time impact their bowel. Once the bowel becomes impacted, the person usually becomes malnourished as the compound they can't absorb forms a cement-like lining that prevents other nutrients from being digested. This is different to Coeliac disease, which is an autoimmune disease whereby exposure to the gluten protein gliadin causes permanent changes, inflammation and damage to the villi of the small intestine.

People intolerant to fructose cannot eat most normal wheat based breads, pastas or cereals. It has nothing to do with the wheat and all to do with the fructose based sweetening agents. Because of this, our household had converted almost entirely to gluten-free rice pasta. At first we tried to convinced ourselves that we couldn't tell the difference, then we told ourselves that it, whilst different, it wasn't that bad. However, after months of weird, powdery rice pasta Mum treated the non-intolerant members of the household to NORMAL WHEAT BASED PASTA when Katie had an evening shift. Mmmmmmm.

On another food related note, I made little self-saucing chocolate puddings from scratch without a recipe and without measuring the ingredients. Sorry to sound very tryhardMasterchefwanker, but I was proud of my effort. They are stupidly easy and I am certainly nothing special in the kitchen, they did taste good.

My uni week started very differently as I spent the day at the Berendale school for my "special needs" placement. The point of the placement is for us health students to practice working with people who have communication difficulties. I spent the day with year 7s and year 8s. It was a fantastic day and the kids are pretty remarkable. Whilst they certainly have challenges (I saw four mild tantrums throughout the day), they are so aware of each others' limitations and have created a really positive and supported atmosphere for themselves.

The school looks and feels largely like a normal high school. Once you are inside the classrooms they do look a little more like primary school classrooms than senior school and the work the year 7s were doing was probably around year 1-4. 

Being helpful to the teacher was challenging. I wanted to be as useful as I could but I soon worked out that assisting every child that asked wasn't the way to go. Lots of the kids have attention deficit type problems and it is really important for them to be able to build up the amount of time that they can go without attention for.

The emphasis at Berendale is on independent learning. Whilst the work the kids did was simple, they are expected to be able to become self-directed learners from a much the same age as kids in mainstream schooling. The year 7s were given a book full of worksheets which they had to have finished by Friday. They had to plan out by themselves using their timetable how many sheets they would do and when they were going to do them.

One activity the kids was doing was making a mobile (the dangley, ornamental type not the type you make phone calls on). The mobile was about the food groups as part of their module on healthy eating and nutrition. 

Making the mobile is considered a complex task for the kids as it involved cutting out shapes, shorting the shapes into the food groups and then putting it all together using bluetac and string. Lots of the kids couldn't tie a knot by themselves and I really enjoyed teaching them. Firstly, I would show them and talk them through the process, broken down into simple steps. Then I got them to do one whilst I talked them through it. Lastly they did one by themselves whilst I was still watching just in case they got stuck. All the kids I helped could tie the knots in the string by themselves by the end of the class. Seeing the pride in their faces when they told their teacher that they'd "done it themselves" was very special. 

It also reminded me of how much I enjoy coaching and tutoring.

The feelings were mixed out at Frankston this week. There were frustrations. A couple of subjects have been taking an age to give us our work back. We did get an essay back, the one I spoke about recently where the whole cohort was told that we didn't do very well. Thankfully I still did ok, but the feedback was sub par to say the least. I was deducted marks for neglecting to reference an introductory sentence which had no facts or ideas in it. It was just the sentence at the start of a paragraph introducing the subject matter to be discussed. I was also criticized on the grounds that my language use was both too simple and too complex. Both comments referred to individual word choices. 

The marking schedule was also intrinsically flawed. If you achieved a "pass" mark in each assessed category, you would not have achieved enough marks to reach a pass grade for the whole essay. 

I'm grateful that I still got a decent mark, given that so many smart, capable students did not. I know that as a result of this mediocre marking a lot of people will be feeling a lot more pressure going into that subject's exam than they probably would have anticipated.

I voiced my displeasure in my feedback survey about the teaching of the unit.

There were some lighter moments at uni this week. At one point all the paramedics students ended up with a 3 hour break which we spent a fair chunk of squishing about 8 of people around a 3 seater couch watching funny cat videos on youtube. At one point I was in tears from laughing so much.

http://funniespet.com/funny-cat-pictures-2.html/funny-cats-pictures

 

Tonight I will be planning my impending swotvac week. I haven't been this nervous about exams ever. I probably should have been in year 12, but I wasn't and that's a story for another day. 

Much study awaits.

Paramedics Week 11: survived! & other things that happened this week

Week 11 felt like the calm before the storm. Exams are close, but we can't quite smell them yet. No major pieces of assessment were handed in or given back so the reality of grades was not thrust at us for a few moments. 

I'm trying to get my head around the amount of rote learning I will have to do to prepare for these exams. Rote learning and I have been enemies in the past. I find it boring. I don't like that it doesn't require any analysis and that basically anyone with the most basic level of intellect is capable of it.

At school that meant that I didn't bother to do it. Early on in high school I didn't do it because I didn't need to. I have decent memory and general knowledge and that was enough to do well without doing any work. Once things like languages came into the equation, I dropped them as soon as I could.

The only thing rote learning requires is the willingness and time to do it. I keep trying to remind myself that I will be really pissed off if someone with less raw intellect than me does better in the exam just because they were bothered to put in the work and I wasn't. I don't mean this to demean other people and the less intelligent people I refer to are entirely figurative. What I'm trying to do is use my ego and pride as motivation.

Probably the most enjoyable thing I did this week was watch the end of my brother's footy match. I was coming home from Frankston on Friday and I knew his team was playing against another team from his school at school on Friday afternoon. I also didn't know whether someone was going to pick him up or whether he'd just take the train home. I decided to exit the Monash Freeway one exit later and have a little look.

The boys in my brother's team, Alex in particular, had been talking up the clash all week and it drew quite a respectable crowd. I only saw the last quarter and a half, but Alex played well and his team won. There was a serious amount of 16-18 year old pubescent boy pride on the line, which was hilarious to watch. The victory celebration involved a chant that left Alex hoarse for a day and the boys chairing their coach off the ground.

Seeing my brother in his natural habitat without him knowing I was there was interesting too.  As it turned out Dad was there, so Alex got to chose his chauffeur (he chose me, not that that's important). It has been a little while since I was in an environment full of teenage boys and was reminded of the rowdy, smelly, energetic and vibrant creatures they are.

The other highlight of this week happened at work of all places. On Saturday I served one of the most aesthetically delectable guys I've laid eyes on in a long time. He was tall, tanned with sandy light brown hair and had mysterious dark blue eyes. His arms were very toned (good musculature, but not freakishly ham-like body builder big) and he had a very charming smile. Thankfully I managed to maintain control over my vocabulary throughout the transaction. I ought to be ashamed of my superficiality.

I have my "special needs" placement tomorrow at the Berendale School, a high school for intellectually disabled children. I had my induction a couple of months ago. I'm a little bit nervous but I think it'll be a really valuable experience.