Well, I have officially finished one complete week of classes in my second semester of college. Already I can tell this is going to be a much more stressful semester of classes then last year. Although, I’m not going to lie, I had a pretty lax schedule last semester, what with no Friday classes and lots of BS courses like Sociology and University 101. At any rate, at least the plus side to my classes this semester is that I can see the purpose of all of them as they pertain to my major.
Overall it’s looking pretty easy to set up a daily routine around all my classes. The only problem I’ve been running into is eating at kind of bizarre times since my classes seem to fall at regular eating hours every day. (I have classes running through or at noon every day of the week.) But, unlike last semester, I only have classes that run into the evenings twice a week, and once it starts getting light out later, all my classes will be done before dark, which is pretty exciting.
Last Tuesday we started classes and I had a college first of waking up when it was still dark out! My first class of the day is an 8:00 nutrition class. The good news is that I realized after the first day there will be no need to wake up before 7:30 or so to prepare for class since I come back to my dorm immediately following the class before I have to see anyone who might actually care about my appearance. I think nutrition will probably be my favorite class this semester. Aside from the fact that the subject matter is of the most interest to me, the teacher is really nice and there are only two tests given the entire semester (a mid-term and a final) and both are open-note and given online. Apparently that means the tests are supposed to be really hard, but she gives us a week to complete the test...so I’m thinking I’ll probably be fine. I think my favorite thing so far about the class is the fact that in place of a textbook we have to read two books (“What to Eat” and “Food Politics”) that basically explore the government and big corporations control over how food is marketed to consumers and the tricks that supermarkets play on us to get us to buy things that aren’t good for us. It’s really interesting and also really bleak. I have a feeling after this class I’m not going to be able to view food the same way, which is mildly depressing.
After nutrition I have two hours of down time, at first I thought I would take that time to nap, but I’m realizing if I just by some coffee I don’t really need the nap and then I have two extra hours to spend studying or just doing whatever (like writing this). Then from 12:30-1:45 I have my human bio lecture. This is class is looking like it’ll be an easy A. For one thing, it’s the same professor and structure as my nutrition class. Also, it’s a very basic overview of everything I will be covering in anatomy. Even though it’s going to be repetitive I don’t think it’ll really hurt to have any extra reiteration of topics from anatomy.
By 2:00 on Tuesdays I’m done for the day, which is really nice! My brother and I have established Tuesdays as our lunch day together and it also gives me a lot of time to do homework and also head over to the gym before dinner. Which reminds me, the gym is SO nice. It just got finished over Christmas break. It’s really big and was intimidating at first but now that I’ve gone a couple of times by myself I’m getting into the swing of it and I’ve set up an entire workout regiment that takes about an hour. Right now I’m trying to make it there 3 times a week, I want to get up to 4 days but I’m not sure how realistic that is based on how much other work I have to do this semester.
Ok, on to Wednesday. So Wednesdays my day does not start until 1 when I have my Focused Inquiry class. There’s not much to say there, it’s basically like taking any sort of high school english class. We had to read a stupid book about teenage angst and identity and now we’re discussing it. It’s another sort of throw away class that I should be able to BS my way through. After that I have a huge gap of time in the afternoon and then my anatomy lecture at 5:30. Like I figured, anatomy is totally overwhelming. My professor is this really nice 70+ year old woman whose ridiculously enthusiastic about teaching. The lecture doesn’t seem like it’ll be any harder then, say my psychology class last semester, but the 5:30 time slot is proving to be a problem since that is my natural sleepy part of the day. So no matter how much caffeine I put in myself prior to that class I still find myself dozing off. I think it’ll just be a lot of outside class reading so I can stay on top of things.
Thursdays are my busiest days. I have my 8 am nutrition lecture, then human bio at 12:30 followed immediately by my anatomy lab. Anatomy lab is...terrible. It’s 2 hours of sitting in a lab looking at diagrams and reciting bones and muscles and nerves. It’s useful information, but it’s A LOT of information. On the plus side there is open lab every day of the week where they let you just come in and looks at the diagrams and bones and models and such and practice. I went yesterday and it was definitely really useful in getting the information to stick in my head. It’s just going to be...a lot of studying, unfortunately.
On Friday, I experienced another college first which was, actually having classes on Fridays! I’ve got to say, I’m not a fan. But in reality, I’m done with my classes before I’d probably even be up if I didn’t have classes, so it’s not as though it’s really taking anything out of my weekend. Every other Friday I have to be up by 8:30 to get ready to catch the bus down to the School of Nursing on the MCV campus. The whole bus ride thing is kind of annoying since you have to be at the bus stop nearly an hour before the class actually starts to accommodate travel time and any delays with the bus system. Generally it goes smoothly and you end up at the School of Nursing with 30 minutes to waste. My nursing class is only one credit but I think I’ll get some practical experience from taking it. We’ve been assigned to a senior nursing student to shadow at the hospital for 4 hours this semester. A lot of people are upset about the sections they’ve been assigned to (there was a girl that got the burn unit :-S) but I’m pretty psyched because I got the adult trauma unit and I feel like that leaves a lot of room open for many different experiences. I think they purposely tried to assign us to areas that weren’t in the specialty we already have in mind just so we could experience other things. The only down side to the whole shadowing thing is I have to get like an entire new wardrobe just to enter the hospital since they have about a bazillion dress code regulations and we don’t have scrubs yet. After NURS 101 I head back to the main campus to go to focused inquiry.
Mondays are just a repeat of Wednesday, but I have my human bio lab in the morning from 11-12:50. That class, like the lecture, is kind of a joke. Like with my bio lab last semester, this lab is taught by a biology graduate student (his name is Nate) and he seems pretty chill. He basically told us it was really easy to get an A as long as we came to lab, so I’m not too worried.
And that’s a basic overview of my week. I want to hear about how everyone else’s second semesters have been going! I miss you all!!!
-Cougzz
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