it's july, you know

well, my boyfriend subtly reminded me that we are in fact, in the midst of july, and my last post was mid-late june. Many things have transpired since then. First, i turned a delightful 29 last weekend, and celebrated with some kayaking on town lake and a bbq at a friend's apt. Secondly (and also sort of a birthday present) my good friend/roommate got promoted to boyfriend, but that's all a little more personal than this blog is meant for, so we'll just leave it at that. (picture katie smiling ear to ear) so back to school...

I think we've had two more tests since i finally purchased all my remaining books. I did well enough on the tests, although i wasn't terribly excited about my lower scores, but i still have a solid A average, so i'm not going to complain. This next week we start our "skills" portion of this course. So our lecture portion is completed, which seems like a relief, but i think the workload will not be going down at all. Also, in the skills section we are all separated into smaller groups, some of which meet at different times of day. So i'm kind of bummed that some of my closer friends aren't in my group, but it just gives me an opportunity to get to know more of my classmates. Afterall, once we finish our foundation year, we will all be separated by our specialties anyway. Monday's skills lesson is on infection control and body mechanics. I worked for a hospital system for two and a half years, and we had infection control meetings every other month, so i'm pretty comfortable with the material. The body mechanics information will be really helpful, because i'm worried about hurting my back even more (i have a slipped disc and have to be really careful about injuring it further). We also bought a "gait belt" that we will put around patients so we can help them ambulate down the halls. and pull them up from a sitting position. Then, in another few weeks, we start our small clinical rotation! i'm excited to get out of the classroom and get more hands-on experience.