Day 2: Good lectures, but administratively STRESSFUL!

AUGH!

I’m glad yesterday was a good day, but I found today to be very stressful. Only the second day too, bad sign! There were a few fun classes but also a lot of drama and some anger.

Class was only from 10-4 today, and started with a Neuro class on spinal cord injuries. We saw some really gruesome pictures of bedsores and learned some interesting information. I have had a lot of neuro education in both undergrad and now OT school, but it just doesn’t stick with me – I just don’t “get” it very well. I get it well enough to get an A on a test, but then I forget it because it was only due to memorization of things I didn’t understand. Had lunch, then it was time for a psychiatrist to speak about mental health issues. He was so amazing. I wanted to adopt him as my grandfather. He spoke in the kind of voice you hear on audio-books, gentle and kind. He seemed like the stereotypical pipe-smoking older man rocking in front of the fire, although only in the sense that he was comforting. But the things he spoke of were also really depressing at times! It kinda made me want to cry! At one point he said suicide and homicide are preceded by the same symptoms – only the direction the gun was pointing was the difference. A lot of suicides are also immediately preceded by a homicide. He spoke for two hours and was great. He had a little trouble getting used to the fact that some of our class was across the state and live via TV monitors – he’d stare into the TV screen and mutter “Great Scott!”. It was hilarious. He was such a good speaker.

THEN it was time for a class meeting, and some drama (manageable due to our fantastic class president) ensued. Group projects are a big deal because nobody wants to be with people that won’t do their share or don’t have the same “vision” when it comes to grades. Anyway, most of us were in groups we were happy with, but it turned out the professor wanted us to be in groups different than last semester. That’s understandable, although there was a mini class argument on how to go about changing up the groups. We decided on picking names out of a hat. My new group is fine, but it was still a stressful experience!

Then we had another speaker come in, a neurosurgeon. She spoke about traumatic brain injuries and gave us background on them, and also a little bit about OT’s role in working with such patients. Again, pretty interesting. Makes me want to wrap myself in bubble wrap though and never move again, after hearing about some of the horrible things that happen to people! I really like having visiting speakers because it gives us different insights!

I really enjoyed the lectures today and found them interesting. The group project drama was a little stressful, but the most stressful thing involves our class schedule and last-minute changes that have really affected our own personal plans. I originally wrote out a long detailed rant on this, but sat on it a few minutes and realized I shouldn’t post the rant. I’m trying to keep some modicum of professionalism for the sake of any of my professors who may be reading this. It’s hard though, y’all have no idea how much self-control it is taking me to not share! Augh!

So I just got home a few minutes ago (a rainy day doesn’t help things) and decided to type up this rant, which I then sent to myself for prosperity before deleting 99.9% of it for this post. Now I’m going to go play some calming music and do some breathing/yoga exercises, because as my OT friend Brooke would say, “I’m on fire!”

After that, I have some reading to do before I work tonight from 9pm to midnight. Augh again. Back tomorrow with hopefully better news and a calmer attitude…