Too many things

I don't really know what to say, other than I'm simply too busy. I drew up a timetable of my school/work/volunteer commitments so you guys kinda know what I'm up to.

"Want to have a team meeting on Friday at 12:00?" "Dear God no."

So, as you can see, I'm a busy man. A few notes on it though. The class and lecture slots are only for the three nursing subjects that I'm taking. The chemistry subject has an internet lecture and a couple of chapters each week, and the physics subject has two internet lectures and a chapter or so a week, plus a bunch of questions (questions which, for a student new to the subject, take a long time to answer). So you can see how all those free-looking slots start to fill up with crap. One other thing is that the work I do on Friday, Saturday and Sunday only happens once every two weeks, so I do have time to do school stuff on those weekends.

In other school-related news, I present to you this letter, which I received on Friday:

Yolanta is one of my favourite lecturers, we call her Yoyo.

It basically says that I had the highest grade in my year last year. I was quite elated to find that I had achieved it, and also very happy with the money they're giving me.

Oh! This week I had my first session in the in2science program. I visited the grade seven class I will be with for the rest of the semester and it was pretty interesting. First off, I don't think the chemistry teacher likes me. I hypothesize that it has something to do with him being a physical education teacher and not actually a science teacher. Nevertheless, I went around to all of their little tables and was helping them with their posters they were making on the properties of solids, liquids and gases. 

It was frustrating though, because 12 year old children really have no interest in doing school work. I would sit there and ask if anyone knows any properties of gases, and get responses of silence. I then basically forced them to know what some properties were by using really simply examples like saying "what does a small amount of gas do when you put it into a open area". So I basically ran through a few different things in that manner and went to another group. When I got back to the first group they hadn't put anything on their poster, so I made sure they all knew what the properties were and went away again. About ten minutes later I return; again, no work had been done. I naturally have a calm demeanor, so it was easy not to let my annoyance physically manifest, but on the inside I was like this:

No, I do not want to know why you two are the besterest friends in the world.

Even so, it was still a great experience. I go back every week on Tuesday for the rest of the semester and I'm looking forward to it immensely. Sorry again for not being more active everyone. Semester is only seven weeks long, and I'm just about to start week four, so even if I'm not that active for the next few weeks, I will be soon thereafter.

Thanks again everyone for taking interest.

Happy birthday!

It's my birthday today! I'm now 23 years old and feel no different than yesterday. However, let me not get too hung up on minor details; I love a great birthday, and love celebrating it with people I care about.

Well, enough of that. In the meantime, I've been making up for lost progress after having lost a bunch of work on photoshop. I still haven't done a picture for Layman Researcher, but the one I did for Siphil is done and ready to go. Sorry for those of you who haven't seen the movie, but this is based on "2001 A Space Odyssey". Siphil's blog is called "2011 A Space Odyssey", so I thought I would tie that into a comic for him. I am surprisingly proud of myself for the center image.

When was the last time you battled evil computers and went through crazy colored tunnels of light? Hmm?

Some of you may notice that I have an awesome new site design, this is thanks to the lovely nerdspiffy that made it for me out of the kindness of her heart. Check out her blog if you haven't already; she's got a lot of great posts and is working on a graphic novel called "Vexing".

I think that's it for tonight, I won't have a competition for this post, as I'm still behind one drawing and I have nine hours of uni tomorrow, which will surely wear me out enough as it is. So I'll leave with an opening sentence of a book that I'm never going to write (it's kind of my hobby to think of great lines in books that will never be written or great scenes in movies that will never be filmed).

"The expression on his face reflected the degree of uncertainty in the approximation he had just given."

I think I'm getting back into it

I thought it was a bit rough that I had to have something ready for uni by second day, but oh well. I have to be in class in about two hours, so I thought I should get to it. It's just a quick introduction to a short thing about diabetes. Let me know if you think that I've gotten back into the swing of writing yet. I felt it was pretty good for 10 minutes, which included time spent on finding articles.

Diabetes mellitus represents a group of diseases that share common characterizations, including chronic hyperglycemia and other metabolic abnormalities relating to the deficiency of insulin effect. Diabetes can be classified into four different types. 
 
Type one is characterized by destruction of pancreatic beta cells, which secrete insulin, by either an autoimmune response, or other unknown cause. Type two involves the decreased secretion of insulin by the pancreas and well as decreased sensitivity to insulin peripherally. Category three diabetes includes diabetes as related to a specific condition or disease, as is common is cystic fibrosis patients. Category four diabetes is characterised as diabetic symptoms relating to pregnancy (Kuzuya et al., 2002).
 
Diabetes is a serious condition that can have many adverse effects on health if not treated appropriately. In many cases, nutrition is the cornerstone of a diabetic patient’s treatment, which is why fasting is of particular concern in the preoperative care of a diabetic (Mc Hugh et al., 2009).

Kuzuya, T., Nakagawa, S., Satoh, J., Kanazawa, Y., Iwamoto, Y., Kobayashi, M., et al. (2002). Report of the Committee on the classification and diagnostic criteria of diabetes mellitus. Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, 55, 65-85.

Mc Hugh, S., O’Keeffe, J., Fitzpatrick, A., de Siún, A., O’Mullane, M., Perry, I., et al. (2009). Diabetes care in Ireland: A survey of general practitioners. Primary Care Diabetes, 3, 225-231.

It's funny that everyone at uni seems to hate writing, but I really enjoy it. They all say "oh exams are better because you just go in and get it over and done with". I still prefer writing essays though. If you're like me, you'll go over it constantly, changing things, fixing things, and just making it as good as you can before you hand it in. It feels as though you're more in control of what you're doing. What do you guys think?

As long as we're on the topic of writing, I thought I'd share a site that I discovered recently; one word. I have it book-marked, but you just go on there and click go and it gives you a work that you have to write about for 60 seconds. It's amazing what some people put out in 60 seconds. Anyone that enjoys writing should give it a go.

Anyway, I better have a shower before I go to uni. Thanks for reading and let me know what you think!

Tomorrow!

So tomorrow's that day! Finally starting uni again.

I'd also like to apologize for not updating for the last few days, I've just been busy with work and getting ready for school and other things. I do want to try and update each day, so I'll make an effort to be more prompt with that.

Today was mostly spent printing out an abundance of things that we're going to need for uni; subject guides, assignments guides, lecture notes, additional information, et cetera. Unfortunately, after printing about 200 pages, the toner in my laser printer ran out and I can't print anything more. I called officeworks to see how much a new toner cartridge costs, and it's about $80 (as much as the printer in the first place). I suppose it's my own fault for not checking that when I bought the thing, but I still think it's stupid that they charge so much for toner. Anyway, I'm not going to be able to afford that for another couple weeks or so, as a bunch of bills came in in the last couple of weeks, so I'll just have to head over to my parents' place to do printing.

Another money killer is the textbooks. I'm looking at about $800 all up for just the ones that I need (far less than all of the recommended books). So they're going to have to wait as well. I'm not too concerned about the nursing ones, as last year I was able to get by alright just sharing books with other people and using library copies for a while. However, this year I have the two subjects that I'm doing through OUA (physics and chemistry) that I really need the textbooks for, as I'm doing them over the internet. I'm thinking that if I budget correctly, I should be able to afford them in the next couple of weeks. I can't wait any later than that though, because stuff is due in week two for both subjects..

Also, looking at the physics stuff today looked a bit daunting. If anyone that follows has had something to do with physics, I would love to have someone that I could ask questions.

Again, thanks for the follows and whatnot, I'm going to make some dinner now. Be sure to check back tomorrow, I'll be letting everyone know how the first day went.

First day of uni for first year students

Today was the first day that all of the first-years got orientated to the university, and guess what? I was helping orientate them! The day went pretty smoothly, just guided them to the lecture halls they needed to be at, then to lunch, then in the afternoon, a full tour of the campus. It was good to meet some of the new students, it was also good to catch up with my classmates that I haven't seen over the summer break. We also got some faculty of health sciences t-shirts, a usb flash drive and a $50 gift card, so I guess it wasn't entirely voluntary!

Later in the evening I attended the annual trivia night that they have during orientation week at the uni. It was pretty fun, but lots of sexual innuendo, as they're trying to keep the interest of 18 year olds. My team of second years didn't win, or even come close for that matter, but it was still a really fun night.

Corrin (fiance) finished work at 10pm, we had a late dinner (11pm) then after a bit of relaxation and talking to my brother on the phone that's living in South Korea, we made our way to the gym at about 1am. I suppose that I haven't mentioned that I've started going to the gym recently, as I'm trying to lose weight. I think I might keep a record of my progress on here if anyone is interested. Anyway, it's 3am now, I'm tired and I work at 7:30am, so I should be able to fit in 3 hours of sleep.

Nighty night blog world, and thanks for the comments and interest, I honestly wasn't sure if anyone was actually going to be interested.

So busy at work... not really.

So I work at the local hospital as an "Operating Room Assistant". This basically consists of cleaning and setting up the operating theatres in the morning, positioning and moving patients for surgery, setting up and use of surgical equipment and cleaning up after surgery. I enjoy the job, as it gives me insight into what I'm studying, and I have access to a whole host of nurses and doctors to ask questions about things I want to know.

For the most part, things are pretty busy. Lots of running around and organising things and making sure things run smoothly. Sometimes we even get the big emergencies when people are dying and all that and it's loads of fun. But sometimes, namely on weekends, it's just slow, so slow in fact, that we sometimes don't even do a single case for the whole day.

Today is one of those days. I've literally been sitting around, then getting up and trying to find something to clean, then sitting back down, then getting up and mindlessly wondering around the suite. It's just SO boring and it makes the day go by so completely slow. I suppose I should appreciate it though, sometimes when people call in sick and you've got twice the work to do... shit you wish it was slow.

Anyway, I'll finish off with a thought. One of the doctors I was talking to last week said that when you go into a lecture, it's better to just put down the pen and paper and sit back and really try and listen and understand what your professor is saying. He said that if you spend all of your time madly trying to write down the exact words coming out of his mouth, you'll never take anything in. I'm thinking of trying this technique this year to see if I retain lecture information any better. It should work out pretty good anyway, because the university provides us with lecture printouts anyway that basically have all the information we need on them. Any other university students out there, what do you think?

Edit: Haha, just as soon as I posted that, one of the surgeons came in to book a case for this afternoon.