Schools back!

Well, my days of freedom are over and I'm back at Uni.

I started back at the GC campus on Tuesday, with a wonderful first day! Heart dissections straight up - so interesting! You know when you're a fully fledged anatomy student if you can talk with your lab partner about tonight's dinner menu, whilst trying to locate the atrioventricular valves of a fresh sheep's heart specimen - and not blink an eye! We then got to prick our fingers and fill up little viles of blood and have it spun to check the composition. We also checked our blood under a microscope, and using some chemicals, had to work out our blood type. I alrady knew I was o+, but it was interesting working it all out.

I've actually had a fantastic introduction to semester 2, with placenta dissections last week for the Anatomy for Midwifery subject and then today's heart. That was fascinating, but still felt a little wrong to be pulling apart something that less than 24 hours before was a little newborns home. At the lab we also had to estimate blood loss on a range of hospital linen. There was a station set up with a pad, towel, bed sheet, bluey and nightie - all soaked in blood and we had to estimate how many ml's it would be. It was a lot harder to guess accurately than I thought, as everything absorbs differently. I got all mine within 50ml's, so not a bad effort for the first go.

The 2 intensive days I did with the Midwifery students were fantastic. Apart from the placenta's, there was also a lecture on conception and embryology - fascinating! One other part that got me all excited was the lecture on anatomy and physiology of lactation. Breastfeeding is one of my passions and studying to be a lactation consultant is something that I'd love to go on and do. There is so much about lactation that we do know - but way more that we don't. How the body works just blows me away. As much as I'm loving this subject, I'm finding it really hard to get motivated now that the rest of the course in online. I'm supposed to have completed module one this week, but I'm been stuffing around with it and really need to just get it started. My excuse is that I'm waiting for the textbook, so hopefully that arrives soon so I can get it into it. I'm also trying to arrange regular study sessions with some of the other students, I need interaction and people to bounce things off. It seems I'm not much of learner by myself.

I'm really liking being back on campus for A & P and catching up with all my study buddies. I've hooked up with some lovely people that are all high achievers, so that satisfies my competitive side. It keeps us all motivated and encouraging of each other to do well. One of the women is a single 50? year old, with no kids. She quit her job as a political journalist to study nursing as she wanted to do something meaningful. She is amazingly intelligent, and completely eccentric! She is great though, and really eager to study and do well. However, she's tough to sit beside, as she gave up smoking and drinking just before the start of semester 1 and spends the whole lecture tapping her feet. I've had to yell at her to stop a few times, as my writing starts being affected with the constant moving. She also told me yesterday that she has anxiety, and in the absence of coffee, cigarettes and alcohol she uses magnum ice-creams as her vice. Sounds normal right? Well, no she then went on to say that she needs 7!!!!!! I thought she meant this as a one off, but no - she's said she did this 3 or 4 times over the semester break whenever she had a freak out!! Now, I'm a lover of all things chocolate, especially all things ice-cream covered in chocolate - but I even think 2 in a row would be my absolute limit. Blimey, 7! She's fun though, and I'm heading out tonight with her and a few others for on of the girls birthdays.

I'm really enjoying being back though, and giving the brain a work-out after the break. Doing only 2 subjects this semester is going to seem like a breeze compared to the 4 I did last semester. I'll actually be able to fit in a life around studying - bonus!