Life is so crazy right now. I constantly look at this loverly blog and feel guilty for my lack of updates, but its hard to find the time lately. When I do have the time, I normally just want to collapse with a good book or for a nice, long nap. Anyway, hello Internets, how are you doing today?
So what has been keeping me so busy? Well, mostly work and school. This is the first time I have REALLY combined the two at a University level. I mean, last year I "had a job" over Christmas working at Sears, but that was MAYBE once a week if I was lucky. While at Talize I am working 10-20 hours a week. Plus I have a lot more assignments this year in school on top of regular readings and classes. Which I like because they help take the pressuer off exams, and for the most part I'm a better writer than I am a test-taker, but it does eat up more time. I'm ok with that though. I love being busy, it makes me happy.
I am really liking my classes this year, to my surprise. My last blog I think I promised to fill you in on what I am taking and what I think of it, so it's been a few weeks - here we go.
Health Promotion: The point of this course is to look at Health Care at both the individual and the population level and look at how better health can be educated, promoted and advocated (so how to help make people healthy as well as help raise awareness for both the community and the governmental bodies on what would help an area be overall more healthy). I really like the basis for this course, because health is about more than sick or not sick. On top of that our proff is hilarious. And really good as well, using slides as an aid rather than reading the information directly off of them. I've gotten a bit of a chance to get to know her as well, as I did the Terry Fox walk/run with her and some of my classmates a couple weeks ago.
Childhood and Adolesence Health: This course is (atm) probably my least favourite course. Not that I dont find the information interesting, because it definitely is, but Im not fond of my proffessors teaching style. Namely that what is on the slide is what she is going to say. And she gets annoyed if we havent done the readings for class, which is always something that has bothered me. We are in University, you shouldn't sold us like children for not doing the readings - we're old enough to decide for ourselves at this point. I do like when she starts talking about her own work, which is often quite interesting as her method of research is to esentially intergrate herself into the culture she is studying and try to live the experience with the people she is studying, in the best way she can. So thats often interesting to hear about.
Research Methods - aka, Stats: Now as a general rule, I severly dislike Stats classes. I am normally pretty good with numbers, but stats is something I have incredible amounts of trouble wrapping my head around. However I really like our proff. He uses real-world examples and explinations, in ways that we can really relate to. Often in class he will actually get us to interact in the lesson as well. It is a really good way of explaining math and stats. I've always been better at understanding when the "theoretical" is taken away and I can see a real-world use to something. So I think I could actually do well in this class, as long as I keep up with the homework.
Speculative Fiction - Sci Fi: Oh MAN do I hate analysing books. SO much. Dont get me wrong, I LOVE reading - reading to me is almost as essential as breathing, no joke. But I enjoy the stories, I enjoy the connection with teh characters. I HATE analysing books. Yes, authors will purposely put symbolism in their books. I have learned that much from watch John Green videos. But I don't think they've put in enough sybmolism that people are still finding "hidden meanings" 100+ years later. Also analysing a book to me always feels like learning a bad secret about a good friend. I really enjoy a book and then I find out the "meaning behind it" is supposed to be, I dunno, anti-feminist or some other idea I disagree with. Then I am conflicted as to whether or not I should still be enjoying the book...
Quality of Life: this is the class I talked about last time. I still really like it. I really like the proff (he kind of looks like my Great Uncle David. Its weird). He's nice, friendly, very engaging. And again, I love the premise of the class. Health is more than just being sick - health is about the personal percieved quality of life. A person can be very sick and feel healthy because of aspects of teh rest of their life or their outlook on life, and a person can be medically "healthy" but be still be not-healthy, some aspect of their life is subpar. I feel this is one of those courses that anyone wanting to be a doctor should take. Guess what, your patient is more than just a condition - maybe you should treat them like a person for a bit and see what happens.
So those are my classes. I'm trying my hardest to keep caught up with readings and stay on top of things. My goal is to have no mark less than an 80 this year. And honestly, I dont see any reason why that shouldn't happen!
So I'm really hoping I can try and update a bit more in the coming months. Next weekend I'm busing 9 hours back to Ottawa for Thanksgiving and my 10k race I'm doing (!!!). So hopefully I'll put up a post about that or perhaps something else. Until then, keep it healthy Internets :P
