Just a quick update for those who have been following my career change. Two weeks ago I started the fall semester of classes. This time around I’m taking a slightly lighter workload than last spring, only two classes instead of the three I took this past spring. They’re also full semester classes, not the 6 week accelerated O-Chem class I took over the summer. This makes the work load a bit easier.

On the other hand, my A&P II Lab is at 8:00 AM on a Monday morning! That’s not the ideal way to start the week, but it could be worse. Fortunately the professor is fairly dynamic and it’s not a snooze fest. I mean where else can I spend a Monday morning digging around in a pig’s heart trying to pick out stuff like chordae tendineae (the literally “heart strings” of a heart) and the bicuspid valve and other valves. Yeah, that’s the way I roll on a Monday morning!

Sadly, the worst part of the schedule is actually Wednesday afternoon between the A&P II lecture that ends just before 4:00 PM and the Bio II lab that begins at 6:00 PM. It’s not worth it in my mind to hop in the car to pop home, grab food and drive back to campus so I’ve been exploring the food options near the campus. The first week found me getting two slices of pepperoni pizza and can of soda for about $6.50. I couldn’t complain in the price. Unfortunately I had forgotten my water bottle and the salt levels were high enough I was pretty thirsty during lab. The second week found me checking out the Chinese food place nearby. I hadn’t eaten there in years. Let’s just say their Sesame Chicken is no match for what I get at Lee Lin’s! We’ll see what this week brings.

You’ll notice I didn’t mention an actual Bio II lecture. Well that’s because there is none. It’s more of an online class. My General Psych class in the spring was hybrid, one in-person lecture and one recorded. This is more self-study, with review the PowerPoints and readings and other links. This does concern me. It’s not that the topic is all that hard, it’s more I have to remember to actually set aside time to go through it and actually take notes like I would in an actual lecture. I found myself realizing last night that the homework and quiz were due at midnight last night, not 6:00 PM Wednesday (like the prelab) is and was hurrying through them. I’ll have to do better for next week.

Meanwhile I still wait to hear about the tech position I’m supposedly in the running for.

So that’s where things are. This week. We’ll see in a few more weeks!

That said, I do think I’m fully prepped for the first A&P Lab practical quiz next week, though I should bone up on the coronary blood vessels! (side note, the arteries have cool names like the Anterior Interventricular Artery, while the veins, like the one parallel to the AIV is simply the Great Cardiac Vein. It’s almost like someone got bored naming the veins.