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I like to let my mind wander while I shower, and one of the
topics which happened to reside in the space between my ears this evening was,
appropriately, motherhood. I was mainly concerned with the unique
qualities that such a role by definition may or may not demand. Physiologically, the beginning of motherhood
is defined by the event of parturition.
However, the physiological explanation (as is often the case) leaves
much to be desired.
When I thought about
the sociological role of motherhood, I came to the startling conclusion that it
may be the only role that constantly falls under the definition of a
professional. I have learned as a
pharmacy student that being a professional means accepting a fiduciary relationship
with the people that I serve. In a
fiduciary relationship, your greatest responsibility is toward these people (in
my case the patients) and their needs are placed above even that of your
own.
Doctors and teachers are among
those counted as professionals under this definition, however, how many of them
constantly maintain a fiduciary relationship with their students and
patients? Certainly, at times individual
doctors and teachers do recognize the need to assume such a relationship and
place the interests of a patient or a student above that of their own. For example, consider the pharmacist who is
locking up for the night when a patient arrives with a script that desperately
needs to be filled. The pharmacist is
tired, does not receive extra pay, and will not benefit by any substantial
measure by staying open late to fill the prescription, but a fiduciary
relationship necessitates that the needs of the patient be considered above all
else. The pharmacist could, of course,
tell the patient to go to a twenty four hour Walgreen’s, and most likely no one
would blame him.
Motherhood, however, if
done correctly, requires that a fiduciary relationship is maintained almost
constantly. Not surprisingly, mothers
frequently sacrifice the fulfillment of their own needs and desires in order to
make the lives of their children better.
The least we can do as children is to take one day out of the year to
honor these selfless women who devote every day of their lives to making ours
the best possible. As all mothers know,
it is a full time job.
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Decomposing. I have
been watching way too much television lately and in general have been enjoying
being lazy. This is too good to last,
however, and soon I will have to re-focus my efforts on my studies.
Went to Stephanie’s shortly after my last entry for a get
together. Matt, Stephanie, Irina, and I
played DDR and Trivial Pursuits and hung out.
A few days later, I went back to Stephanie’s and played some more
Trivial Pursuits with Stephanie, Zak, Irina, Lila, Caroline, Anna, and
Umburto. All I have to say is that
Trivial Pursuits is a very challenging game when played correctly. Anyway, since we didn’t get to play much DDR
at Stephanie’s, Irina came over during Christmas and we got managed a few good
hours of practice (thanks Irina for the cherry candies). A few days later, Matt came over and we
played the new Burnout: Revenge. We
played for several hours, and I must say that for the time being, it is my new
favorite. Later during the week, Mark
came over, and we played nothing but DBZ games.
It was fun, but I am beginning to see that Mark was unfortunately very
accurate when he said that Tenkaichi was a game that should have had a lot of
potential but ended up broken due in part to control issues.
Anyway, over the weekend, I talked to Jonobi for the first
time this break. Our conversation prompted
me to buy In the Groove, which I have been playing, almost non-stop. When I first played it, the step patterns
were so complicated and jumbled that I had to switch to 2X to read them. I was able to adjust to 2X fairly quickly,
however, when I tried to go back and play a song at a slower speed, my timing
was off and in general I was having a lot of problems. It surprised me how quickly I was able to
switch speeds, and the near impossibility of going back. Anyway, over the course of three days, a
strict training regimen of an hour of actual playtime (via workout mode) every
evening brought me gradually closer to my goal of loosing weight and being
comfortable demonstrating my skills in front of other people. When I played on Tuesday, I noticed that my
neck was very stiff and it was also hurting.
The more I played, the more it bothered me. I had clearly injured it, and I knew exactly
what I had done. A few days earlier, I
had started doing sit-ups, and when I do sit-ups, I do them until I cannot do
them any longer. Toward the end of this
routine, it begins to look like I am doing the wurm rather than sit-ups, and
thus I wrenched my neck muscles. I have
thus decided that because I do not do them correctly, sit-ups are not for
me. Anyway, by Wednesday, my neck felt
much better, but for some reason, both my coordination and my dexterity were
completely shot. I could barely complete
the easier songs that I was working on during the previous days, and I was
having trouble even reading the more difficult songs. I decided that this was due to burnout after
several days of such an extreme regimen and so today I took the day off. Hopefully, everything will come back to me in
time for Jonobi’s get together tomorrow evening.
On Tuesday evening I talked to Heather for the first time
all break. It was great to talk to her,
but there were a few things that I forgot to mention. I noticed on her facebook profile that one of
her interests is video games. It also
says “Yes, I do play video games, but mostly role playing games, so don't ask
me to play you in Halo.” (When I told Matt about this, his response was, “I
like this girl already”). But the point
was that I forgot to ask her what RPG’s she is into. I am always in the mood to compare
notes. Oh well, gives us something to
talk about later.
Err. I know that
there were more things on my list; however, the problem is that the list is in
my head and not on paper. I must have
missed something. Oh, yeah, I saw Sable
at the mall (she was working at the calendar kiosk). It was good to see her before she goes back
to school, but she was very busy and we didn’t get to talk much. Ah, and I want to read a book for fun before
I go back to school so any suggestions (with details) would be greatly
appreciated. Also, I would like to
extend a big thank you to all of my xanga stalkers. You rock (you know who you are)! Well, I know that I will think of something
else as soon as I post this, but I can always update again! Until next time…
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Hey all. Sorry for updating again so soon, but I am
trying to make up for lack of updates during the semester. Anyway, on
Saturday I went to Stephanie's house with Matt. We played some DDR (after
remodeling Stephanie's living room to make it DDR-proof) and when we got tired
of dancing we sat around talking. At about eight thirty, Irina came over,
and so we had enough people to play trivial pursuit. We played for about
an hour, but Irina didn't bring a change of clothes for nothing, so we turned
on DDR once again. Unfortunately, we got a late start, and I had to be
home early, but Stephanie promised to have us over again on Wednesday (I work
that night, so no promises, Stephanie).
While we were at the party Saturday night, Matt asked me how things were with
Jen, and I explained to him that nothing had really happened since her email
other than the whole pretending not to exist thing. Ironically, when I
checked my email that night, I was surprised that Jen had summoned the will to
send me one last email saying that she forgave me. She thanked me for
wishing her a happy birthday (which thanks to Katie, I know confused her to no
end) and noted that perhaps things just weren't meant to work out between
us. I am glad that she seemingly has put the whole thing behind her (for
her sake), but I did not ask for her forgiveness nor did I expect it. I
see this unconditional forgiveness as stemming from things that she was taught
as part of her upbringing as a Christian (just a guess here), but if it makes
her feel better, then more power to her.
On Sunday, I woke up at noon and ate lunch/breakfast. After lunch, I went
shopping at Chesterfield Mall and Chesterfield
Valley with my mom, but
it was so busy everywhere that I could barely hear myself think, let alone
shop. I wanted a calendar and I also wanted to see Sable, so I headed
over to the calendar store at the mall, but I just couldn't seem to find one
that I couldn't live without. Oh well. I would rather wait than settle for a calendar
that is less than perfect.
Today, I woke up late once again. After lunch, Matt came over and we went
to North to visit teachers before they go on break. We talked to Dr.
Bowman, Mrs. Carter, Mr. Reynolds, and Mr. Lay. We talked for all of them
for a significant amount of time, and it was what I consider a successful
visit. I also continued my DDR training program. I hope to increase
my stamina and speed, and loose the weight that I put on since Halloween (and
then some).
Tomorrow I plan to go to Mark's house in the morning to play some DDR and maybe
some Burnout. I work from four to eight, which shouldn't be too
bad. Then from nine to eleven, I will be watching the season finale of
Nip/Tuck as they finally reveal the identity of the carver. I can't
wait. Hopefully Heather will remember to watch it.
If anyone has a good idea for a new title for my xanga, let
me know. It is time for a change, but I
don’t have any ideas.
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Exhaustion. But
wait. I am not ready to talk about that
quite yet. Let’s start with finals. I already mentioned that both the cultural
heritage and anatomy finals went well.
However, I was not extremely confident that I had achieved my lofty goal
of a 95 percent on the anatomy final. I
didn’t get as much studying done over the weekend as I probably should have;
however, I wasn’t expecting either of my Monday finals to be too
difficult. I have to admit that the
Intro to Pharmacy Practice final was much more challenging than I was
expecting. There were several questions
the likes of which we had never seen before (although we probably should have
been able to work them based on our knowledge of the example problems that we
have done) and there was one problem in which all of the given values were
missing units. I don’t know if this was
done on purpose or not, however, as we are not allowed to ask questions during
an IPP test, I was forced to make some assumptions. This particular final was nerve racking as it
was worth twenty five percent of our grade and there was to be no partial
credit.
The politics final was at 7 PM
that night, so I had lots of time to kill and no desire to study. I knew I still needed to do some reviewing,
but I wanted to have some fun first. I
ate a late lunch while playing Scene-it with Cory and Hardick. After Cory finished slaughtering us, we moved
on to Mario Kart 64. I only won one out
of about twenty five races, but it was good fun and relieved a lot of my finals
induced stress. I still wasn’t in the
mood to study politics, so I decided to see what Nick was up to. Nick told me about an old test that he put on
the Z-drive (you rock Ferder) and he suggested that I give it a go before the
final. As I was on the fourth floor, I
decided to see if Heather was in her room.
She was getting ready to work the desk at four, but it was early enough
that we could sit and talk for a while.
She was already done with her finals, but as an RA, she was required to
stay at school until Wednesday evening.
Since she had nothing to do the next two days, we made plans to hang out
on Tuesday. At this point, if I put off
studying any longer, it would never happen, so I went to a deserted library,
where I reviewed my notes for the next hour and a half. I then went up to Julie’s room, ate dinner,
and then we all left for the final. I
honestly feel that it was the easiest of the three politics tests, and I was
relieved that I wasn’t the last one done with the test for a change. After the test, I went back to the residence
hall, where Heather was just about to get off from her shift. She told me that there was going to be free
cookies and ice cream in the cafeteria, so we decided to check it out. We talked some more over ice cream, and I all
but decided to partner with her for our cultural heritage presentation next
semester.
Tuesday was so much fun that when it was over, it was
actually slightly depressing. I got to
STLCOP at 10 AM and talked to Jim and Rachel for about a half an hour. Rachel was worried about her Spanish final
that evening which included an oral section that needed to be memorized. I hope it went well for you Rachel (I know I
used to hate oral exams when I was in Spanish).
When I got to Heather’s room, the door was open, so I walked in. Heather’s freshman roommate was lying on the
bed studying, but I didn’t see Heather, so I asked where she was. To my surprise, she was still in bed, having
taken advantage of the opportunity to sleep in late. I waited for Heather to get ready, and then
we proceeded upstairs to Valerie’s room to watch an episode of Nip/Tuck that I
had taped. Some combination of the way
in which I recorded the show and the tracking on the VCR resulted in a picture
that would give anyone motion sickness, so we decided to watch some Red Dwarf
tapes instead. Rather than sit through
the first episode that explains everything, I opted to explain the premise of
the show myself. I just hope I did a
decent job. By the time I was finished,
Valerie and her boyfriend Chris had returned, and Chris decided to watch Red
Dwarf with us. First we watched the
Polymorph episode, which everyone seemed to enjoy. Heather got a good laugh out of the famous
seen in which Kryten rescues Lister from his rapidly shrinking boxer shorts. We then watched the episode in which Lister,
Rimmer, and the Cat first meet Kryten.
This probably wasn’t the best judgment on my part, but I failed to
remember how much that episode sucked due to the horrible actor that they had
play the part of Kryten (who in my opinion quickly becomes the best character
in the series). After the episode was
over, Chris announced that he wanted to go to some girl’s apartment to pick up
some stuff that he left there.
Apparently Heather had the spare key to the apartment, so we all piled
into Chris’s car and were off. When we
got there, we realized that none of the key’s on Heather’s key ring fit the
door to the apartment. Chris decided
that Valerie had the skinniest arms and that she should try and reach the lock
through the mail slot, but her attempts ended in failure. A few trips later, we were back at STLCOP and
Chris had his things.
Back on campus, we
ran into Dr. Czenyka, our Cultural Heritage teacher. She explained to us that she was done grading
the finals, and that all she had left to do was file them in the student
mailboxes. Heather volunteered us for
the job (I didn’t mind…I would probably have volunteered myself anyway) and it
only took five or ten minutes to get everything filed. Finally, we arrived back in Heather’s
room. It was nearly 2 PM and I was
starving. I ate my sandwich as Heather
set off to prepare some Easy Mac. I
looked up from my sandwich and our eyes met just as she was opening the package
of noodles. For a second, time seemed to
freeze, and then the package burst open, its contents flying in every
direction. After we cleaned up the mess
and had ourselves a good laugh, we ate lunch, talked, and watched LINGO. Jon popped in during lunch to chat, and soon
it was time for Heather to go to her meeting with Dr. Katz (our organic
teacher). Then it was upstairs to hang
with Justin, Jon, and Justin’s girlfriend, Katie. When I got there, they were looking for
Justin’s dorm key. Loosing your key on
the last day of the semester apparently is one of those events that have an
abnormally high probability. Anyway,
after several minutes of not finding anything resembling Justin’s key, we gave
up and played some games. Soon, it was
time for me to move my car, and Gary
was nice enough to help me get my pads up to Justin’s room. We played DDR for a little while, but quickly
realized how out of shape and practice we all were. Soon it was time to eat, and we decided that
the last meal of the semester needed to be a good one. Obviously, this meant taking a field
trip. After a fierce debate, we settled
on Olive Garden. On the way there, Gary told us about the
Chinese restaurants that his family owns, and that got Jon and I thinking about
Emperor’s Palace. None of the others had
heard of the place, and so we decided to go there instead. In my opinion, Emperor’s Palace is the best
Chinese buffet in the St. Louis
area, and by the time we got there (over an hour after we left STLCOP as we
avoided taking highway 40) I was more than ready for the all you can eat
goodness. Let’s just say that I ate my
thirteen dollars worth! It only took a
half an hour to get back to school on 40.
When we got back, I packed up my stuff, said my goodbyes, and savored
the official end to a busy fall semester.
Tuesday night provided a sharp contrast to the day’s
events. It was one of the worst nights
that I have had in a while. I’m not sure
what specifically caused my restlessness; however, my night was filled with
frustrating dreams. The next day, Katie
would suggest that they were a result of something I ate that day. And certainly, stuffing myself at Emperor’s
Palace may have made my thoughts reveal themselves in dream form, but it is the
dreams themselves that are important. In
one of the dreams, I checked my grades for the semester, only to find that I
had gotten a C in Spanish (Dios Mio).
This is curious as I haven’t taken Spanish since junior year of high
school. This dream most likely stemmed
from a combination of my own worry over my Anatomy grade, and my concern for
Rachel and Matt who both had to take a Spanish final. In another dream, I was pulled over by the
cops and given a ticket for not knowing what street I was on or where I was
going. This dream obviously is a
manifestation of my anxiety concerning driving and knowing where I am when I am
driving.
I ended up sleeping in till noon on Wednesday. I had to go to work at four, so my day was
essentially wasted. Work was typical
until about seven, when the store got dead, and my pharmacy manager had us
start working on his new project. This
meant fixing problems with the order manually.
For the next hour we sifted through lists of drugs, looking up the
highlighted names in the computer and changing several lines in the drug
ordering info. It was one of the most
boring things that I have ever done. It
was obvious from the periodic sighs coming from my manager that he was enjoying
the job just as much as I was. Hopefully
I won’t have to do that again anytime soon. I checked my grades
after I got home from work on Wednsesday, and by some miracle I
actually made a B+ in anatomy. Woot!
I spent all day Thursday waiting around at the hospital with
my mom and my aunt. My dad was scheduled
for surgery on his neck. The C6 and C7
disks in his neck had been pressing against a nerve for the last six months
causing numbness and loss of coordination in one of his arms that was originally
diagnosed as a mild stroke. When they
performed the surgery, they discovered bone spurs on the disk that was also
contributing to the pinched nerve. They
cleaned it out, and hopefully the surgery will gradually return full feeling to
his arm. He will have to be careful
about how he moves his neck for about six weeks or so. Just being in the hospital waiting for him to
go into surgery and come out of surgery was extremely stressful and
exhausting. The hospital environment has
this effect on anyone, but at least the surgery went well.
Today I worked from nine to three. It was a typical busy Friday at the pharmacy,
and I quickly became frustrated with the efforts of one of my co-workers,
Edith. Edith is one of the newer
pharmacy technicians at our store. She
has been working with us for something like three or four months now. And I have to hand it to her, the things she
knows how to do, she seems to do well.
However, for someone who has worked close to five days a week the past
few months (she is not a pharmacy student), there are a number of things that
she doesn’t know how to do that she probably should. She is unable to enter scripts, enter
refills, print extra labels, and the like.
Essentially, she is useless when it comes to doing anything that
involves our computer system. What frustrated
me the most, however, was that at times when I was working my fastest to keep
up with the flow of customers, Edith was just standing around doing nothing for
several minutes. This would be acceptable
if there was nothing that she knew how to do, but Kim and I were doing the
things that she did not know how to do, and there was plenty that she could
have done. Don’t get me wrong, she did
do plenty of work, she just didn’t do as much as the rest of us. After dinner, I began my DDR training. With some practice, I should be able to
return to my skill level at the beginning of the semester.
Well, I think that is everything. Congratulations if you made it to the
end. I must admit that this was a selfish
post designed to help me remember the details of the final events of the
semester. Stay tuned for more.
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So I took my Anatomy final this afternoon. It wasn't
horrible, but it would be a miracle if I got the 95 percent that I needed for
my B+. If Mrs. Trannel gives us the customary free question, I can miss
four questions. I already know of three questions that I think I got
wrong, so I am probably screwed. Oh well...darn you Anatomy Lab.
Katie and I exchanged presents today. I can now reveal that I got her a
copy of Burnout 3: Takedown. She got me a DVD of the movie Dead
Poets Society. I had never heard of this movie until I opened my present,
but from the description it sounded interesting. The basic premise is
that Robin Williams is a Poetry teacher at a private boy’s school who inspires
his students to live life to the fullest. I didn't feel like studying
tonight, so I actually started watching the movie instead. I got through
nearly an hour of it, but as it is almost two and a half hours long, don't
expect a review quite yet. After we unwrapped our presents, we played
some Burnout. Katie quickly caught on to the mechanics of the game, and
four "Road Rage" matches later, I found myself loosing four to
zip. Hope you enjoy yourself Katie, but remember to get in some quality
time with your Physics book as well : P
STLCOP students who live on campus awoke this morning to discover a very visible,
and very cleaver finals prank carved in the snow covered quad. The prank
was so good, that our anatomy teacher applauded a job well done.
Thankfully, several students managed to take pictures before the maintenance
crew went to work cleaning it up. I will let the picture do all of the
talking...
Mad props to Ryan Stoneking for the great photo. You can view it full sized at http://www.deviantart.com/view/26176754/
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