OPs

I'm firmly into midterms now. My most recent one was on Friday in palpation, and I thought I would take a minute to describe what an oral practical exam looks like at massage therapy college, because I'm sure it's unlike anything anywhere else. We're grouped into pairs, and each given a time slot in which we have to show up and do our exam. One person is scheduled to be therapist first, and the other is client, and then we switch roles. The nice thing about this set up is that I only have to be there for the 20 minutes that I'm doing my OP, and I have the rest of the class period off, but the bad thing is that you have only those 10 minutes that you're therapist to show all that you've learned up until this point in term.

I got to college Friday, and my classmates were roaming the halls, dressed according to OP dress code (polo shirt, khaki pants, ID badge, hip-slung lotion holder, closed toed shoes). The college is laid out so the halls all form a square with the classrooms on the outside and the offices and washrooms on the inside. Students clump together in the corners and review all the body parts we should know, quizzing each other and practicing our palpation on everyone who walks by. It is not uncommon to walk round a corner past a group of students and have one ask you to hold still so they can poke some part of your body.

As the first OP time slot comes up the friendly quizzing and reviewing gets a slightly panicked tinge to it with the girls (all of us are girls in my year except one guy) proclaiming their lack of knowledge and crying out that they should have studied more and they're all going to fail. This then spins into more vigorous and agitated palpation of those nearby until our skin over all the more prominent palpation points (collarbone, shoulder, jugular notch, jaw bone, etc) has grown red and sore from the constant prodding. People's carefully pulled back hair (again, for protocol) has been roughly pulled aside to find the inion (bump on the back of your head) and shirts and pants have been untucked and hitched in various directions to get to landmarks hidden by typical clothing.

The first girls get called in to do their OP and the rest of us sit pale and stricken in the hallway, whispering muscle attachments to each other and worrying about whether the attachment for pectoralis major is ribs 1-6 or 1-8, and whose notes are right, and even though we're all pretty sure it's 1-6 should we trust the term 2 (who has already passed this course) that it's 1-8? Periodically people get too worked up and bothered by the fussing around them that they hop up and walk around the square of hall to calm back down.

Finally it's my turn. I'm client first, which I hate. Being client first means that my partner does all her body parts first, stating the attachments and actions, and finding them on me. I won't have the same body parts for my exam, and yet these will all be fresh in my mind and will have the potential to confuse me. I sit on the massage table and she looks at her list of bones, muscles, and ligaments she'll have to find and point out and confirm for the examiner. The bell rings, and she starts. The first one she did pretty well. The remaining ones got worse, and worse. By the end she was stating entirely wrong attachments and palpating the wrong areas of the body, and doing the wrong actions and confirmations. I felt terrible for her, knowing that there was no way she was going to pass this exam, and yet a part of me felt relieved because the worse she did, and the more I was mentally correcting her, the more confident I grew that I knew my stuff.

My turn. I flew through them. My hands were shaking, but I was confident. Only once did I falter, forgetting the confirmation for the 12th rib, but I took the initiative and made up one that seemed to work in my mind. I'm sure it's not the one we were told, but I think it should be acceptable. I felt terrible for my partner, knowing that she must feel awful, sitting there and knowing that I was acing the same exam that she just bombed. And she must know she bombed it.

And then it was over. I was shaking, and flushed from nerves, but it was done. My peers were all out in the hall. Those that were done already talking about what parts they'd gotten and things they'd done wrong, and answering and reassuring the girls yet to go. Some who'd done badly were crying in the parking lot, and those who'd just been bodies were showing the telltale signs of nervous therapist partners by red welts where they'd been pressed too hard by nervous hands. It's a dangerous thing, being a body for an exam, because you're not allowed to talk, even to complain of pain, because that tips off the therapist that they're doing something wrong and constitutes cheating.

I have this same thing to look forward to on Wednesday when we have our massage techniques OP. It's more exhilarating than a roller coaster.

Job and Apartment

Today I had my training shift for the cafe I just got a job in. Hurrah! At long last the search for part-time employment is over!

Once again, I'm working in a coffee shop. Seems that's all I'm qualified for. I just have to laugh at myself here. Is it just me, or is it that whatever is the first job you get in high school brands you for life? It's like being type-cast. Let me tell you, folks, I'm a phenomenal actress who keeps getting stuck with the role of extra. This is not to say that I don't like coffee shops. Out of all the jobs I've had, the one I had at Second Cup was by far my favourite. You have the customer interaction, the friendly chatting, the smell of espresso, the fun of steaming milk, the simplicity of a cash machine... it's just that I was fancying the idea of coming home not covered in greasy coffee oil and grinds and grit.

However! A job is a job, and I like cafe work well enough. It beats shoveling shit out of a pig barn (aka: fast food). Besides which, it's only another 16 months until I will begin my search for massage therapy work - something I have incredible confidence in finding immediately following graduation. And in the meantime it will pay the bills and let me buy a certain boyfriend pretty things.

In other news! And exciting news! Greg and I found an apartment. For those that don't know, we're moving in together. Just us, and Rumble. The apartment leases from August 1, and I have this one until August 27, so there's some substantial overlap for cleaning and gradual moving. Maybe we can avoid a truck? Who knows. I haven't actually seen the place. I'm just that trusting of Greg's opinion. With the assurance that it has new appliances and bathroom and paint job and clean floors, it's already a million times better than this place I live in now where the appliances and the walls are probably originals from 1970. The walls have certainly never seen hole filler. Sigh. Stupid student apartments.

That's about all the news here. Greg's off for the weekend at his grandparents' place to see some show thing that I still don't really understand but Greg goes to every year with his grandfather. I always call it an engine show, and Greg always says it's not an engine show. So whatever he's doing where ever it is - it's not an engine show! In my defense, he did mention spark plugs...

Homecoming

It's amazing how quickly things return to normal. As I write this, Greg is downstairs playing his new video game on my PS2. We drove back from his hometown this afternoon, unpacked some of his things, I gave him his gifts, and we went grocery shopping.

I spent Saturday night with his parents, who are delightful people. I was expecting to be nervous and a little uncomfortable spending a whole evening with them without Greg acting as a reassuring buffer, just as I expected to be nervous talking to them on the phone (me not being a phone person), but I wasn't at all nervous with either. Something about them puts me at ease, and I find it easy to converse and smile and laugh. It was a pleasant evening.

I woke up at 5am on Sunday, and tossed and turned and dozed until 7:00, when I got up and showered. I wandered down to their kitchen and had some juice and read some comics until his parents appeared, and shortly after we set off to the airport. As soon as we got in the van to go I could feel my heart race. My breathing was trying to fly ahead of me, and I was struggling to maintain a normal heart rate and keep myself from hyperventilating. It was a strange reaction for me, since I can normally go through the most terrifying and exciting things without feeling an urge to hyperventilate, yet here I was, in the back of Greg's parent's van, literally shaking with excitement and struggling to breathe. As soon as we got out of the van at the airport Greg's mother noticed I was shaking and pale, and reassured me in a very friendly manner.

I have never felt such joy as the moment at which Greg stepped out of the gate.

We spent yesterday and today together, and today when we drove back home, everything felt normal, and natural, and easy. I'm happy like I haven't been happy in the last 140 days, and I feel like my life is finally back where it should be. It was hard to have my boyfriend and my best friend so far away, and I am so glad to have him back.

Hour Count Down

Remember this? We are now down to (drum roll) 39 hours! Yippie!

Tomorrow I travel by bus to Greg's hometown, where I spend the night at his parents' place and then drive with them to the airport to pick him up. 39 hours!

So what's a girl do with the time in between now and the time they leave to boyfriend's hometown? Several things. One of which included THIS:
The best haircut I have ever had. Bar none. It's the perfect length, the perfect shape, has the perfect curls, and isn't in the slightest frizzy or crunchy.

What's a better way to greet a boyfriend at the airport but with gorgeous hair like this? Except maybe if there was gorgeous hair and home baked cookies (isn't that right, Greg?).

Graduation

Right. I graduated. Kind of forgot to write about that. It was a lengthy ceremony. We dressed in gowns and hoods, were handed cards with our name, student number, major, and "participation number", and lined up in twos in a line that went on forever behind the stage and around the arena under the seats. I was number 578 and there were still a good, oh, 300 behind me. I'm somewhere on the left half on the middle isle, about 10 rows back, I think. In other words, I'm one of the tiny skin-tone spots.Here we are all filed into the auditorium. It took about 20-30 minutes just to get us all filed in and seated, following the direction of the marshals. I was delighted to note that the tall, skinny, blonde-lanky-haired fellow with glasses and an earring that was marshal for my area and escorted me to my seat was none other than the professor from the political science department who is engaged to the anthropology professor who loves me and never gives me anything below a 95%. He, of course, has no idea who I am. Although he has met me once, introduced by, "and this is Haley. Haley we were just talking about students who make it worthwhile".
This was a much happier notice than the principal marshal who (although dressed amusingly) turned out to be the philosophy professor who failed me on a paper, writing: "well researched and presented, but I do not agree", causing me to drop the course.

I digress. There was slight chaos in my pairing because the girl ahead of me didn't show up, throwing off our numbering and forcing the marshals to reorganize us into pairs. Then she showed up moments before we walked into the auditorium, forcing the marshals to frantically re-pair us as we had been. Then later, when my row finally got up and walked around the room to the stage this same girl forgot her participation card at her seat and forced the marshals to frantically find a spare copy for her. It's enough to make one think she was on drugs. Here we are, passing the marshal's participation table. The girl right in front of me is, I believe, at this moment whispering sharply at the marshals something to the effect of "don't you have a spare one? Can't I just write my name on a post-it?!?" But there I am, the picture of poise and comfort, smiling benignly into the camera. Ha! I'm actually trembling like an idiot, picturing myself tripping in my heels and sprawling across the stage - not to mention sweating buckets because it was only 38 degrees that day and the air conditioning just couldn't keep up.

I walked across the stage and shook the four hands that were offered me, and returned again to my seat. The biggest thrill wasn't shaking the president's hand, nor the chancellor's hand (who's also a well known politician in Ontario), nor the other two random people who I did not know or recognize (although I've been told that one was the vice-president of the university), but rather when Dr. G, who's retiring this year, shot me a big smile and a thumbs up from behind the fourth hand-shaking guy. I'd seen him file in, and cheered for him when the president mentioned his retiring this year, and was hoping upon hope that he would somehow look up at me from the program he was reading when I walked across in front of him. All I wanted was a look of recognition, and I got a thumbs up and a whispered "good job!" to boot. I love that man.

Yay!

My table came!!

I aced my anatomy midterm!!

I aced my anatomy midterm AND my table came!!!

High School Rules

On Mondays I have a full day of Anatomy and Physiology 1. The course is designed such that the first half of the material, right up until the end of today, one class before the midterm, is all information that I had covered in high school biology and chemistry. Since I loved biology and chemistry it has all stuck with me surprisingly well. As a result, the teacher hasn't taught me really anything new, save a few terms that I didn't know, or didn't remember.

This has been great. It's been a simple review of something that I quite enjoyed in high school, and the result is that I'll likely not have to study much at all for the midterm next Monday. I'll review the few terms I didn't know, sure, but other than that I have a solid grasp on the material, and it is multiple choice after all.

What has not been great has been my classmates. Unfortunately one of the differences between university and college is that, somewhat like in high school, it is deeply uncool to know the answers in college. It is uncool to answer the teacher. It is uncool to do the reading ahead of time. It is uncool to do anything but stare at the teacher blankly and vacantly, refusing to absorb any material.

I am not afraid of my classmates. I was in high school, and that held me back, much am I loathe to admit it. Now, however, I have resorted to the much more effectual approach of thinking that they are the losers, and answering and participating and learning regardless of their sneers.

I have had to field the scathing remarks of "if you already know it, Haley, why didn't you just get an exempt and stop irritating the rest of us?" Most of these delivered in the typical high school way of whispered remarks to friends within ear shot of the intended target. The expected high school response would be to sink down in my chair and refuse to open my mouth for any more questions in hopes to save myself in their eyes. But, as you may suspect, I am unwilling to play by high school rules. I'm 21, thanks, I've done a degree at university, I have wonderful friends, a loving boyfriend, and a great family, what do I need the approval of some snotty teenager (or wannabe teenager, in the case of the one 20-something married girl who sits with the fresh-out-of-high-school kids for God only knows what reason) in the back of my college classroom? The fact is: I don't need your approval. You know what I do need? Good marks and the respect of my teachers. That's what counts, not you, and you don't get that by playing by your social rules.

I hated high school, and I absolutely refuse to go back there in any way whatsoever.

Thankfully there are a far higher proportion of older women who do not hold this teenage mentality, and often turn to me for clarification of a point and admire and respect me for my already absorbed knowledge, rather than scorning me for it. And, eventually, hopefully, those stupid teenage girls will learn that their rules aren't going to work in college. Probably right about the time when they fail their first midterm. Say, like the one on Wednesday.