That whole Monday morning blog thing? Yeah, that's not really happening so much.

There is some irony, I suppose, that I announced Monday morning as the time for my blog posts to come out (after happening to write one every Sunday night for several weeks) and haven't posted one on time since. Well, I'm sorry for that. It did let me know that I actually have some readers, though! Thanks for that, both of you.

One week of classes is in the books. The nature of this program, however, makes it seem like nothing has really been accomplished. So much of the course work is didactic lecture (ungraded), independent reading and study (ungraded), and a few exams (graded). Next Monday is the first exam; we also have weekly quizzes in Skills and our first quiz in Health Care Systems next week. But Skills is pass/fail, so that doesn't feel like a big deal, and the HCS quiz is online, so it doesn't feel like real classwork. There are basically no papers in the first year of pharmacy school (at CU, anyway). That's been a huge adjustment for me. Each of my English classes had a final paper of 10+ pages due, and a lot of my literature classes were discussion-based, not lecture-based. This whole going to class, sitting and listening, and getting no feedback on my comprehension of the material until the exam business is pretty new to me. I'm not complaining - they definitely don't load you up with busy work - just pointing out how different it is.

Either the hammer has yet to fall or this semester is more manageable than last. I'll let you know which when I figure it out. I think I made enough adjustments to my study habits - like staying on campus to study after class instead of going straight home - to have a fair chance of avoiding burnout.

In case you were wondering, this weekend was not so productive. I'm OK with that. I didn't get behind on anything, and I spent some time with friends and extended family that I don't normally have available. Still, it would have been reassuring to be ahead of schedule in something.

For whatever reason, I never shared my struggles with my intern license on this forum. That's odd. Anyway, pharmacy students are granted intern pharmacist licenses while students in order to learn the profession in experiential fashion. Under the supervision of a state-recognized preceptor, these interns can do just about anything that a full pharmacist can do, and the idea is that supervised practice is the best preparation for unsupervised practice. Well, most of my class received their intern licenses about a month after school started. A portion of the class, however, had theirs delayed due to the background check portion of the application. Most of these, including mine, were due to repeat traffic offenses. I had two speeding tickets and a "defective vehicle" charge (standard plea bargain for a careless driving charge that isn't a serious case) from 2000 to 2002, and then another speeding violation in 2006 and another defective vehicle in 2008. Apparently that causes concern that I may not have an appropriate respect for the law. I'm not going to get into the various reasons why that isn't the case with me. All I'm going to say is that I finally got my intern license. This means that if I had time for it in my schedule I could get a job in a pharmacy. I'm going to try to get one in the summer, but right now it would just take me away from my family and get in the way of my school work, so for now it's just a fancy name tag that I can show off at parties.

In an hour, my wife and son land at the airport. They were only gone for three days, but I missed them a lot. It's not that I'm so dependent on my family that I can't function without them for a weekend. I'm just a much better person when they're around. Having someone to come home to makes me come home faster, and having someone to play with makes me do my chores sooner. I wasted a lot of time this weekend. But I am quite nearly a Wii Tennis pro, which ought to count for something.

That's all the news from my otherwise uneventful week. Thanks for stopping by, and keep checking back on Mondays (or Tuesdays, if there isn't one Monday).

Best. Cookies. Ever.

I paid $3.49 for this box of twelve cookies. I think, given that they are limited edition, I got a pretty good deal. Seriously, though, all joking aside, I love these things. I'll gladly pay more than a quarter per cookie. Never mind that a regular box of Oreos is like two bucks for three times that many. If you cover my Oreo in white fudge, I can't pay too much for it. And no, under no circumstances may you have one.

All that complaining about not having any homework must have worked. The day after I posted that entry they posted our first assignment. We go back to school tomorrow, and I'm really looking forward to it. Sort of. I mean, I'm saying farewell to sleep for the next two months, but I feel like I've started forgetting things from last semester. Also, I feel like the first semester was almost a different life. I've been getting into the swing of things at what is still a relatively new job (a job that I love, by the way) and enjoying some time with friends and family. It doesn't feel like I've been a student these past four weeks. People keep asking me how school is going, and I don't know what to say to that. I mean, it's going well, because I haven't been in it for a month, and because all my grades were good, but it's sort of like, "Oh yeah, I'm still in school."

The courses for this semester, in case any of you care, are Principles of Drug Action, Integrated Organ Systems 1 & 2, US Health Care Systems, and the two pass/fail classes that run the length of the program, Professional Skills Development and Experiential Practice. In April we have an interdisciplinary ethics course that will feature students from each of the schools at the medical campus working in small groups. We did an orientation activity with our groups in August, and that was sort of cool. We'll see what tune I'm singing when we add that course in the middle of the semester. I just realized that this semester, P1 Spring, is the lightest load in terms of credit hours in the entire program. So if this semester almost makes me lose my mind, any of the remaining semesters ought to finish me off.

If you actually like reading this blog (I'd be surprised, but who knows), my brother is doing a similar thing only he's doing a semester abroad in Montpellier, France. Also, he's a better writer than me with more interesting things to say. Here's a link.

Tonight I'm going to get a full night's sleep, wake up early and eat breakfast, and pack a delicious lunch. Last semester our days were short but they managed this by pretty much eliminating breaks from our day. This time we get a lunch break every day but it means that class runs longer. I don't know which way I'm going to like better. Probably the one that let me come home for an afternoon nap last semester, but you can't overestimate the value of a little break.

This coming weekend my wife is visiting her friend in Texas. I wish I could go with them. I don't like going to bed alone, and I never get enough sleep when I do. I like to think that I'll be able to focus and knuckle down and get ahead on some studying, but I think I'll probably just get nice and caught up on my Wii playing when all is said and done.

I think that's enough for today. Thanks for stopping by, and come back soon.

I have another week of this crap?

So basically I'm ready for school to start. I know, given my last several posts of the school year, that I probably shouldn't complain, but this is getting ridiculous. Every other school in the state (that I know of) is back in class already or starts this morning, including CU Boulder. But UC Denver? Yeah, we start next Tuesday, after the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. I've no idea why. The break is an entire month. I'd realy prefer to just start this week and end a week earlier in May. And I could really use the financial aid immediately. I make almost enough money to support us all by myself, but my hours have been down since that first hectic month and we need just a little bit of supplementation that we've been without since we moved into this house.

Also, I have no material for my blog. The break is relaxing, but I feel like a broken record. I got to spend some time with friends, which is a novel experience. I'm getting a lot of time in with my son, too, and I love that. It just feels like I'm in a holding pattern for the next week. I wish our first few assignments were available to us now so I could start working on them. I'd definitely take the chance to get ahead. Anyway, with a break this long, it'll be hard to jump right back into school with no transition. I'm not looking forward to any of that.

And that's about all I have right now. I'm not going to waste any more of your time with this inanity. Thanks for stopping by, and hopefully next week I'll have something to say.

Happy New Year

Just a few thoughts this week; nothing very deep and nothing very connected. I didn't want to let the blog flatline while I was on break, but I don't have a whole lot to say, either.

New Year's Eve is my least favorite holiday. I have no idea what all these people are celebrating. Maybe it's because I stay up that late every day, but I don't see the appeal. We made it through another year. Awesome. January 1st is an arbitrary day that we picked hundreds of years ago to be the start of our calendar year. It carries no major significance. I like doing year-end recaps and watching the 10 best plays on SportsCenter and lists of the 10 best movies and songs and all that but the whole getting drunk and counting down and ringing in the new year just makes me angry. It's really not that big a deal. I mean, if someone else has a better understanding of the significance, please let me know what it's really about. As far as I can tell it's just an excuse to get drunk with the next morning off to recover. Grow up and use a sick day already.

This break has been so good for me. I feel well rested and connected with my family. I've had all kinds of time to just be lazy and do whatever I want. Work is going well, although I'd like a few more hours. I can't complain too much about my hours, though, because three days a week is perfect once I start back to school in two weeks.

We had a great Christmas. Xander got spoiled rotten for the second year in a row. He still hasn't caught on to the concept of presents, at least not completely. He opened a rocking horse from his great-grandma and then decided he should climb on top of the box for a while. I think he actually got that the gifts he was opening were for him (a vast improvement over last year, when they unwrapping was the best part), but he lost interest after just a couple. And clothes were not very well received. He opened an adorable polo shirt from my dad, picked it up, and threw it. Not impressed.

It has struck me that I've basically been an adult for a decade. That may be stretching the facts a little (I was a 16-year-old senior in high school ten years ago) but I've certainly been more independent than not since the year 2000. I've held at least one job for all but about six weeks of the last decade. I've lived more than half of each year of this decade outside of my parents' home with the exception of 2000 (I only lived in the dorms from August to December of that year). I think I've been making my own decisions and doing everything I could to take care of myself over the last ten years. Maybe I grew up too early, but that doesn't change the facts. Now I'm fully independent (financially speaking), married, a father, a homeowner... that feels like a significant accomplishment. Maybe it just means I've become a fully brainwashed member of society. I'm OK with that. I feel no strong desire to oppose my dominant culture. Belonging to the system suits me.

I think that's all I have for now. There's something terribly wrong with the Nuggets, and that bums me out. Jay Cutler had two great games this week, now that they don't mean anything to his team. At least it means the Broncos don't get as good a draft pick from the Bears. I have a bad feeling about both of my baseball teams for 2010, too. Maybe it'd be better if I didn't focus on sports for the time being. I think I'm going to start rooting for the Mountain West Conference in college football. They're lovable underdogs. So go TCU tonight. I hope the Horned Frogs win by 50 points. Congratulations to BYU, Utah, Air Force, and Wyoming on their impressive bowl wins.

Thanks for stopping by, and come back next week. I promise to have something better to say.