Tri-7 Wk9 Day 428 - Dxi III Midterm, Don't Care ...

I recall reading a business psychology article once which dealt with goal setting, motivation and actual achievement. When outside forces set a goal for you and the goal is beyond the belief of what the person thinks they can achieve then performance was shown to be well below what the individual was capable of in the first place. When those same outside forces set a goal that was well in reach then studies indicate that the goals was exceeded.

Right now, I think I'm in a situation of performing below mandated levels. It's an odd psychology that's taken hold this semester and being chronically exhausted probably has a great deal to do with it. I just don't seem to care.

I've been with Logan for nearly three years now and have cared a great deal for those three years. I would stay up all night to study for exams the next day if I thought it would give me any type of benefit what-so-ever but that is no longer the case. I'm showing up for everything and that's about it. Maybe it's the stresses.

In the first trimester, the biggest stressor had to have been when the school said they were going to ban smoking on campus and suspend students on their third violation. I started smoking about 10 years before most of these students were even born. I wouldn't expect many of them to understand but I had to consider the very real possibility of getting suspended from school and having to find another place to complete my chiropractic education. The threats associated with the smoking ban where all a big joke anyway and the whole thing never completely came to fruition because even after passing a student vote the smokers at Logan ended up being tolerated anyway and the school put up smoking huts or designated smoking areas.

Maybe getting slated for the St Peters clinic in Tri-7 is having a similar effect on my as the smoking ban/suspension threat specter did in Tri-1. There's nothing wrong with the clinic, in fact it may be the best clinic out of the five available. It's the nearly 120 miles per day I'll need to be driving on the days when I do have clinic which, now-a-days is a minimum of three days per week.

I remember when I was trying to pledge a fraternity on campus and would be away from home for 16 to 18 hours at a time on a regular basis, sometimes longer and there wasn't a single person I talked with that had any inkling what that was like. In fact, most of the responses would qualify as condescending. However, last week when classes started at 7:20 and then we had board reviews scheduled until 8 p.m. there ended up being a plethora of post on facebook about the 12 or 13 hour day so many had to endure. Everybody seemed to understand quite clearly when it was happening to them.

I get the same thing now with driving. Nobody seems to have the vaguest clue as to how spending a minimum of two hours a day stuck in rush hour traffic could have an adverse effect on ones blood pressure. This was my situation for the first three semesters of the DC program which, in itself is hard enough but add those two hours (and sometimes three or more) of rush hour traffic I had to deal with each day and my blood pressure did skyrocket. That was with 100 miles of driving per day and that drive was due to the main highway leading to school being shut down. Now, we're going to bump that up another 20 miles.

But really, how do chiropractic students not have a clue of how something like that can raise a persons blood pressure. Is the youth of the school really that clueless? It's annoying to have situations which nobody understands.

4:03 a.m. and I'll need to head out soon to at least offer up some pretense of caring about todays Dxi III midterm exam.

It's hard to say I really care about any of it. I know I mentioned before that I've had more thoughts about quitting this program more times in the first two or three weeks of this semester than all the other semesters combined. The best response I've had from that is to be reminded that I've had thoughts about quitting the program before. Don't people listen? I know I've had those thoughts before. For most students that thought will flutter through their mind at least once a semester. The qualifying difference is that those thoughts have ruminated through my head more than all other semesters combined.

I think the relative isolation I have to the school due to my lack of proximity is probably a big underlying culprit. That along with the fact that so much of my work is done solo. There's never much, if anything, in the way of studying with other people except for days like today. When we have an exam I can go to school early and I'll be able to hook up with a few other classmates who also show up early to study and it makes a HUGE difference having other people to study with. That's not usually the case though. The vast majority of studying I do is completely on my own.

Apparently, I have 17 adjustments counted in clinic. I need a total of 50 adjustments to be able to get into outpatient clinic which means getting to practice in St Peters. I should at least hit 20 adjustments after today. Missing one of my first clinic days due to my brother's wedding in Vegas was probably one of the worse things that could have happened in terms of school performance. It was a great thing as far as my brother's life is concerned and not the type of thing I'd ever want to miss but, it terms of getting through school and missing not just two full days of class but missing that early clinic day in particular has proved to be rather devastating in terms of the overall effect it's been having.

So now, it's shower, get dressed in clinic attire and head to school. I have 1 hour and 45 minutes at lunch time to treat three patients. It should only be two patients but one, my room parter, doesn't want to stay and be treated at the time she was scheduled so I have to deal with that shit and squeeze it in during the lunch hour which also takes away from any extra study time that could have been done after my 2nd patient of the day.

Again, it's a total lack of understanding by people who are in much different positions than me from people who aren't taking a full course load or who have never taken a full course load trying to tell me their view of something they don't know about in the first place. I skipped an appointment I had last week but that was something I was "told" about two hours before the fact. The appointments I had today were scheduled a week in advance and agreed upon beforehand. Last week I was just told I was scheduled for later on that day which, in true Tri-1 fashion meant waiting a couple hours more than necessary before I could head home as well as putting me in the middle of rush hour traffic.

The only thing that really makes Logan tolerable right now is in the comfort of knowing it will eventually, one way or another, be over.

It's funny, usually after a night's sleep my attitude is reset to it's normal positive self. Not so much this morning.

I know that if I fail Dxi III that I can take it again along with Dxi IV and still stay with my class. Gonstead has be a bit concerned because I didn't do very well on that exam and can only pass the class by getting a strong enough grade on the final.

It's all very, very close this semester. It's totally unlike any other semester. Of course, well meaning people will simply tell me I've been through this before without having the faintest notion of what they're talking about.