I'm a little stunned to see the last time I blogged was on Friday, Deember 14, 2012. I suppose a lot has happened since then. For one thing, I did end up getting my financial aid reinstated but, in kind of a very odd and peculiar way. From my experience at Logan, whenever a student is suspended for any reason they must write an appeal to get back in. I was put on a financial aid suspension for the Fall 2012 semester but this would appear to be a new area to financial aid since they had a very hard time telling me what I would need to do in order to undo the suspension. And, by "a hard time" I mean it took them a very long time to tell me what I needed to do. Apparently, it took them a while to figure it out. In the end, they said I needed to retake and pass a class I had failed. This is part of where the irony comes in to play. I didn't actually fail a single class in 2012 although my transcript would beg to differ. To be more clear, there were no teachers that actually assigned me a failing grade. The F's I obtained were changed and entered in by the ladies in the registrars office at the behest of my adviser. That was the plan set forth by my adviser in order to help me complete my degree quest at Logan.
I distinctly remember expressing concern to my adviser over the inevitable suspensions which would result from repeatedly failing different classes but, I was assured that I had to be suspended three times before anything bad would really happen. Unfortunately, as I was to later find out by their own admission, the advisers are, in their own words "clueless when it comes to financial aid".
So...financial aid got to wield their big stick and with just a few days before I was to take my Competency Boards last Fall I received an email telling me my financial aid was cut off and I was suspended from receiving financial aid.
The Financial Aid department took so long telling me what I needed to do to get unsuspended that they did so with only a day left for me to register for any classes which, I had to pay out of my own pocket. One of the problems with registering at the last allowed day for a Tri-10 class is that Tri-10 classes are only 6 weeks long to begin with and the first two weeks were already passed by the time I learned what I was supposed to do to get back in.
Here's another funny part about financial aid ...even though I did what they requested by repeating a class I got an F in, there were still hang ups with them when it came to getting registered for this Spring 2013 semester.
I started contacting my adviser around the same time I last posted here - per an email I'd received there was a week when I could get registered for the Spring but....my adviser kept checking to confirm that I would be able to get financial aid for this Spring and, once again, financial aid wasn't sure. Apparently they forgot what they had already told me to do. Almost seems like they're flying by the seat of their pants and figuring things out as they go.
Eventually, with less than a week to go before I was to take Comp Boards, I got an email from my adviser telling me when I could come in to meet him. It was obvious from the email that there was no solid resolution from financial aid because there was nothing in the email pertaining to those concerns.
When I did go in and meet with him he informed me that the Financial Aid department refused to put anything down in writing and that I should just sign up for the classes I wanted then they would take a look at it.
It's been kind of smooth sailing since registering. And, almost surreal. I never did have to submit an appeal. My guess is that they didn't want anything in writing showing that the reason any of my classes got failed last year was because the grades where being changed by the registrars office to F's so those classes could be taken over to allow me to have at least 12 credit hours and get financial aid. 12 hours is the minimum credit hours necessary to get financial aid. Anything less and you get ZERO.
I know I'm not an isolated case because I talked with the ladies in the registrars office when we first did all this and their attitude was very nonchalant and remarked that I wasn't the first person they had to do this with and you do what you gotta do.
So, I registered for classes and ran a copy of my schedule down to financial aid to get that process started and when I dropped off my schedule not a word was said about it being turned in so late. Usually, I'm told it's going to take a while as in a matter of several weeks before it can get pushed through but nothing like that was said this time and, wouldn't you know it, in less than a week my student loan was ready to be picked up. About the only out of the ordinary thing I noticed was the number of page views this blog got prior to me picking up my loan check. Recently, with the lack of consistent blogging, I'll get about 50-70 page views per day. In the two days prior to getting that check, I had 875 page views. I have 562 post as of those hits so, there were definitely enough hits for someone to have gone through every single entry I'd ever made. I'd be willing to bet it was someone from Logan who might have scanned through all my post to help make a determining decision as to whether or not I'd get my check. I'll probably never know for certain but, it's still quite odd ...the total lack of standard procedure for everything I went through in that little scenario.
Here's a little snapshot of how obvious the extra hits were on this blog....
To the right and left of that spike in the picture of page views are the normal hits I get and that spike represents the two days prior to getting my check.
I guess that was my little rant to bring us up through the first three weeks of January. I took competency boards on January 17th and I have to tell you, it is MUCH harder doing all that stuff on your own without any classmates to help you through the process. The Fall of 2010 was the last time I took those Competency Boards (comp boards) and I only remembered so much. It had been a couple years since I had my hands on an e-stem machine so, even though I knew some of the academic stuff like using a setting of 80-120 for acute pain and 3-5 for chronic paid I didn't know how to use the machine, which buttons to press & so forth. It's the kind of thing that would take less than a five minute review with a machine handy and someone to show you the practical specifics but, I didn't have that prior to testing. Taking those comp boards was a bit of an exercise in humility and a fair amount of embarrassment I figured I passed a third of the exams, another third could go either way as in pass or fail and the final third was no way I passed. I was pretty much right in that thinking and passed about half of the OSCE test I took that day but, we had five stations that were taken in the semester before which are certain passing marks for most all students. Anyway, I did pass those comp boards and got back into clinic.
Last week was my first week back into clinic and the current set schedule has me working 3-7 p.m. on Mondays and 11:30 to 3:30 on Wednesdays and Thursdays. It didn't take long for the long 50 mile one way commute to rear it's ugly head. On Thursday it took nearly two hours to get home. Actually, I went straight to a basketball game that started at 5 p.m. and was about 20 minutes late for. We had a very light dusting of snow here in St. Louis but, the traffic as you approach downtown St. Louis was so jammed up that it took me 15 minutes to travel the last few miles before being able to cross the bridge into Illinois.
It definitely helps that I don't have any classroom type classes this semester. I only need to show up to Logan for Minor Surgery and maybe a few times to work with Dr. Haun on my Senior Research project. Oh, and I have to stop in to see Jennifer Reed who heads the marketing for all our clinics. I'll also have to show up on April 6th to finish up my Internal Health Specialist program. That will be nice. I've already passed all the exams for that program and just need the additional 6 hours of attendance time to be legitimately certified in Internal Health.
I was hoping I might be able to get transferred to the Montgomery Health center so I could work with Dr. Gould and get a bunch of practical experience actually using what we learned in the IHS program but, she informed me there was no way for her to transfer students. I guess that's something she ended up learning in the past few months because previous emails indicated that she would simply take students from other clinics if necessary.
The stark inflexibility of a few people in key positions in that school can really make things difficult for a person to graduate. It's bizarre to hear someone say there's absolutely nothing that can be done about a situation such as having two students switch their clinic assignments when students had been allowed to change assignments for as long as there has been outpatient clinics - maybe 30 years or so and, all of a sudden, such a thing is impossible? Oh well.
From what I heard this past week in clinic there's going to be changed regarding interns new patient requirements. One thing that has me concerned is that I heard new patients have to make at least 6 appointments.
I'm starting over at zero in terms of my number of new patients since I wasn't able to get the few I had signed off before I dropped clinic back in the Fall of 2011.
One really positive note is that Dr. Wittmer, the head of all the outpatient clinics said the 82.25 hours I had put in the first time I went through the Tri-9 clinic session still count towards the 180 total hours of clinic time I need for Tri-9. Dr. Hogarth, my clinician at St. Peter's had advised me to check up on this because if those hours didn't count then I would be living at the clinic. For now, thank god I don't have to. Not that it wouldn't be good for me but, I have to complete two semesters worth of my Senior Research Project (SRP) in the next three weeks and will need a LOT of time to get that completed. It will be really nice to get that done.
Once I finish this semester and get through all my current classes then I'll only have a single class left as in my Tri-10 clinic duties. Other than fulfilling that last requirement, I'll also need to complete all the specific clinic requirements. I'll get into specifics with that in another blog entry but, I know we need 10 new patients, so many urology exams, I think I have 20 of those and need 25. We'll need so many x-rays taken and a few other things. This reminds me - to augment clinic, one of our classes is Lab Interpretations and I have my 4th one due this coming Monday.
This has all certainly been an interesting experience. One of the interesting parts consisted of going broke last semester after my financial aid was cut off. That wasn't the only thing cut off. My power got cut off completely once as well and it took me three days to get it back on. I got lucky with the second time it was supposed to be cut off because, I was past the date of getting it cut off but the power company just hadn't gotten around to shutting me off. I was able to set up a payment agreement with them to keep the electricity on. I ended up missing the next payment in January of that agreement but, fortunately with the financial aid coming through I was able to pay everything I needed to ...I believe that was over $600 to get all caught up but, I should be able to maintain electrical throughout this semester.
Oh, getting arrested was another consequence of my unexpected loss of financial aid. I had missed a court date for speeding, one of those 10-15 mph over the speed limit deals. one of those times when I hit the gas to make it through a yellow light instead of slowing down and coming to a stop and a copy just happened to be right at the intersection when I did it. That court date was the day after my Grandma passed away last year so, I was on my way back to Minnesota for the funeral the day of my court date. I did learn something though, and that is if you miss a court date then a new court date gets set. I didn't know that. I figured a warrant would be put out for my arrest and there would be a fine. Eventually, I got pulled over for an expired sticker on my car but, when you have to choose between water & electricity or paying for a sticker and settling up a fine ...well, I chose the water & electricity. Anyway - that's all taken care of now. Surprisingly enough, the night I got arrested my bail was all the way up to $5,000! That's when I learned subsequent court dates had been set after my first missed court date and every time a new court date was set the amount of bail kept getting increased.
I can definitely live without any more of those types of experiences.
With the exception of the handcuffs it wasn't a bad time. I got to kid around with the police officers at the jail and we all laughed and cracked jokes. The cell I had to stay in had the door to the cell wide open so, there weren't any claustrophobic experiences as far as that's concerned.
My parents bailed me out of jail and I finally appeared for my court date on Jan 24th, got court supervision and went home.
This coming Monday starts week four of this semester and I now have 95.25 clinic hours in towards a needed total of 180 clinic hours so, I'm sitting pretty well as far as the hours are concerned.
It's hard to imagine only having to be in clinic three days per week since my initial introduction to outpatient clinic consisted of a mandatory 5 days per week for the first 13 weeks of the semester in addition to the occassional Saturday shift, and volunteer work we had to do at the Salvation Army Adult Rehab Center (ARC) and the St. Patrick's center. Oh, and the 17 classes we had to take in addition to all of that.
If I could have had just ONE day off from clinic per week, just a couple days here and there, I'm certain I could have pulled it off but, the schedule that I had was just too much. Driving a minimum of either 120 or 184 miles per day took it's toll. Physically, mentally & spiritually I was bankrupt.
But, I'm still around :)
And, it's time to look forward.
I'm a little stunned it's 3 a.m. but, I left my house this morning around 11ish a.m. and didn't get back home until midnight so, there's been a lot of things I needed to get done around here. Still are.
With the start of this new month, I've been contemplating getting back into Karate. Saturdays are a good time to start since it's a little shorter class, from 9 to 10 a.m. and the class is usually a bit smaller then the regular Tuesday and Thursday evening 7 to 8:30 classes.
I've been planning out next week in my head and with the clinic hours I have scheduled I would actually be able to make both the Tuesday and Thursday evening Karate classes. I was involved in Shorin-Ryu karate from 1982 until 2007 - a full 25 years although certainly not consistently. Something or another always seemed to come up - usually work or school or, I would just get out of the groove and stop going.
I officially have two different weight loss type competitions I'm in right now. One is called Lose to Win which is sponsored by one of the local hospitals. I did that competition in the Fall and lost 70 pounds in 12 weeks which gave me a percentage loss large enough to place 3rd out of over 1,000 contestants. I've been heavy enough though that a single 12 weeks isn't enough time to lose all I need to in order to be really lean or even enough time to get to a healthy BMI.
The other contest I'm in just kicked off this past Thursday night at Gold's gym. This is a transformation contest and the amount of weight loss isn't as important as simply how good you look at the end of 90 days. I have a decent shot at winning my age class in this competition. Starting out, I'd say I have a 5% chance at winning. If I work my tail off over the ensuing weeks then that percentage may go up but, for now, I'd say around 5%. Really, not bad odds to start out with. First place in my age group would come with a $6,500 check :)
That check along with selling my motorcycle would cover the cost of my summer tuition at Logan. Since I had to retake that one class by itself, ...that threw off the entire plan I had worked out with my advisers. If I could have gotten back in with that class then I would have had enough hours for financial aid for my remaining semesters. Oh well.. lol
I've been considering and would like to do a video blog or vlog regarding these most recent weight loss competitions. I'm figuring a video title of "Lose 70 pounds in 12 weeks" would probably garner some attention in the YouTube community. In my first competition (Fall 2010) I lost 66.6 pounds. I failed to complete the Spring session in 2011 and in my second completed competition (Fall 2011) I lost 70 pounds. In this Spring competition I would like to lose 85.8 pounds. My starting weight was 285.8 so, if I lost the 85.8 part of that then I'd weigh 200 pounds and have a percentage loss of 30% which, I don't believe has ever been done before in the Lose to Win competition. I have a heck of a good start since I dropped 25.4 pounds in my first week. Our second week weigh in is this coming Monday and I'll also see, for the first time, how I stack up against my competition. The prize money has dropped since the first time I entered the contest since they now split up the men & women and only award prizes to the top five of each gender. It was $500 for first place when the results were for the top 10 regardless of sex and now 1st prize is $350 for the top male and top female contestant.
So...after that first week, I have 60.4 pounds to drop over the remaining 11 weeks. That's an average of about 5.5 lbs per week. Usually, with the big first week drops I'll average about a pound a day or 7lbs per week for the first 8 or 10 weeks into the competition. I'm not really starving myself at this point or anything but, the Gold's competition just started so I wasn't overly concerned about what I was eating. Still, it's been a lot less than it was before these competitions started.
Which brings me back again to this upcoming week. If I start karate and go to that tomorrow morning (less than 5 hours from now) then I can also go on Tuesday and Thursday nights.
Here's a kicker - Gold's gym has classes that start at 5:15 a.m. and those are Monday through Friday. That would be a heck of a combination. Those morning classes would include Spinning classes and BodyPump classes plus, I would also have my regular workouts with the weights and i'm sure I'd still kick in the treadmill work like I've been doing. Out of the past dozen days I've only missed one day at the gym. One goal I have for this 12 week session is to have a double digit drop in weight beyond the first weeks double digit drop. For my week 2 weigh in I would like to have my percentage of weight down over 10%. The 25.4 lb drop in week one represents an 8.9% drop which should put me in first place. We'll see.
The trainer at Gold's who measured me and took my before pictures recommended spinning classes, bodypump classes and Core classes. I didn't see anything in the schedule for Core but a lady behind the counter at golds said classes like Pilates are core classes.
What else is going on???? KhanAcademy.com and Codecademy.com are two sites I've been visiting daily. Khan is used by me primarily for math practice and Codecademy.com is for learning to code, basically in HTML5, CSS and jQuery so far. I've got over 30 days straight at Khan and 23 days straight in coding with Code Academy.
I'm currently signed up for three upcoming runs. The first is called the Sandmine Challenge or Cave Run, it's a 5k through a series of caves over in Missouri, that's on the 23rd of February. The next two runs are in April and consist of a 1/2 marathon in St. Louis on Sunday, April 7th and ....the next one is another 1/2 marathon in October - the St. Louis Rock n Roll marathon.
On February 24th, I'll be working at the Working Women's Survival show over in St. Charles.
Feb 23rd - Cave Run
Feb 22nd at 12:30 p.m. my completed SRP is due.
There's 1/2 a chance I may end up staying up throughout the rest of the night and go to karate before coming home and going to bed. I do believe I've gotten back into karate that exact same way before.
A little over a week ago I sent an email update to some close family members and a few others to kind of act as coaches or, a sounding board. I was supposed to provide another update this past Tuesday and Friday and I'm thinking i can just as easily blog the updates and email them all a copy of the blog which, kind of kills two birds with one stone.
There's not shortage of activities to keep me occupied and plenty of work to accomplish. Guess I better get to it! :)
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