School update

Well, it is official: I failed the antepartum course by less than 2%. I will be retaking the course in the next term, which starts this coming Monday. I'll also be taking a course called Primary Health Care.

I really wish I could take a leave of absence from work while attending school. Or cut back on my hours to devote more time to studying. Learning this material and finishing school is so incredibly important to me! However, my finances dictate that I must work. I must have income coming in, or we have no place to live. It's as simple as that. Perhaps buying a house while still in school was not a great idea, but we were very cramped in our rental. Yes, it was cheap, but it was far too small for 3 adults and a child. (Yes, three adults. My son is officially an adult!)

I absolutely LOVE our new house. Love it!! Don't like the huge mortgage payment, but it's worth it.

Anyway, back to school. I met (via phone) with my program advisor twice, and we have come up with a new game plan for my classes. I will be adding an extra term to my plan of study, which will put me at going to clinical bound in July 2012 and graduating in March 2013. All things happen for a good reason, right? Perhaps I just was not destined to graduate in December 2012. This has to have happened for a reason.

I am seriously disappointed that I won't be attending clinical bound in Kentucky next spring with the rest of the midwifery students that I have come to absolutely love. Instead, I'll be with a different group - more than likely, people that I have never met with or interacted with before/yet. It's so hard to think about rooming with and doing clinical bound with women that I haven't met or bonded with! Clinical bound is 8 (or is it 9?) days long, and appears to be a VERY intensive time period of skills and testing. I'm hoping to connect with others who will be attending next summer, so I at least have one or two friendly faces there.

In the meanwhile, I need to come up with a game plan on how to manage my time and study and retain the information learned in my two classes this spring. I've put out a request on our school forums looking for study buddies for my two classes this coming term. I think that practicing and bouncing the info back and forth might help me to retain it better. I'm also looking at writing up index cards with pertinent information from the different sections to help study. Maybe some colorful graphs and charts will help too.

I'm also going to attend a seminar in another week or two on how to learn test-taking skills. This is something I definitely need to refine my personal learning skills on! We went over some of the test taking skills when I was at our Bridge Crossing in KY, but that was over a year ago. I definitely need to refine my test taking skills, since that is where my huge mistake was with my antepartum course.

Wish me luck!