From Student to Midwife: Part 2 - Reflection on my First Semester

So, last week was a little quiet on the blog because I had exams. Incredibly hard exams. My first exams for my midwifery degree. In the above picture, I am procrastinating on the day before my physiology exam, with a terrible head cold and wearing a smile to mask the cold lump of fear in the pit of my stomach. As I've mentioned before, I've found this semester quite difficult. Going from an Arts degree to a Health degree is a huge transition, and so I'm a little out of practice with exams, having spent the past year and a half writing essays instead.

I found out last week that I have passed one of my subjects, however our marks aren't officially released for another couple of weeks yet. I'm fairly confident that I also passed nutrition, and fairly convinced that I failed physiology and will have to repeat it next year.

Right now, I have a few blissful weeks off before starting Summer Semester, which I opted to do this year to speed up my degree a little. It starts on the 20th of October, and I'll be doing Anatomy, Research and Evidence Based Practice and Pharmacology, the last of my generic health units before I start my midwifery units in February next year. Apparently Anatomy involves some viewing of cadavers, which both repulses me on one level and has my inner freaky, science nerd screaming "COOL!"

While I haven't enjoyed this semester quite as much as I was hoping, I have learned a lot and I'm one step closer to achieving my goal of becoming a midwife. I'm looking forward to a few weeks break and getting through a little more of my extracurricular reading about midwifery in the meantime. One semester down, seven more to go!

From Student to Midwife: Part 1

What's in my bag: Student Midwife Edition

Considering the overwhelming amount of support I received from the blogging community when I decided to switch university degrees, I thought it might be fun to keep you all updated on how my midwifery studies progress. It's week 11 of my first semester right now, and I must say, I was quick to learn this degree would not be a walk in the park!

To become a midwife, as well as learning actual midwifery skills such as birthing techniques, how to check blood pressure, how babies develop etc. you also need a lot of foundation knowledge, which is what I am tackling in this semester and over summer semester. This semester I am taking Health and Indigenous Australian Peoples, which is a subject about cultural awareness in health care, Food and Nutrition in Health, and Human Physiology, and boy are those last two hard! Human Physiology covers such a ginormous amount of content that I am kind of struggling to keep up, and Food and Nutrition in Health is a lot more complex than I thought it would be.

As a part of Food and Nutrition in Health, we are keeping short food diaries and creating basic individual diet plans for ourselves to see if we are meeting our individual dietary needs. As someone who struggles with their appetite and has various food restrictions due to health problems, I've found it interesting and challenging so far! The food intake study is my main assessment for this class, so it will be interesting to see how I go with the theoretical stuff that goes along with it!

As for Human Physiology, well so far I have only had an online test which I passed (thank god!). I was supposed to do a closed book exam in week 8, but I was ill and so sat it last week instead. I'm incredible nervous over it, because by all accounts, it was terribly difficult!  As much as I love learning about the human body, I am looking forward to being finished with my foundation subjects and moving onto midwifery practice subjects next year!

Thankful Thursday #3

Okay, so I know I'm late again but these posts mean too much to me not to write them at all and this week has been a very up and down week full of anxiety and a little bit of illness for me, so that makes it even more imperative to be thankful. I started back at uni on Tuesday at a new uni and was not feeling very positive about it all because I just loved Griffith so much, but it's turned out that SCU isn't all bad and there have been plenty of little things throughout the week that I can be thankful for.

Friendly faces - I walked into uni this Tuesday feeling like I was going to throw up, when all of a sudden, I saw a single friendly face who offered to show me to my class and all became right with the world again. Friendly people are the greatest!

Pinterest's send pin option - Since leaving the Gold Coast and my beloved Griffith university, pinterest seems to be mine and my best friend's main channel of communication. We often send each other funny little things that relate to inside jokes we share, or pins of things we know the other would just love so much. On Monday night I had a particularly shitty night with family and financial problems getting me down and just before bed, with tears streaming down my face, I opened this pin that Darci sent me that set me off in hysterics! It was exactly what I needed to cheer me up!

Comfort foods - This week has definitely been a good one for comfort foods in my household. I went through 4 litres of ice cream and a large jar of nutella in less than two weeks and even convinced Jake to let me buy more! Not exactly a healthy diet, but hey - I'm happy and ice cream is delicious!

Setting goals - This may come across as a strange thing to be thankful for, but I'm a terribly indecisive person and I'm not very good with goal setting (load of rubbish, innit). This week, however; I decided that June/July 2015 I will be in the UK/Germany. On top of being indecisive and not good at goal setting, I'm also a rubbish saver, but it seems this decision has all of a sudden  got me watching my pennies and I've actually managed to put a fair chunk of money away already! I never thought a UK trip would really be possible for me while I'm at uni, but I may just prove myself wrong here!

Jake - yeah, I know I could put this dude in pretty much every Thankful Thursday post ever, but this week with him has ben so great! He has made me laugh so much! Picture this - I came home on Wednesday afternoon to see my burly, Aussie, beer drinking, tradie boyfriend with a mud mask on. Yep, that's right, a mud mask! My friend lent the mask to me to try because it is a product she bought through me from Arbonne that I hadn't tried yet. I put it on Jake jokingly on Sunday afternoon when I was doing it, but I never expected him to like it enough to want to do it again! So funny!

I hope you have a lot to be thankful for this week! As always thanks to Lisette and Leona for inspiring me to be more thankful!

Nervous!

Oh my goodness! I have my first O-week activity for uni tomorrow and I am absolutely freaking out guys! This moment has been such a long, long moment in the making and now it is finally here, I am beside myself with nerves! I'm so worried that I won't make a good impression, or might find it hard making friends, and I'm so worried that I'm not going to be able to keep up with my workload that I've been sitting here all night with my tummy in a knot, and I can't even eat my dinner!

Funnily enough, the thing that is worrying me the most is what to wear. I knowww, how girly and predictable of me, right? But i swear, it's not like me at all! I'm the girl who chucks on whatever she feel good in and heads out the door. The girl who dresses for her mood, for her taste, for her own aesthetic and doesn't give a hoot what anyone thinks of her. The girl with "the tablecloth dress", the jarmy shirt and the funky hippy dress which get worn absolutely all the time! So why am I stressing out? Why am I so adamant that I make a good impression on these people? Well, it might have something to do with the fact that people keep on telling me the friends you have in uni are the friends you'll have for the rest of your life! The rest of my life is hopefully going to be a long, long time, people! In fact, I'm really holding out hope that humans are immortal by the time I reach like, 45. Forever is a long time to be talking to the same old girls, so naturally, I want to make friends with the right people! 

I know this is a trivial thing to worry about, and I know that I should just dress in what I feel comfortable in so that I make friends with similar aesthestic taste and interests as me, but I still feel like I have nothing to wear. I'm sorted for tomorrow, because I'm wearing the new outfit I bought the other week, but for the next three years' worth of classes - I'm worried!

The new outfit

I made a few Polyvore wishlists that I would like to share with you - three different styles which I would totally wear in a heartbeat, and all of the clothes in the sets are under $50 a piece, so I might eventually be able to actually buy a few of these things to incorporate into my wardrobe and make dressing for uni that much easier. All of the jewellery in the pictures is similar to stuff I already have and wear everyday. I'm not such a fool as to think I'll be getting any new jewellery any time soon - student budgets are not forgiving!

Anyway, take a look and see what you think. The pretty nude bag is something I REALLY want! I need a good, big, neutral bag for uni, so if I budget hard enough...

My Polyvore

What do you think of the styles I picked out? Anything in there that you think I'd get a lot of wear out of? Obviously the black skirt would be a winner, but what about the other things?

P.S. Sorry for my overuse of exclamation marks in this post. I'm seriously just that nervous!

Quick life update:

I just totally enrolled into Uni for semester 1, 2013!!!

Woo-hoo!

Tomorrow I will make appointments with some real estates to find a place to live and hopefully by this time next month I'll be a Queenslander! This whole growing-up-and-moving-out thing is just starting to feel real and I can't help but feel nervous and excited about it all! This last year since finishing school has gone too quick. Is this what it feels like to grow up? The years get shorter and life goes faster. I can't wait to begin this next chapter of my life!

Are you embarking on any new endeavours or adventures in 2013?