The craziest things seem to keep happening to me and unfortunately, my truck seems to be involved as well. Last week after dropping off my car pool buddies I get a call from one of them asking if I know how to jump start a car. I say sure and ask if she has jumper cables. She does so I turn around and pull up facing her car. She has a 98 Volvo and has been told that her battery connection isn't the greatest and something like this might happen.

Both of us are "pretty sure" we know how to hook up the cables but to be on the safe side she calls her boyfriend to double check. While she is on the phone with him we hook the cars up, black to black and red to red. My car is running and she gets into her car to start it but nothing happens. Her boyfriend suggests that I rev my engine a little and she try again. I get in and rev the engine and she tries the car again again nothing happens. As soon as she gets out of her car I get out of mine and we both notice smoke coming from the place where the cables are connected to her battery. I quickly turn of my truck. Unfortunately, this does not solve the problem.

The smoke is getting worse and worse and eventually we see smoke coming from the connection of the cables to my battery! The situation is escalating quickly. The smoke is now a visible plume that can be seen from a distance. A few people passing by stop and stare. Within seconds the cable catches on fire!! Katherine and I are running down the street, she on the phone with her boyfriend and I on the phone with 911.

Out of nowhere I guy runs out of the apartments across the street with a fire extinguisher and puts out the fire, takes the keys out of Katherine's car (her car was not on, but I guess this is what your are suppose to do) and yanks the cables off of the cars. The police and the fire dept show up, but the mystery hero had already fled the scene.

After calming down we try to think of what the heck could have caused this to happen. The fire dept stuck around for awhile examining the batteries and the cable, and came to the conclusion that it must have been a bad cable. I think they were also pretty upset that the fire had been put out before they arrived!

Anyways, there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with the internal operating system of either vehicle. My truck does have a "shiner" to the driver side headlight and bumper where the cable melted into it. Did I mention this happened just days after I picked up the truck from the body shop?

So the next incident happened yesterday on the way home from school. Once again, it was me and my car pool buddies. Now, I know that the windshield wiper on the driver side of my truck needs to be tightened and its worthless otherwise. Its something I have been putting off but I know needs to be done. I just avoid driving on days that there is inclement weather. Little did I know that the mother of all storms would be hitting us yesterday on our way home. I tested the wipers before we left school and as I predicted the driver side wiper didn't do anything but what I did not predict was that the passenger side wiper would fall off completely!

Long story short, we ran into some major weather on the way home and had to pull off on the side of the road and tape the passenger side wiper back onto the arm so we could at least stay on the road! I'll keep the blog updated if I have any new adventures!

I got my truck back!! The total bill for repairs came to $13,500!! Thank goodness for car insurance. It's definitely one of those things I hate paying for every month. I consider myself to be a pretty darn good driver but I have to say that so far, I think the car insurance companies are in the red as far as I am concerned! Also, my truck looks better now than before it went in to the shop :)

Thanks State Farm!

I'm Drowning!

Okay, I'm officially humbled. After spending about 16 hours studying for my most recent Pharmacology Exam I received a devastating 74%. Ouch! I have a "History and Physical Exam" test on Monday. I got up at 7 a.m. this Saturday morning and put in 7 hrs. I need to do at least another 7 hrs tomorrow in order to feel slightly ok about this test.

I don't know what it is but I feel like I am barely staying afloat. It's one test after another and I am frantically cramming for each test. I don't have time to get ahead because we have at least one test every week. If I don't put in at least 16 hrs of studying for each test, I feel unprepared.

I just feel anxious all the time! Hopefully during Spring Break I'll get a chance to get ahead and I won't feel this constant pressure.

Hello World!

I'm a couple of weeks into the second semester and it's going pretty well. I think that I learned a bit about time management from last semester and hopefully I will not be so stressed out in the next few months! We are learning about some pretty cool stuff right now like heart and lung physiology and pathophysiology! I think I am probably having a slightly easier time with these subjects than some of the others in my class because I am really fascinated by it. Also, having been on an ambulance for a couple of years isn't hurting either :)

In other news, Paul has been out of town since school started and there is really no word on when he will be back. His endeavors have not been without compensation though! He won his very first tournament and is very fired up to to win a few more :)

I found out the hard way that Panera will allow you internet access for only 30 minutes between the hours of 11 and 2. I thought I had found the perfect place to study...too good to be true!! It is almost impossible to find a coffee shop with a place to sit in Boulder at around 5 pm!

I wrecked my truck but it isn't totaled thank goodness!! It will cost about $8500 to fix but it should be fine. I am okay, I was very lucky. Stupid icy roads! I didn't think it was possible to do a complete 360 on a straight freeway .... but it is! ;)

Oh ya, and I'm completely hooked on the show House. I could watch it all day long. I kind of even sorta know what they are talking about some of the time! Yay

Okay, two weeks to go and semester number one is in the books! My grades so far are pretty good. I have managed an A in Biochemistry, Anatomy, Problem Based Learning and Professional Seminar; a B in Clinical Medicine and Patho/Physiology; and a C in History & Physical Exam. My grade for Pharmacology is yet to be determined.

For a lot of people in my class this report card is A-OK, lucky for me I happen to be one of them. I sit in the back row and tend to be a lot more laid back. I don't ask a lot of questions because people who do that annoy me and I secretly think they just want show the rest of the class how smart they are by asking completely ridiculous questions. I don't study as much as a lot of my class which allows me to have some semblance of a social life. I am grateful for this! Sometimes I feel like a slacker but when it's all said and done I realize that getting an A in every class is not worth my sanity. "you know what they call the guy that got C's all through Med school? Doctor!"

Our instructors vary from being as annoying to me as nails on a chalkboard to being downright fascinating. One of our Clinical Medicine instructors (we have had approx 10 this semester) crams about 5 hours of lecture material into 2 hours. She uses abbreviations in her power points that none of us know and has given us enough handouts this semester to keep a cozy fire going all night long. Oh, and we're all pretty sure she makes her own clothes and was the inspiration for Dr Seuss' Grinch character. Key Point: I cannot stand her

Our Clinical Medicine class is this: 2 hrs on Mon, 3 hrs on Tues, 4 hrs Wed. We are never sure who is going to be lecturing because most of the time we have outside physicians and PA's coming in to lecture and it's always completely random topics. I posted something on facebook about our last test and I think we had well over 1000 power point slides, 14 handouts, plus the material from the last test. Each instructor gives our medical director 10 questions. The medical director picks the same number of questions from each instructor to put on the test. This means that if 70% of the material covered comes from one instructor, this instructor and the instructor that lectured for an hour will get the same amount of questions on the test. The test is 30 questions. I don't know, this just seems ridiculous to me. Also, you only pass the test if you stay with the pack. If you are more than 2 standard deviations away from the mean you fail. So if everyone does pretty good on the test (mean is 95%) and you got an 87% you could possibly fail the test. It's just craziness!

But...I am super happy to be there! I know everyday how fortunate I am to have gotten into this program. I just need to vent a little here and there. However, I am seriously wondering how a few of the people in my class got in. Seriously!! I think some files got switched around or some sort of foul play is involved. Also, a love triangle!!! Coming next on Kermster's blog!

Stay tuned :)

Yo Yo Yo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX7jme2b0N0

This is a really funny "rap" that was made by the Emory University PA program! It's about the first year of PA school :)

A blog!

I was searching the PA forum and I ran across a PA student's blog. After reading it I am 95% sure that the student is a Senior at my school. That means he is currently doing clinical rotations while we, the juniors, are going though our didactic year. He never mentions the program specifically but he does talk a lot about the individual instructors, class schedule, ping pong tables outside the classroom and he mentioned that it snowed a foot a couple of days before Halloween. Makes sense to me.

Anyways, his blog gave me the idea that maybe I would do a blog about my experience in PA school. It seems these days I don't have much to talk about that isn't somehow related to PA school. I'm sure that a lot of what I post will not be remotely interesting to most of the people that read this blog but I think it might be a good way for me to vent. The guy whose blog I found almost got divorced during his didactic year b/c his wife felt that he was neglecting her so much and he had a 3 year old son. Reading his blog made me feel very grateful that I have no real responsibilities outside of the program and that my fiance' understands that we will have to sacrifice time together for a little while ;)

So, more posts to come.....