23 posts tagged “school”

So school has started again. This is my last semester before I graduate but I still won't technically be done with school since I still have to go back to school to finish up some classes that are requirements for the application for the physicians assistant programs. Yet I don't even know anymore if I am going to be able to get into a PA program since my grades have been pretty sucky in the classes that determine if I can get in or not. This is my make or break semester since it determines if I give up or not. Lets see what happens.

It's so difficult to get myself to study for my finals. I have my last final of the semester today and I have only studied for a total of an hour. And on top of that I never went to the class to begin with. I am so not in a good position to get a good grade. I just find it hard to motivate myself once they say that classes are over. For some reason I shut down my effort when classes end. But that's no good since there is still finals week after classes end. Oh well I still have to soldier through it. I still have time to study for this test since it doesn't start until 2 pm today. And then after the final I am going into the city! Yay! I can't wait!

today is my last day of class for the semester! i am so happy! :) this semester has dragged on forever it feels like. i guess because i haven't had a break since i've gone to school straight through since last spring without a full month off it has made me dread going to school. every day i had to force myself to go to class and everytime i was there i practically hated every minute i was there except for the one class that i actually liked. i hated every other class so that didn't make me like school any more than i already did. i feel like i learned nothing this semester. i feel like it went in one ear and out the other. i didn't do as well as i normally do either. i even almost failed a test! i passed by .5! that never happens to me unless a majority of the class fails in which case it's the teacher's fault for making a hard test.

and next semester is not going to be any easier either. im taking a bio course, a bio lab, an upper level genetics course ( i hate genetics), and an upper level anatomy course. i am going to be swamped with work to do and tests to study for. and on top of that i have to work as well. im already stressed out about it! but i'm sure i'll make it through it just like i made it through this semester.

I can't sleep tonight. I wanted to go to bed early because I have to get up early tomorrow but I can't sleep because I have something big on my mind. I'm trying to make a decision about what to do with my future since my college graduation is approaching quickly. Originally my plans were to just graduate with my psychology degree and see what kind of job I got and if it was a crappy job I would go to graduate school to get my masters degree in social work. Now I'm starting to think that I won't be as happy doing that as if I decided to change my mind. And what am I going to change my mind to? Well since I started working in the medical field about four years ago I have absolutely loved it and I thought I wanted to be a nurse. But then one of the doctors I worked with was like "you are smart enough you shouldn't settle for being a nurse you should go all the way and become a doctor." And for a while I toyed with the idea of going to medical school. But after a while I just had the feeling that I didn't have the stamina and the drive to make it through medical school which would be a total waste of time and money if I went and then didn't make it through. So I was like well I'm already half way to my psychology degree I should probably just stick with that since I still really love psychology. But now that I'm back working in the medical field I realize how much I missed working in medicine. I just absolutely love anything related to medicine. You name it I love it. I don't get squeamish or anything. So now I think well maybe I can't make it through medical school but I probably could make it through Physician Assistant school. So I am really starting to consider that as a career path. I would only have to take about an extra years worth of classes to get all of the required classes done. I just feel like if I didn't get a job in the medical field where I was somewhat in control (i.e. not a nurse who is practically at the bottom of the food chain) I would regret my decision for the rest of my life. The only thing I worry about is that I might not get as good of grades as I need. But I guess I will never know what I'm going to get unless I try so I should just try and see what happens. Ugh I'm so stressed! Changing my whole life plans is very stressful!

Today was not exceptionally exciting. I woke up and then went babysitting. I was happy though because I was only babysitting the baby and not his older sister who loves to play dress up and pretend which I am not too big of a fan of doing. After his initial crying spurt he warmed up to me and started showing me all of his toys. And then he really started to like me and started using my name which was the first time I ever realized him ever talking to me while using my name. He kept waving to me and saying "Hi Cole!" It was too cute. After I was done babysitting I didn't have anything better to do so I took a short nap and then I went to school where we learned about how the mentally ill are being locked away in our prison systems. Very disturbing and very sad. We watched a documentary on it from Frontline. I was trying to find a link to it but I couldn't find it on the site but here's the Frontline site anyway. And now I am sitting in the school's computer lab waiting for my carpool buddy to show up from his midterm. And that was my uneventful, boring day!

For some reason I really like Emile Durkheim and his theory of anomie and deviance. I'm learning all about deviance this summer in a sociology class I'm taking. Since I can't think of anything else to blog about today I decided, hey why not share some of your notes about anomie with the world (or the few people that read this vox). These are notes that I took in reference and may be a direct quote from the following source:
Pfohl,S. (1994). Images of Deviance and Social Control: A Sociological History. McGraw-Hill. Chapter 7.

-Durkheim: deviance is the result of a state of normlessness in which nobody knows the rules
-deviance:result of unfulfilled human aspirations
-anomie=state of normlessness
-a society with anomie lacks the social control of its members
-Durkheim: there is no human nature without society
-"human nature is characterized by an 'inextinguishable thirst'; that our capacity for desire and feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss...by themselves our needs or desires (seemingly rooted in our psychiobiological capabilities) would be too great. Somehow, our inextinguishable thirst, our unlimited capacity for desire, must be curbed or regulated. It is to provide this proportion, to regulate our otherwise insatiable aspirations, that society apparently comes into being." (pg. 254)
    -too much unregulated desire, too few resources to fulfill unlimited desires, lack of moral norms --> anomie
-"deviance was a normal and necessary social phenomenon which contributed to the order of a given society" (pg. 255)
Suicide
-fluctuations in the rate of suicides within and between societies can be explained by the way that societies are structured
-suicide is a "symptom of the growing malaise of a society in transition" (pg. 257)
-"in egoistic, altruistic, and fatalistic societies, rituals  of collective moral order are said to increase the likelihood of suicide" (pg. 257)
-"married people are bound by normative rules which tie them into a system of regulated interaction. Single persons were said to lack such lies and the socially controlling constraints which come with them. Such exaggerated individualism raises the probability of suicide. The person constrained by this morality of individual responsibility was seen to be especially vulnerable to suicide" (pg. 258)
-"altruistic suicide" is found in societies that the "collective conscience is so binding that there is virtually no distinction between the individual and the group" (pg. 258)
-"fatalistic suicide": induced by the hopelessness of slave societies: "human aspirations may be totally crushed rather than channeled into the pursuit of individual responsibility" (pg. 259)

So that was some of my notes on a chapter in a textbook that I read on anomie and Emile Durkheim's theory. I might post some more on anomie and Merton's theory on it later.

today in my sociology of deviance class we learned about Emile Durkheim and his theory of anomie. anomie when translated means "normlessness," and can be defined as a condition of malaise in individuals characterized by diminuition of rules, standards, and values. anomie can come about when an individual has the inability to find something to strive for in their life. what i found most interesting in this discussion was the idea that anomie causes depression which in turn causes suicide. since i am a psychology major i have heard of many theories of depression (the one that stands out the most is the cognitive psychology theory of Beck), but never once have we discussed anomie in a psychology class. according to this theory of anomie, this lack of values and lack of something to strive for causes depression in a person which causes them to become socially detached from people which causes them to lose their social network which eventually can lead to suicide. i thought this was a very interesting way of looking at depression and eventually suicide. Durkheim wrote a lot on deviance but his theory on anomie and suicide can be found in his book Suicide.

so this morning i had my philosophy final. i think i did alright. the questions were long answer and i did not know how to answer one of the questions which was 20% of the test but i think i did alright on the rest of the questions. he wanted us to spend a half hour on each question which would make us stay the whole two hours and thirty minutes. i was done in an hour and fifteen minutes, so hopefully that doesn't mean i totally bombed it. oh well, its only worth 1/3 of my grade.

now im just procrastinating studying for the final i have to take tomorrow. the final i have tomorrow is on autism and mental retardation. it shouldn't be too hard seeing as on the midterm i only got one question wrong. in order to put off studying i went to bed bath and beyond to pick up those travel size toiletries for my trip that is coming up. next week i'm going away to north carolina with a family that i am going to babysit for. it's going to be a lot of fun. and i don't have to pay for anything plus i'm getting paid to babysit the kids which is pretty sweet. we are going to this really nice house that has a pool and an elevator! by the way does anyone know if you can bring a razor on an airplane? i have no idea since i haven't been on an airplane since i was in the seventh grade which was like 8 years ago.

yesterday was my first day back to school. i had taken three classes over the summer (which i got a 3.8 gpa during) but they don't feel the same as real classes during a real semester. on tuesday i had three classes: abnormal psychology, intro to philosophy, and cognitive psychology. they all seem like really interesting classes and i like my professors so far. the only thing that sucks is that i do not have any breaks during the day on tuesdays and thursdays. instead i just went to school early so that i got there at like 10:15 and then just had an early lunch with my bro. he likes it a lot dorming there which is good. but i have already been replaced as a friend by his new friends at stony brook. he doesn't need me any more :( except to bring him things. but anyway i like having a regular schedule again and i like being at school even if no one really talks to me. too bad school comes with homework which i have tons of might i add.