Month in Review

I'm taking a course in which I have no foundational knowledge.  I'm kind of ticked me off because I've been alive for almost a quarter century, and this is all new to me.

I wish someone would have at least mentioned something about the Soduim-Potassium Pumps. I'm tempted to not believe in them because...how do they know this is really going on?

Also if it is true, do I need to start eating bananas because I had no idea potassium is so important?

The pumps are keeping you alive.



This is what we learned on the first day. It's the critic acid cycle or Krebs cycle. They mentioned it once in Biology 5 years ago but I thought it was dumb so I didn't pay attention. Actually whenever someone mentions the Krebs cycle, I always think about Mr. Krabs.















We also go to the laboratory. There are only 3 people in my section. An old lady, me, and then a guy who's applying to dental school. Dental School guy is getting us through lab. Last week we had to do a stupid chemistry experiment. I didn't learn anything. But felt like this.






I'm repeating a course. I took it in 2010. To apply to the program I'm applying, it has to be in the last five years of your start date. It's horrible. We wear lab coats though.

It's a whole class of evil scientists. JK. Most people are really snobby and think they are gonna be the next surgeon general. But all I'm thinking is "you look kind of frumpy in your lab coat."

We study cadavers a good 6 to 8 hours a week.
We look like this, except we wear lab coats. Quote of the day, "This leg is really heavy." It was just a leg.

My group was struggling to locate the plantaris during open lab. Having taken the course before I knew exactly were it was. They didn't believe me when I showed it to them. But the TA validated it, and they said "Oh, you were right." It's a pretty easy muscle to find cause it looks like a plant.







I have become completely and utterly desensitized at my job. I'm not really surprised by anything anymore.







I joined this research group thinking I was going to be one of the cool kids, make lots of friends. It's basically slave labor. We are currently working on a project which includes my least favorite activity. Searching for articles and citing them. We were each given 100 articles to cite over midterms.

Took a secret picture lol

Last week, they were going on and on about some higher thought process topic...I was just a warm body in the room. They asked my opinion. I told them the truth. The professor is my cousin so I feel duty bound to press on. 

That was September.

Debunking the Ballet Hamstring Myth

I've become much more adept to studying than I was say... 5 years ago. I never studied until the day of the exam, but now I study everyday. I don't do anything except study and go to PCS (the children's treatment center.)

I spent the last several hours reviewing dimensional analysis, and molarity...taking 10 min breaks every 45 mins following perfect studying habits. I decided I deserved an hour break for lunch and came back to where I left off...well, I forgot everything in an hour. Apparently I don't understand it.

Since I'm facing 5 hours in the lab tonight, I'm taking a few hours off to enlighten everyone, especially the misinformed dance teachers and students everywhere. Hold on to your tights!!!!

I took a modern class this summer. Hated it. The icing on the cake was spending 20 minutes discussing how to execute développé and extensions without engaging your quads or hip flexors. "If you engage you hamstring on your working leg, you will increase your extensions because your quads won't get tired (since your working with your hamstring). And have a longer hold time in développé front and a la seconde"??????? um...that's not how it works mechanically.

I have no idea how this teacher believed she was actually extending without the use of her quads or hip flexors. And I've heard this "idea" many times throughout my life and it is impossible. Yes use you hamstrings to lift initially, but they aren't going hold your leg out there. (Like this teacher was trying to get everyone to do.)

EVERYBODY LISTEN. Because I know lots of stuff and no one ever takes advantage of my knowledge. And this piece of information blew the minds of some kids at a random dance studio I teach it  (yes I know I said I'd never teach again, but somehow it happened.)

Pelvic Floor. Martha Graham told dancers "to lift with their underparts." That's exactly it.

Thank You Margie Mack. I don't like to use Google Image Search.

I had everyone lay down, find the ASIS (Anterior Superior Illiac Spine (front hip bones)) and then move medial and posterior into their organs and then literally lift their underparts. Working to engage and feel those deep muscle groups. What do you know?

Kids stood up did their développés and were freaking out. "Do you have any idea how much easier it is?"  "OMGOSH! It's so easy now." "You taught us something new that actually works!"

I used to charge people 45$ dollars an hour to share my knowledge...not just this... I once fixed someone's pirouettes in like 3 minutes before an audition once. But only like 3 people cared so that's why I work at PCS (the children's treatment center now.) But really I can like...fix anything.

 Perfect Split? Give me an hour....well, if you are close haha. If not then a few weeks.

Tear your achilles tendon? I'll get that calf to start firing...

Ok sorry everyone. This was not supposed to be how amazing BioCored and myself happen to be...I just get really excited with how BioCord principles work right away and I cleared up a lot of misinformation. Basically changed those dancers lives :)

KORRA OUT.





 

What a Week...

On Sunday it all started pretty terrible. A patient at my work began assaulting another patient. Who happened to be standing in close proximity? Me. I had to perform the "handle with care" (i.e. restraint) until the other staff came.

It's pretty upsetting to the other patients. The evening was downhill from there as the violence with the patient escalated. The more experience staff took over and I was left in charge of all the other patients, some who became verbally aggressive and defiant. I had to yell and shout to assert my dominance, which I have felt just awful about ever since it took place. Some of the patients said they hated me...

By the end of the shift I really couldn't handle (real life- as in protecting teens with severe  psychological, destructive tendencies) anymore. I used every ounce of will power to not beg another staff to take over my post and let me leave.

Great way to begin finals week.

Monday: I forced myself to wake up and drive to the State Hospital at 7 am. It was the last thing I wanted to do after the previous night. I put in 5 shadowing hours, thankfully with no incident and then locked my self in the library for the next 3 days.

You can imagine my anxiety was running quite high because if I didn't do well on the final exams the last 2 months would have been a waste. I will admit there were some tears Wednesday night but I resolved there was nothing more I could do. I had to take a comprehensive Statistics exam Thursday morning and had to get a 70 to keep my current grade. I had little room for margin of error.

Thursday. I really like learning, but I hate exams. Once I got so angry and frustrated during a test I wanted to burn the testing center down. I don't have pyromania disorder, I just really don't like tests. But in the 80 question Stats exam things were going pretty smoothly. I was filling out answers fairly confidently.

When I take exams I make a list of questions I don't know, questions I might miss, and ones that I think I got right, but there is a small chance they are wrong.  I always take the test twice to ensure everything is correct and double check all my answers. I started fatiguing at the 2.5 hour mark. I was checking and rechecking, when panic set in that perhaps everything was wrong and I began second guessing every answer. After 3 hours I gave up and turned it in.

And I got an 80%.

And then the whole week did a 180. I indulged in a trip to the pool, Pitch Perfect, and got paid for my protective duties ;) I have to work the next 3 days at the treatment center, but perhaps things have calmed down.

First and Last Post Ever About Religon

At my job, patients have the option of attending a church service. They have a Mormon service in the morning and a Non-Denominational Service in the evening, or they don't have to attended at all.

I have had very religious education. 4 years of mandatory religious seminary in high school (before school, started at 6am---I have lots of reserved feelings about those 4 years). Anyways, and then the unofficial little known fact of my religious studies minor that was required by my university. (14 credits worth, then all church they could squeeze into secular classes and on the weekends.)

I know A LOT of stuff going down...doctrine and historical.

You can imagine I've become a little burnt out. And honestly I only do the minimum to keep an ecclesiastical endorsement which is required to attend to school. So when they asked if I could work instead of sit through 3 hours of church and extra churhy' responsibilities that would go all night, I readily said yes ;)

When I arrived at work, they asked if I could accompany some patients to the non-denominational service. I was really excited because I'd never experienced anything outside of my own religion. Well the service actually turned out to be a vocal and well known Christian sect service (I'm not going to say which one to be diplomatic)

I tried to make eye contact with the other staff in the room because demographically everyone is the same religion here. Expect the patients and the preacher. No idea where they found the preacher.

Sunday's service was about not believing in fairy tales. To me that meant not believing in Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Dream, Harry Potter (though I would join if it was a church ;), or Disney (which probably could be considered a religion) haha.

He began that we should not believe in Allah...because he is a fairy tale.


Question #1 I'm definitely NOT Muslim. And perhaps it is my own paradigm or mis/understanding, but the Arabic-Engish translation of Allah is God. I assumed that Muslims believe in the same God as Christians, as Christians believe in same as the Jewish Elohim which translates to God. Did I miss that we all are not believing in the same God. And it made me a little sad to hear him say Allah is a fairy tale.

He continued to point out some very key points of the Religon of the staff. How our beliefs are all fairy tales. It made my stomach knot a little. You don't sit through four years of early morning seminary, and four years of university religious education, to have someone tell you your beliefs are fairy tales when we are all reading the same Bible.

Next he explained the Bible is perfect and we don't need to rely on anything other than the Bible.


Question #2 Fine, Fine, but then which one? There's like 50 different versions..King James, Gideon, Amplified Bible, Easy to Read Bible. And then all the copies that the Monk's were copying by hand until Gutenberg. Can we say... omg here is my statistics lingo...

Can we say with 100% confidence the monks and translators all had a small margin of error? There is no way to test our null hypothesis. Assuming we took all the earliest manuscripts and compared them to today's versions, (I doubt we would have a sample size larger than 30 for early manuscripts) (which is standard for conducting statistical research) even then we could not use a 100% confidence interval because our sample size would be so small.

I just don't think the Bible can be so perfect... But that's just me, not my actual Religous beliefs. And there are a lot of good books out there that teach just as many morals as the Bible.

Before the last question let me set the scene. The patients I work with have endured abuse so traumatic, their diagnoses are scattered throughout the DSM-5. Every adult in their life has failed them and I would even say that God has failed them. It is my understanding that we need to be positive and uplifting in every way.

What the preacher said next made my ears curl and I wanted to throw up. He quoted John 8:44 You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

He told all those children that being a child of God was indeed a fairy tale. Because here in the true and perfect Bible, Jesus says your father is the devil. How could you tell these poor kids...who are suicidal, having been subjected to every evil by their parents that they are indeed children of the devil. 

Question #3 This is not what I was taught, and this is not what my normal Christian friends believe. I woke up the next morning dead set on figuring out what was going on when Jesus said those things. Jesus was in fact, speaking to the Pharisees who denied Christ as a son of God. From my religious training, I remembered son's of perdition, people who deny Christ  are deemed as followers of Satan. Perhaps that's what Jesus meant.

So it is my understanding that by believing in Christ you can be a child of God. I don't think that has to be pre-requisite to be a child of God though... Unless you go out and are super anti Christ I think you'll be ok.

Anyways...Crazy. All the staff had a good laugh about all the anti-stuff he said about us.

Five Days of Clinical Abnormal Psych

Sorry no pictures this time. I didn't plan on writing this but found myself alone at the library on Saturday night so decided to blog.

Tuesday began my first day as a PT aide at the state hospital. They said it was OK if we didn't know anything, and I really had no idea when I went in there.

I learned about 5 exercises before the patients came in. I figured since I was new, they would keep teaching me but they sent me with a patient right away. Of course I was nervous, but being thrown in ended up working out just as well. After a few hours I noticed all the PT volunteers were working with patients, the PT Interns were loitering, and the DPT was typing away at his computer. That's got to fall under exploitation of volunteers or something.

The next day I went with the OT department for a life skills class, which happened to fall on cooking skills day. Now this works out great for me. I get volunteer hours for my class, shadowing hours for my application and a free homemade lunch. And I don't really have to do anything except act really interested and smile. They were making homemade mac in cheese, and pork and beans. It was great because I had not eaten in a while and I definitely took advantage of the free food. I ate until I was full...probably too full.

The next day I went with the OT department for a class on nutrition and portion control. Definitely brushed up on my topics of portion control, and admitted I probably went overboard on the mac n cheese the day previous. It made the other OT laugh.

Being at the state hospital is quite lugubrious...(best thesaurus word I could find other than sad). I asked the OT how long the patients stay. She told me all of them were civilly committed. Which from Abnormal Psych we know civil commitment requires:

1.) The patient is mentally ill or
2.) Dangerous to themselves or others or
3.) Gravely Disabled or
a combination of those....

Some of them never leave the state hospital.

Friday began my first day at my (finally) paid job at the behavioral treatment center. It's similar to the state hospital except they are trying to intervene before they end up at a state hospital or worse.

The people working at the center were tired. Probably because I gleefully bounced in Friday afternoon, and they had been there all week. I wasn't really working at first, but shadowing to get familiar with all the specific rules...since the 40 hours of horror story filled orientation didn't cover specifics. I tried to be my overly accommodating self and took over all the paperwork which must be updated every 15 minutes (You know just so they find me agreeable and as humanly helpful possible.)

I'm not going to write specifics on my blog except 2 major things that bothered me.

1.) For any infraction all NEAT was taken away from the patient for several hours to a few days. But not just NEAT. Everything.
AND
2.) And if you don't have NEAT, your brain, especially your vestibular brain, is not getting appropriate stimulation.

One patient who had multiple infractions that day, needed vestibular stim really bad. I knew this because after a day of no NEAT, once they had made up for their infractions---they almost impulsively were hanging upside down on the furniture, cartwheeling and somersaulting on the bed...which equates to more infractions. I know how to fix vestibular issues in about 5 minutes, but I dutifully told her stop, marked the infraction and continued filling out the paper work.

And that was 5 days in a row of clinical Abnormal Psych.

Nonexercise Activity Thermogenesis Week #3

10 months passed since I had taken a modern class. It is expected as dance instructor, to continue taking class while you teach to stay current, in shape etc. Apparently taking class in your hometown is next to committing a serious crime...No less than 30 complaints were made by nosy dance moms, who daughters I did not teach or interact with, and that wasn't even the first time. My employer tried to remedy the situation by offering a class but it was during same time I taught another class. So I stopped everything. For Kung Fu, it was more eventual...but I went less and less.

A month ago I read a book called "Get Up, Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It", and was horrified at what I had done to myself.

The book centers around nonexercise activity thermogenesis or NEAT. NEAT is all energy expenditure that make us vibrant and unique...dancing, swimming, playing the guitar, and even going to work or the mall. I used my NEAT signals to teach, but once the hour was up, I was back at home, sitting down waiting for God or someone to intervene with my life. (According to the DSM-V I was depressed but I still hate Abnormal Psych and am writing this blog instead of prepping for exams.)


 I wanted to increase my NEAT signals.There was no way I was going to stay in my current situation and ever increase NEAT. So that's part of the reason I'm here. (Side note...In statistics they say to NEVER use pie charts but I made one to show reasons why I left.

Once things were settled I set out to increase NEAT. First a hike.

 

I lived here before and never went on hikes. I had no idea what was behind the mountains and it was quite spectacular. Had to do Kung Fu on the mountain as tradition dictates :)

Next, I decided to take myself to the first modern class in almost a year. I felt sick seeing many of my contemporaries...people who I had tired so hard to outperform in the past, who now surpassed me on every level. I absolutely loathed being in the class because of the SAID principle.

In physical/sports/athletic training, the SAID principle asserts that the human body adapts specifically to imposed demands. What you practice you get good at... My body and brain had adapted to teaching 3 year olds for an hour a day, with few other outlets. NEAT was low.

One would assume this class to not only be extremely physically demanding, yet also mentally. 80% of the movement was met with resistance from my brain.

This weekend I decided to try Kung Fu again to increase my NEAT and because I had a dream about it. After almost getting into several car accidents (I think some entity did not want me to go to Kung Fu today) I found a place. This is how it went...

Again because of low NEAT and the SAID principle...I hated it. It was not the same Kung Fu I'd been training and these people were much more vicious to someone on their first day than I expected. I got four blows to the head in the first hour. And the girl giving me the intro must have been a kinesthetic learner... She had me hold up a thin pad...and hit me as hard as she could in the chest. Knocked the wind right out. I felt like I needed to stand there nonchalantly and I cannot remember what the point of that particular lesson was about.

The style is called Wing Chun... they don't really do forms, just fight and train. 

I don't know if I want to commit to their school. There are many things I want to try to increase NEAT. Capoeria, Muy Thai, Fencing, Hip Hop, more hikes... So yup. That sums up the last 2 weeks.

Week #1 - Working the System

It has been a week and 2 days since my arrival. I tried to keep my departure on the DL since I don't like telling people my plans in case I change my mind. Which I did several times, but the choice was obvious...I should go where I best could work the system.

How to work the system?

On the condition you don't drink, smoke, party, wear bikinis and surrender basic privacy... You too can find suitable summer living accommodations for 100$ a month. I never did any of that stuff beforehand and sharing a lunchbox sized room is only minor annoyance.

Buying books to study for your summer classes you are taking? PLEASE. I've never bought a textbook in my life. Professor's will try to scare you into buying their 250$ lastest edition. But most libraries have the book on file or any text book on the same topic will have the same basic info.

Finding a job. I only knew how to find dance and Pilates jobs and anything else seemed out of reach.  But, I happen to know the best geographic location to find a job April-July. So I went there.

Within a week of arriving I have a real legitimate job offer.

I guess that's all the system working I can think of. Week #1 was pretty crappy. I spent 900$ at Costco for membership plus four new tires. I sat on a lawn chair near the frozen food isle while they changed my tires for an hour.

I went to a dance concert. I used to love to go to dance concerts a few years ago. There was a performance every week. I never went for the dance performing, more to revel in the regionally specific awkwardness of unequivocal modern dance styles. lol

And the concert lived up to all my expectations. Lots of butt shots, and flailing and all in line with the regionally specific style.

There was a problem of finding someone to attend the concert with. Most of my friends are pregnant, or married. Pregnant people were out. Then I remembered my awesome Puerto Rican friend from freshman year who def makes the top 10 friend list. So we went together and after the concert got snow cones.

I'm taking stats and abnormal psychology. Statistics is really good. If a job related to finding percentages from distribution curves is out there. Hire me. I love solving those type problems.

Abnormal psych is terrible. I almost dropped regular psych a few years ago because I hated it so much. I got an A thankgoondess considering the suffering. I always laugh in my head when people say they are taking Into to psychology, or Psychology 1 and they think they are going to learn how to analyze people. Nope, nope, nope. You don't do that stuff until Abnormal Psych which is like 3 classes farther. And it's still terrible.

Yesterday we finally got out the DSM-V (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). I related back to my friend who swears she has OCD.... in fact, according to the DSM-V,  she does not have OCD. Look at me already diagnosing people. 

The particular school I go to is a stickler for "going the extra mile". Going to class and getting goods grades is just the minimum.  For abnormal psychology, we are required to work in the state hospital which is actually the psychiatric hospital. I ended up in the PT department working...I'm mean volunteering... as a Physical Therapy Aide. That's not exactly the field I want to go in but if you stay long term, the hospital will recommend you and all their long time volunteers have 100% placement rate for grad schools.

Coincidentally the job I was offered is at an adolescent psychiatric boarding school nearby. So really I traded out teaching dance 6 days week to working the psychiatric health circuit 6 days a week. But so far no regrets.