SUMMERSUMMERSUMMER

Megs:

OMG so this year has come full circle and I am free from the craziest semester I've ever had at uni (granted, I've only had four). YAY YAY YAY YAY. Now I have time to plan a million things-to-do-but-probably-won't-due-to-laziness. But I will do that later, because right now I have all the time in the world to do absolutely nothing :D :D

I guess it's a good time to be reflecting on what I've learnt this year, in Part I Optometry at Auckland Uni, and about Life In General. In no particular order, they include:

- How a colour deficient person sees the world
(there are some cool simulations on the internet. This one's pretty fun:
http://www.colblindor.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/)

- That there are more colour deficient people around than you realize, but they only happen to tell you that they are when you tell them you study eyeballs

- That Magnum Gold is really rather sickly sweet, ugh (I learnt this yesterday). And that there ads for it everywhere in the city, like massive billboards that shout "COME GET YOUR ARTIFICIALLY COLOURED ICE CREAM", and that I am a consumer who falls prey to these billboards.

- That Optom Class of '13 class is full of quirky and kooky and damn awesome people, and I love just about all of them

- That I like perfume. I want lots of it.

- That you CAN wing tests and do very well on minimal study. But you can fail too. Whoops.

- That getting Bs and Cs is okay.
You once said to me, "I believe [the grading system] proves work ethic and ability, otherwise there would be no point in having A, B, Cs..." That is true, I agree with you. Getting straight As feels good and looks nice on a transcript of grades. But I think it becomes counterproductive and narrow when it becomes the only goal of one's existence. Having really limited time for revision because of AYO was a nightmare this year, but getting grades that are lower because of that was taught me that it's not the end of the world. Overall (note the OVERALL, haha) I worked hard this year, and I will continue to work hard next year, so I won't beat myself up about grades any longer. It's a freedom that I always had the freedom to give myself.

- That writing stories/poetry/on people's faces is more fun than a lot of things. And far more productive.

- That "you're not dreaming big enough until someone is laughing at you." Kudos, Marianne.

Huzzay!

*

News from home:

So I have a crooked rabbit. Leo's been suffering from head tilt since the last day of uni, and it makes him look like his head's at a 90 degree angle. It got so bad that he was unable to walk for about three weeks and the vet even suggested euthanasia. And I had to look after him continually while revising for exams. Anyway, this semester had the worst exam season ever, so I'm damn grateful to Renee, who really listened. :] Plus I found loads of support and advice on a forum for rabbit owners going through the same thing. So thanks to everyone from On The Wonk :) Funny how strangers on the other side of the world can make all the difference!!

I'm going back to Taiwan these holidays - going on that 3-week tour around the island that's meant for Taiwanese kids who grew up overseas. Excite! Yee!
Oh and I was talking to someone about it who went last year, and apparently lots of Taiwanese people live in South Africa because there were lots of SA Tw people on the tour. Who would've thought!! Dad says it's because years ago, people who could gap the country did so at the first opportunity, regardless of where it was. I find that quite interesting.

Burble, burble.

Hoorayendofexams

Megs:

Here are some of the best feelings in the whole entire world:

1. Going for a pee after holding it in the whole night because it's too cold to leave the bed. (In the toilet in the morning, that is.) - Kudos to my friend Chris, who told me with much conviction this has to be the best feeling there is.
2. That scarily happy high feeling after you finish your last exam and knowing you are on a break and you don't have any uni to bother you for the next month and a bit and you are so happy you could scream!!!

I'm sure there are several other best feelings but whatever; I'm kind of on #2, although I'm quite sleepy at the moment, so I'm not really all that high. I have never studied around the clock for two weeks solid in the time leading up to exams! Stupid crazy things happen to you when they shove all of them together - Thursday am, pm then Friday am. My last exam was Stats, so I guess you could call this the aftermath! Ahar har har.

There isn't much to discuss about mine, except that Physics sucked for everyone, Medsci didn't, and Stats was a cinch. Pretty much sums up S1 2010. No paper I did this semester will really be relevant in my career. (Cheers to my mother for pointing that out). Someone from my class told us that his mate, who is an older Optom student, failed Physics, and passed Mechanisms of Disease with an A, and begged the Optom department to let him into 2nd year, so they were like "meh okay". Hooray! There is hope for all of us yet. And I understands statsy jargon now, which I suppose is of quite some benefit. Yee!

Nothing else is new that I haven't told you. If there is anything that is a bit different in my life that is worthy of putting on this blog is that I am put off pork and feel sick after eating it. The taste and smell makes my stomach turn. One more step towards vegetarianism becoming a rabbit.

Well now that I'm sitting here I might as well think about my to-do list for these holidays.

- Get Restricted driver's license (so slack; I probably won't get this done til Christmas)
- Finish watching Tess of the d'Urbervilles
- Finish 31 paintings of Kuan Ying
- Design dress/costume for the Eye Ball (another Ahar har har). Since the theme for the Optometry ball for 2010 is Horror, so I'll have to come up with something freaky and crazy. Lady Gaga will probably be good inspiration :D

Hum. I'm incredibly sleepy. You spiked the pizza at lunch didn't you? :P Hope you're having fun at work.

PS. Isn't it incredible that I am counting down the days til July 2nd, not because that it'll be my birthday, but because my TXT2000 will renew then? How things have changed. Ahaha. I need to get Txt4k.

Back in Auckland once again!

Wil:

Well... and so i'm back in the wonderful land of Auck. Woo! I'm very happy to be so.

I am sooooo ridiculously tired. Our flight was delayed 1.5 hours because they'd lost a screw somewhere behind some panel and had to call in the engineers to come find it -_-
In the end they couldn't find it and just told everyone we're going to fly anyway. Ha!

So yeah, semester 1 has come to an end. I'm quite relieved! I didn't think I could work harder than I did last year in Health Sci but I certainly proved myself wrong! Whether or not my results will reflect that will be another story. Let's discuss each exam:

1. PHCY256 (Biopharmaceutical chemistry): I think those fortnightly 'End of Module Tests' (EMOTs) actually were good things after all. I certainly didn't have to study nearly as hard as the other papers for 256 as I had studied the subject to quite a reasonable depth by the time study leave came about. Woo! I guess that's one of the main objectives of the EOMTs.
The questions were quite predictable and I was able to answer all questions with a relatively high level of confidence (except one question about Thin Layer Chromatography *yikes* I never liked TLCs...)

2. PHCY231 (Biochemistry): Despite having only had 17 lectures in the entire semester for this paper I felt there was an awful lot to learn (or more like memorise!). But what do you expect of biochem? Anabolic pathways, catabolic pathways, drug detoxification, inhibition of regulatory enzymes, activation of regulatory enzymes, influences of hormones etc etc Just a whole lot of memorising! For only a 7 point paper I felt that I spent too much time studying.
Being such a small paper overall it wasn't hard to predict (almost bordering on being psychic) what was going to be in the exam - there wasn't a lot to choose from! As long as you had all the pathways memorised then you were fine - and I was! I'm hoping for a good mark in 231 too!

3. PHCY254 (Physical Pharmacy A): Okay this is where it starts to go down hill (just a tiny bit mind you). The format for this years exam changed a little bit from previous years and the questions were a lot less predictable. Fortunately, I enjoy physical pharmacy as a subject in its own right and enjoyed studying for it. I'm just a bit bummed that it might not have been my best exam! I'm glad this exam didn't ask questions on very specific points that I hadn't fully studied.

4. PHCY251 (Physiology for Health Sciences): 32 multiple choice questions and 10 mini essays. Studied squat for it and still managed to successfully wing through most of the questions. Huzzah!
It's suffice to say that if I get anything higher than a B+ then i'll be quite happy!
But I do have to say that some of those mini essay questions were horribly written. Also, some sub-questions (of the bigger overall essay question) were allocated a big mark (>5) but you could only write very little on it (i.e. just a bit more than a sentence or small paragraph). So depending on the question it was either very easy to get marks, or very easy to lose them.


Ah well I can't wait to get my results back.

It's sort of time to relax now that holidays have arrived but I still need to do my community placement! As you know, that's sorta playing on my nerves a bit. Getting a bit anxious...

Oh! and we also have a group assignment to do for our NZ Health System module! Which reminds me - I need to email out information to my group partners!

Ugh it's late. Normally I would be in bed by now. I really hope my suprachiasmatic nuclei forgoes my temporarily adopted need to wake up at 6:30am every morning and let me sleep in for once! I don't think it has received the message that exams are over...


Blah

I love cheese. Nom.


I'll ttyl. Come visit me once you're done with exams.

Hinga dinga dingum

Megs:

This is just another note before the holidays once again slip away into memory (again, where'd they go? Honestly.)

Here are some fun things that were achieved. You know most of this, but one day I won't because I'll get Alzhiemer's or schizophrenia, or something, so I'm putting this down:

-Signed on with Trademe and bought things; namely the book Touched With Fire that we studied poetry out of in English at high school, because I've missed reading what was in them, and also won a bid at 6pm today for Memoirs of a Geisha (the novel, not the movie) because reading it did something to my head that just enabled me to ramble on paper better and a bit more creatively. Exciting times, yes.

-Watched the entire series of Death Note from start to finish. Turns out I had watched most of the second season, I just thought I hadn't because nothing happens for a good fraction of it and partly also because I didn't remember listening through the intro-music very often; but that was only because I very much dislike the screamo at the beginning. But that aside, it's about as good as anime gets.

-(Probably) drove parents crazy by playing the same bars on piano over and over. I practised more on the thing than I did viola over these two weeks. Need to practise the latter.

-went to anatomy museum to look at dead things

-finally figured out algorithm for last pattern on Rubik's cube which was annoying me because I couldn't solve it, but yay for that now

-got new clothes despite needing to get rid of clothes

-did a crap job of studying

-then realised this weekend that am turning into a bit of a social recluse, but what can you do. Yay, bussing starts again tomorrow.

Would like:
New hobbies
More money to pay for new hobbies
A holiday