I know, I know, it's been 4 months

Okay, okay, first off, I know I'm terrible, it's been 4 months since the last blog. I wish I was more consistent but here we are. Let's catch up!

New Year

For the past few years my new year's resolutions have been plentiful, however this year I made very few, but they are as follows:

• Practice yoga
• Eat a better diet
• Drink more water
• Study more and more effectively

I also set a couple of goals too:

• Improve my snowboarding
• Learn new recipes 

 These have been coming along pretty well so far!

Term 2 - Module 103 - Heart, Lungs and Blood

After new year I started back at uni and we dived straight into our first Level 5 (Second year level) module - Heart, Lungs and Blood. I also spent the first couple of days spring cleaning my room!

A few days in we received our results from the first module and I was pleased to see that I passed everything for the first module (academic skills, essay, exam, attendance), with an exam score of 82.4% (the distinction boundary was 85.8% - not too far away!).

This encouraged me that I was doing well and to keep going and keep working hard.

This term was different to the first one for many reasons.

Module 101, the clinical skills module, finally started teaching us some practical skills. We learned how to take a manual blood pressure and how to conduct a cardiovascular exam and a respiratory exam. This meant finally taking our stethoscopes out of their pristine cases and getting to use them!

Module 103, heart, lungs and blood, was immediately noticeably more in depth than the previous module, and I could already tell that I was going to need to work harder to learn all of the details. Helpfully, this module had scheduled module tutorial tests spaced out throughtout the term, five of them, which counted towards our final score. These tests encouraged me to start my revision straight away to keep on top of the material for each test, and the scores came out okay: 10/12, 12/12, 8/12, 11/12, 10/10, totalling 51/58 (87.9%).

We also got to choose a "Student Selected Component" for the first time. This is a topic that interests us, from a list we are given, and we don't get examined on it, however we do have to pass the component - by taking part and completing it to an acceptable standard (usually assessed by a powepoint or essay). The SSC I chose for this term was called "Secret Intelligence" and it was about blood biomarkers. We learned about different types of biomarkers and different conditions they can detect, including ones which are already in use and those which are at the forefront of development. We got to visit the pathology laboratory at the local hospital and have a tour as well as talks from consultants. We were assessed by powerpoint presentation and I chose to present on Rapid Diagnostic Testing as this relies on blood biomarkers. 

This term I also made more trips home, 4 in total within 9 1/2 weeks. A couple of these trips were planned and a couple were unplanned, so I was constantly on my toes. The unplanned trips weren't relating to my Dad for those of you who follow his progress, so I won't share the details of them here. But, on the subject of Dad, his chemotherapy treatment was changed to the third and final option during this term, and student support were there to help me through that change.

In other term 2 news:

• 3 of my flatmates and I chose our house for next year, and they went to view it while I was at an appointment - they loved it and we signed for it immediately!
• IT SNOWED! We turned into children and played outside in the snow, and built a snow-woman!

•  4 of my flatmates and I made a time capsule email, complete with a video, to recieve in 10 years time! We predicted our lives and reminded ourselves that we deserve to book a trip to Vegas! 

• I did some group revision sessions for the first time and actually found it helpful.
• Dog therapy came to the university!

Easter Holiday

At the end of term I left immediately after my final exam, the exam finished at 4.30pm and I was on the train by 5.10pm! I wanted to travel straight home on the Wednesday so I could get stuck back into my snowboarding improver sessions on the Thursday! I managed to squeeze in 7 sessions over the Easter break and am currently snowboarding comfortably from the "red station" on the main slope, which is the exit just below the top. I had a couple of attempts from the top at the end of my last session and let's just say that was a disaster! I ended up with a bruised coccyx to go along with the potentially broken hand from the week before (Do as I say, not as I do, and go for x-rays when you're told to! I'm currently almost 3 weeks post hand injury and still sore).

During the holiday I worked a fair amount, having 8 days off total out of the 32 I was home. However, I still had time to catch up with my family and friends, help rearrange my sister's bedroom, sort Japan photos with my brother for our scrapbooks, start working on my Family Study Essay, and play too much Sims 4! I also managed to do a little bit of student stuff at my workplace - practicing taking histories from patients, checking blood pressure and listening to some chests, and I spent a couple of mornings with the 3rd years from our local uni and it was crazy to see how much more they know! And one of our GPs donated me even more textbooks!

Just before I came back to uni my sister celebrated her birthday and it was nice to get the whole family together for a little buffet dinner.

As Term 3 has only just started I think I'll write about it in a separate post. However, I will just include on the end of this post that I passed everything for the second module (exam, module tutorial tests, student selected component, attendance), with an overall score of 80.5%. This is the combined results of my module tutorial test score of 87.9% (distinction boundary of 89.7%), and my exam score of 79.7% (distinction boundary of 81.1%).

Thanks for reading,
Katherine x