First Semester Done

First semester is officially done and I can say I survived. Barely, but survived. Finals just about killed me, and as soon as they were finished I submerged into depression. It seems like I am experiencing withdrawal symptoms from lack of adrenaline and cortisol experienced during the semester. There was so much catching up to do at home, and Christmas shopping, and preparing for next semester... I need a break. A real break. Not shopping, or cleaning house, or preparing menus, or writing essays and reflections for next semester. I want to go to Mexico and lay on a white sandy beach with a Margarita on one hand and a good book on the other. Something that I want to read and not something I am made read. I literally started Christmas shopping 5 days before Christmas, and my house is still in post atomic bomb state. I have no energy to do anything and I don't know how I'm going to survive another semester. I don't want to sound all negative, but it is just how I'm feeling right now. I want to be able to look back and reflect on my journey for what it really was and not some fairy-tale version of it. However, I also want to take some time to acknowledge the good stuff. Sometimes when we are feeling low, it is easy to overlook the good stuff. To help me put things in perspective, I decided to acknowledge the good things as well as what is bothering me.

Things that have been bothering me:

•   My grades

I have to say that this is the part that I'm having the most trouble with. When I was applying to the Midwifery program I made sure that my grades were all A's, as to not compromise my changes of getting an interview at McMaster. Even in College I managed to finish first semester with an average of 90. I knew that it would be really hard to keep those grades once in the Midwifery program, and I kept telling myself that once in the program all I had to do was pass. I was fooling myself thinking that I would be able to accept this and go with it. Don't get me wrong, my grades are not bad at all, but they are not all the straight A's I grew accustomed to. I found myself stressing over every assignment, even when they were not worth a lot of marks. The result was: I became over-stressed, over-worked and never had a break. I do not recommend this attitude, and if you can help it, aim for decent grades but forget perfectionism.

•   The mess in my house

Talking about perfectionism, here is another area that I need to let go. Fact: The house will not be tidy and clean. Definitely not if you have kids. At the beginning, this drove me insane, and I nearly killed myself trying to keep up with the house. The struggle of deciding what needed more of my attention, the endless pile of clothes, backpacks, school forms, toys and shoes accumulating on my front hall and kitchen table or reviewing the Anatomy & Physiology units that just kept being thrown at me like baseball balls at a practicing pitch. Advise: hire help if you can afford it. If you can't afford it, hire it anyways.  Pay with whatever loan you are using to pay for your tuition and pretend it's part of your education cost. Believe me, it will buy your sanity. Also, by the end of the semester I was so tired and so overwhelmed with the amount of work that I stopped caring. I saw the mess, but I didn't have time to care. That my friend (if you know me well), you would know is a sign of how insane this program is. 

•   My eyes

Ok, there is this crazy eye twitch that is driving me insane. It was absolutely out of control for about 10 weeks, then it got a little better and now it has come back again. Apparently it can be caused by stress, lack of sleep, bad nutrition, over use of electronics and allergies. What can I say? All of the above are part of my life in great amounts. Also half-way throughout the semester I started to see blurry. There were times that I couldn't read at all. It turned out that I developed what it's called dry-eye syndrome. It is common with people that spend long ours staring at computer screens or without blinking. 

•   Feeling disconnected from my family

I guess this is how anyone who was a stay-at-home mom and who homeschooled her children would feel when all of a sudden spends 12 hours a day studying. I don't know what to say about this. Will it get better once I'm done with school and a midwife, or will it get worse? I don't know the answer to this question, all I know is that it is a real issue. For those of you with children, we can imagine what it will be like to be away from them all the time, and we can organize childcare and make sure their needs are met, but when the time comes and you feel disconnected from your family, it's hard. It's jut hard. Will I just get used to it or will I begin to resent my choices? All I'm saying is that it is harder than you can imagine it will be. So make sure you know really well why you are doing this. If you don't have an enormous passion and a fire burning that cannot be put out, it may not be worth it.

•   My eating habits

I don't even know if I want to talk about it. I started the semester full of intensions of bringing food to school to save money and to eat healthy. You know, cafeteria food is expensive and crapy. I bought a lunch bag, and containers, and brought my snacks and lunch to school for about 3 weeks. That was it! At this point I was already so tired that I didn't even have energy (or time) to pack myself a lunch. Not to mention that it is one more bag I have to carry on top of the already extremely heavy one (or several lighter ones). I gave in and started to eat the expensive, unhealthy, but ohhh so comforting junk food form the cafeteria. I have put on about 5 kg during this semester and for the first time in my life I have a tummy that bulges when I bend forward. I know it also doesn't help the fact that I sit in front of a computer all day and don't exercise at all, but also the fact that I'm almost 40 and my metabolism is considerably slowing down.

Things I'm thankful for:

•   Ready made menus and "Plan to Eat"
I cannot stress enough how helpful it was to have weekly menus ready for the whole semester.  This meant that my husband could do all the shopping and cooking without ever asking the question; what are we going to make for dinner. This was possible with an online service I used to plan meals called "Plan to Eat". "Plan to Eat" organizes your recipes, allows you to make weekly menus and generates your shopping list according to you meals. You can also build a basic grocery list that you can select items that need to be bought that week that do not appear in your menus. You can manually input all your recipes (which is a little time consuming at first, but totally pays off in the long run) or you can simply find a recipe online and just copy and paste the link and voalá... you have everything imported from list of ingredients to how to prepare, photo included and all. I had 14 weeks of menus and grocery lists made for the first semester and now I'm just going to repeat the saved menus for second semester. Just to testify to the efficiency of this system, I can say that we only ordered food 3 times in the entire semester.

•   The organization I did pre-school

I'm not talking about the day to day organizing we normally do in the house. I mean the get rid of junk, organize basement, garage etc... It has made possible that when the weather got cold, or started to snow, I could, with a phone call, give my husband directions to exactly where the winter jackets were stored and which box he would find the snow boots. 

•   My big bedroom

Not that I did a lot of sleeping there, but I turned my bedroom into a giant study centre. I got event tables and made a U- shaped cubicle where I had everything I needed at hands reach. Anatomy & Physiology by far took the most space, but it was very easy to switch to an essay I was working on when my brain was fried of science and needed a change of thought. I also decorated the walls with mega monthly calendars where all the assignments for the semester were marked with color coded markers for each course. It was easy to get an overall look of which weeks were going to be busier and plan accordingly. 

•   Living close to school

With the exception of one day (there was an accident that closed the 403) I never hit traffic. I'm a 15 minute drive away from McMaster, however, parking is not so easy. Some people park on the side streets and walk, others like me, pay for the M parking lot which is a little outside of campus. There is a shuttle buts that takes you to the middle of campus and then you have to walk to your building. After all said and done it takes me about 45 minutes to get to class. It seems like a lot but it's not bad at all. All the Anatomy and Physiology lectures are available in MP3 as well so I get to listen to the lectures again when driving or waiting. On the weekends, if I want to practice in the lab, my transponder allows me to park at the visitors parking lot, which is right on campus.

•   My friend who is a MSK professor

I have a very good friend who has studied Kinesiology and used to be a Muscle-Skeletal (MSK) anatomy professor back in Brazil. We spent 4 weeks on MSK module and it was very helpful to have her as resource to ask questions in the comfort of my own home. She watched many lectures with me (they are available on line in video form), explaining what would have taken me hours of research. She also made several trips with me to the lab and helped me identify every muscle of the body in the cadavers there. It was extremely helpful getting ready for the famous bell-ringer exam.

Another semester will start soon, and probably the next time you will hear from me will be when the semester is over and summer holidays start. In spite of all the struggles of this last semester, I still know how lucky I am to be here. It's kind of like going through labour. You know how bad you want that baby, and you know you have to go through labour to meet him/her. You know it is hard work, but you also know you can do it. Yet, it does not make any easier when you are experiencing it and you even doubt your ability to do it while going through. That is when support becomes imperative. That person that hears your pain, but doesn't try to fix it or do it for you. That person who acknowledges your struggles and holds your hand, but also knows this is your journey. So, as I work hard to birth the midwife inside me, I want to thank everyone who has been my support thus far. Thank you Bea, Anne, Angela, Juanita, Paula, Jeanne, my classmates, and many more, who even for a brief moment, cheered me up.  A very special thank you to my personal coach, my husband. Thank you, not only for making this possible (getting loans to pay for my tuitions, taking care of the house, cooking, shopping, doing laundry, driving the kids...) but for listening to my constant whining and believing in me.

Past half-way through first semester

Nine weeks have gone by. Wow! It’s hard to believe that I'm past half-way trough first semester. I don't even know where to start. It is so hard to find the time to write on the blog. I did have intentions of writing more often, but I know now that is not going to happen. I can say so far, that my experience of the program has definitely been the roller coaster I expected. During the first few weeks, I was mostly excited. Just taking it all in, and being ecstatic that I've been accepted to the program. When third week rolled in, the reality of how hard this program is hit me. On top of that, a lot of energy was spent on:

·  Meeting 29 new students and trying to get to know everyone.

·  Meeting all teachers, trying to figure them out and know their style.

·  Getting used to the schedule (each day, classes start at different times).

·  Getting used to the buildings and where to go. (oh yeah, we did get lost trying to find the life-sciences lab. More than once!)

·  Learning to navigate the many different ways to find the information you need, including checking the 101 email address we have.

·  Completing an endless list of mini online courses, such as biohazard safety, fire safety, workplace harassment, ergonomics, WHIMS...

I cannot stress enough the speed of this program. The science aspect is very challenging. Anatomy & Physiology alone is like learning to speak a new language. Then, there is this whole other side of the program called "The Social Sciences". It feels like I'm doing two separate degrees, a science and social sciences one. It sure is a change of gear in my brain, after studying 5 hours of A&P, to go on and write a reflection on a 60 page long document on the social determinants of health, I read the day before.

Then, things settled down. I started to get used to the routine, and so did my family. I don't feel that the kids are being affected too much by my absence. Their dad has been amazing at stepping in full-time. From helping with homework, to driving to after-school activities, to carving pumpkins. From driving the teenagers to work, to watching their first music live-performance, to filling out school-trip forms. He has been there. Going grocery shopping, doing laundry, and cooking meals; the list just goes on... What I'm saying is: I have been incredibly lucky to be able to concentrate 100% on school, and it sill is super hard. In my situation, I'm not finding that the program is harder because I have kids. It's just hard. Period. I'm actually finding strength on my kids; It's their cute smiles and hugs when I come home, and the cuddles at night when I crawl in bed exhausted, that keep me going (yes... the little one has moved into my bed, and I love it).

Everything was under control until.... midterms came. Then comes another low. MIDTERMS SUCK!!! There! I said it. I was fine while going through them, but really, what is it with this low right after? I wish I had saved the candy I got during my orientation week. My buddy sure knew what she was doing when she included the post-exam candy in my welcome bag. I actually did well during the exams, but there is just something about “after midterms” that simply suck. I guess it’s just your body letting go after all the stress or maybe it is the adjustment of becoming a university student and being tested all the time. All the pre-requisite courses I took before, the semester I did in Practical Nursing; nothing compares to this.

Things have settled again and now I know what to expect for the finals. I have a plan. I’m saving all the halloween candy my kids got last week. I’m learning to be prepared. Also I am very excited about the "evening with Ina May" event that is coming up. I feel I need to distance myself from academia for a night and remind myself again why I am doing this.