The Upcoming

Since I have now officially been to all two days worth of my senior classes... I thought I would share about my upcoming Fall semester...

Currently, I am sitting in our "sunroom" listening to the weather channel about the future activities of Hurricane Irene. The news guy just said that the east coast is "preparing for the worst." North Carolina's coast is already evacuated of visitors and residences are to leave tomorrow... NYC is considering evacuation as well. It's kinda crazy! Earthquake a few days ago; hurricane in a few days!

I think I will prepare by filling up my empty gas tank and buying some water bottles... just to be safe!

Now back to my delightful fall semester. I am taking four classes this semester including human nutrition, mental health nursing, critical care, and population health. I am seriously looking forward to all of these classes!

Nutrition is self explainable... it's all about nutrition.
Population health takes a bit of explanation for it is a mixture class. We are studying genetics and genomics, older adults, and end of life care. We are starting off with genetics and genomics, our first assignment is to develop a family pedigree to analyze the genetic link between diseases and illnesses within my own family. I think it's kinda neat. There are lots of fun assignments in the class that I'm actually looking forward to like interviewing an "older adult" about their childhood and just talking with them about life! I think I will try to meet with my Pastor here in Lynchburg, since it has to be a face to face interview and he's practically the only older adult that I know here!
Mental Health deals a lot with psychiatric nursing. We will learn about various mental health disorders from schizophrenia to eating disorders to bipolar disorders to alcoholism. We have six clinical rotations for this course including one on a psychiatric ward, an AA meeting, an addiction recovery facility, a mental illness day house, and a few more. This class will for sure stretch my boundaries!
Critical Care will be my baby. This class adds to our knowledge that we've already acquired in our medical-surgical class. We will learn more about ventilators, hemodynamics, EKGs, sedation, trauma, and things of the like. We have 6 rotations in an ICU for this class which I can't wait for! I also get to spend all of my spring semester in the ICU since I am in the Critical Care Certificate Program.

My goal is to soak up as much information as I can in my last year of school. I want to take advantage of this time that I have left here at the ole LU. It probably boosts my excitement for this year that I only have class on Wednesday and Thursday...

My running schedule for the fall as slightly been edited since I've been here. Let me just say, running in Virginia is in no way like running back home in the flatness of Texas. Lynchburg seems to be particularly a hilly part of Virginia since we sit in the Blue Ridge Mountains but my goodness, can't a girl get a break?!

My new runners that my Dad got for me before leaving for VA

My training pace has increased about 15 seconds per mile since I've been back; the slopes are torturous. I am scheduled to run the Virginia Ten Miler in late September but I can barely run three miles now... I definitely have a lot of work to do in order to run that race! I definitely will run it but I need to train a lot harder in order to withstand the hills and altitude.

Looks like my hardcore training will be delayed until after Irene strikes!