My weeks are crazy. When school is in, it's tough to find a spare second to do much of anything. With a lot of planning, a lot of effort and quite a lot of time management, things work in my life. I wouldn't say that I am a typical student. Most of my friends at JHU are single, mid to later 20s somethings, living alone in Baltimore. They attend classes just like me then either go to work (many have community outreach workstudy positions that help Baltimore City in some way), or go home to study/cook/chat on the phone/socialize/whatever. Sometimes I envy them for their life of living in the town where they school, for not having to commute nearly 4 hours a day, or not having a house to run, a relationship to maintain, a mortgage. But then I look at my fiance and am happy that I have him and that we have such a blessed life.
Monday through Wednesday I am at school and physically in class from 8am to 12:30. Now, four and a half hours of sitting in a class may not seem that hard to you, but believe you me, when D.Aschenbrenner (the lady who actually WROTE the pharmacology book) is smiling at you the way that she does and going through drugs like there's no tomorrow, it's tough work to keep up. Or, trying to follow zanny L.Taylor as she literally plays out fluid passing through nephrons and demonstrating exactly where UTIs hit. As I've said before, these instructors are the best of the best and they expect the best of the best from the JHU student. Noone gets by here just by coasting.
Thursday and Friday we will be in the wards. Half of my class has just switched from OB and are now entering the unknown psychiatric wards across Baltimore. We know not what to expect; the only advice given us is, "grow thick skins." Thanks, that's helpful! I was lucky to get one of the only night shifts, from 1-9pm and look forward to my "sleeping in" mornings (yes, I consider 7am sleeping in!). I'll be getting home around 11 on these nights and then it will be up on the 11:30 train with those few short hours before sleep and travel used to work out, pack lunch, run errands and study.
Saturday and Sundays are my all day cram days. I generally take a little time to get the house in order, shop for groceries and plan the weekly meals before really sitting down to go through all the notes for that week. I have the habit of writing out notecards for all of my classes. It's a lot of work, but it seems to be the only way I've seen to get the information into my head.
Usually Dan doesn't mind me working so much because he's doing the same himself. In real estate they always say "while the rest of the world works 9-5, we work 5-9," fitting time in with clients when they themselves are off. Not to say D. doesn't work during the day, he's spending that whole time finding houses, scouting them out for his clients, trying to match that perfect house with the perfect clients and then aligning everything so the offer comes in with a good price that makes everyone happy. No easy feat! And, of course, he holds houses open on Sundays so I get my mandatory 3 hours of hard working quiet study time in on those afternoons. Then finally, if D. doesn't have any more appointments, we enjoy a quiet dinner together and a little bit of well deserved quality time together playing cribbage or just vegging out in front of the TV.