Midterm

I am officially halfway through my first summer class, after only 8 days of class. In fact, I just finished writing part of the midterm exam. I have to say it feels very strange to be writing a midterm two weeks into the class, like you're pretending to know things you don't really know yet.

Only I have learned a lot. More than a lot. In some ways, I can see the wisdom of doing more classes this way. The intensity of it keeps your mind focused on one thing at a time. However, I find that I don't have any brain space left for other inputs, like music or reading or other people.

It's my first time taking a class from this particular professor, and although I find her analogies somewhat colorful (and unprofessional....like comparing taking her quizzes to having sex), it makes me realize how much I appreciate good teaching, and how I really want to get back into the classroom, particularly at the college level. I loved teaching a college class!

This weekend I'm heading up to the lake with the fam, and unfortunately have to study while I'm there. The task this weekend is to understand tests of central auditory processing and how they work in the brain, a task that doesn't come particularly easy to me. I will be reviewing. A lot.

SoDak on a Sunday afternoon bike ride

It's the small things, really

I put on a skirt this morning, since I am doing an observation in the clinic this afternoon, and was pleased to see that after 3+ months of working out, my cankles are decidedly less cankle-ish.

Processing, processing

So here's random...last week I was off of school, with all the time in the world to sleep in, and sleep was elusive. This week I'm back to school, and am having no trouble sleeping. Go figure.

My class right now is intense. It's a semester course packed into four weeks. Two and a half hours a day, four days a week, for four weeks. Which equates to somewhere around 50-100 pages of reading per night, a quiz every other day, and a midterm project both assigned and due next week.

It's a good thing I like school.

I wasn't really sure I'd like the class, Central Auditory Processing Disorders (CAPD), but I've liked it better than I thought. One reason is definitely the professor. She's one of the foremost experts on the topic, so she really knows her stuff. Also, she's a really good teacher. And as exhausting as it is to be learning at such a breakneck speed, her teaching is impressive, and it really makes me want to have a chance to teach college again.

So if you're wondering what CAPD is, keep reading. If you're not, stop. Seriously, I've heard/read/thought about it so much already in the past three days I'm bound to ramble on a bit.

So basically, CAPD is a processing problem somewhere in the central auditory nervous system, in other words, your brain isn't hearing so well. You have no actual hearing loss, but what comes in isn't being processed appropriately, so you can't make sense of it. So far we've talked about historical problems defining it, some neuroanatomy and a bit about neuroplasticity and neuromaturation. We've also discusssed information processing, modality specificity, how speech and language tie into CAPDs, types of CAPD (Right hemisphere, Left hemisphere, Corpus Callosum), and typical indicators of CAPD.

In 3 days.

And I've got 3 weeks and a day left.

There will be more.

It's a little old now, but this is making me laugh today.