As of Late

So school is still fun. Mostly. I really am enjoying the classes, but let's just say it's no Monterey Institute. I really miss the atmosphere there, especially the professionalism and the unique relationship between faculty and students.

And I think being a teacher is making me more irritated by small things at school. Particularly in one class. We do online quizzes in that class probably once a week or so, and the professor chooses the nit-pickey-est things to ask about. And since it's online, you can't really ask for clarification, or write something extra to explain your answer. For example, this week she asked us a true/false question about whether a hearing loss can be classified as one of three types: conductive, sensorineural, or combination. Well, in class we talked about conductive, sensorineural, and mixed. Since I couldn't ask her, and therefore went with the knowledge that "combination" is a synonym of "mixed," I said true. And I got it wrong. Which changed my grade on the stupid quiz from a B to an A. And when I asked her why it was wrong, if it was just the word "combination" instead of "mixed," she said that it was, and if I said "combination loss" to an audiologist, they wouldn't know what I was talking about.

First, I would give an audiologist more credit than that, and assume they could figure out the meaning of the sentence despite the lexical choice. Second, I normally would be annoyed but maybe not quite so anal, except that my acceptance to and funding for the grad. program will be decided by my grades this semester. I cannot get a B in the introductory course to the field I'm studying, particularly if it's because of picky little things that don't really matter. Of course, that's my opinion.

So there's that. And then there's my anatomy and physiology course, which I'm thoroughly enjoying. Last week we made a larynx out of an empty soda carton, and it was pretty cool. The teacher really goes out of her way to make the content comprehensible, which is greatly appreciated. My hearing science class is less deadly than I thought, and we have our first test tomorrow, we'll see how that goes. I did get a "Great!" on my research paper proposal, examining the effect of auditory integration therapy (AIT) on children with autism. I have no idea what AIT is, but I'm excited to find out.

I've also done a few observations for school, which have been REALLY interesting to me. I saw one of a kid with autism who has echolalia. Randomly during the therapy session he would repeat lines from movies or books, or things his teacher said in school. I also saw an auditory brain stem response test on an 18 month old, some pretty cool stuff.

Apart from school, I'm taking a cake decorating class. It's...interesting. I think the teacher is definitely in it for the money though. During our last class she never got up off her chair, but watched us practice, and then looked at our cakes and said they looked good. Oh, and she told us all about how one of her best friends is cheating on her husband, and now the husband found out and she's supposed to go out with the friend for a flauta after cake class. Which explains why she hurried us along...I forgot to take a picture of my cake, but it was just okay. I'm pretty sure I can improve though from just practicing a bit. I think this week we make crazy clown cupcakes, which may be more picture-worthy.

So, I will go now and review the formulas I need for tomorrow's test. I think I have them all...T=1/f (time or period equals 1 divided by frequency); f=1/t (same deal, reversed, or inversed or whatever), and wavelength=c/f (wavelength equals the speed of sound divided by frequency). Wish me luck!

PS The scary formulas from the hearing science textbook have not yet shown up in class. I'm hoping it will stay that way. My teacher has mentioned that she's bad at math a number of times, so I'm crossing my fingers that we'll skip most of the math and just get the "concept."