Rotations

So today our rotation sites were released to us. We knew it was coming, but we weren't sure exactly when. Part way through therapeutics someone in a group behind me said they were up so of course everyone in my group starting logging into the site and seeing where we were assigned. This excitement of course threw off everyones focus and no one was really listening to what the prof was saying. She realized this and then allowed us each to look at the sites for 3 minutes and told us to focus for the rest of the class period. This helped a little, but really for the rest of the day I wasn't that focused on what either of my professors were saying.

Finding out where I will be spending my next year and where I will be able to put the last 5 years of schooling into practice before going off into the "real" world where I don't have a pharmacist watching what I'm doing was both exciting and scary. It's so crazy to think that in 3 months I'll be done with classes and starting rotations. It honestly seemed like this day would never come so now that it's here it's crazy! I am pretty happy with my sites, I would have liked to have been out of Des Moines for a few more, but overall I think they will all be great and I will get a lot of different experiences.

Do you like how I've written so much about them without actually saying where they are? Well I'll tell you now so you'll know where to find me next year and since I can't post it on facebook since I'm off that right now.

1st block: Des Moines Central Correctional Pharmacy
2nd and 3rd block: India
4th block: Primary Health Care in Des Moines
5th block: Mercy in Des Moines for counseling/discharge
6th block: Broadlawns for a psych rotation in Des Moines
7th block: vacation
8th block: Alaska
9th block: Mercy in Sioux City for my general hospital
10th block: Broadlawns for my acute care

Lent 2013

If you remember from last years lent season I gave up facebook, twitter, and pinterest. You can read more about that decision here.  Also if you look through some old posts from February and March of last year you can find out how it went for me.

This year I've decided to give up facebook and twitter again. I spend a lot of my time on these two sites and so I think its healthy to give them up and use that extra time to focus on my relationship with God. This will also allow me to get more school work done and pay attention in class more so I think it will be a win-win.

I will try and update my blog more about what is going on in my life during this time, but I'm not sure how good I will be at it so don't get too excited, Traci.

Greek Conference

Last weekend I headed to Indianapolis, IN for Greek IV Conference. It was so much fun and I'm so glad I went. Here's a little recap of what I did and learned from the weekend:

Friday:
I had to go later than the rest of the group because of my classes so I flew to Indianapolis. After a strange start to my journey at the Des Moines Airport where attendance was taken on the plane I made it to Indianapolis and was picked up at the airport by a volunteer with the conference. I got all checked in and then headed to my room to hang out with the other Drake peeps. There were 5 other DGs (Tess, Christina, Lindsay, Haley, Anna), Amy, and Turk from Drake. That first night I missed the sessions, but still got to chat with all of those wonderful people before we went to bed. We spent the night talking about a lot of random things and it was so great to see my DG sisters again and spend time with them as well as meet one of the new members.

Saturday:
We got up and got ready then heading to Starbucks for breakfast. We arrived at our concentrations a little late because of this breakfast stop, but we decided people needed to eat. My concentration was called Influencer and my specific section was about how to influence the world. It was aimed at graduating seniors and so it talked a lot about making the transition from a student in a greek house to the "real world", and how we can be influential in our new location. It was a great concentration- I learned a lot and it really made me think about some things.
Here are the things that stuck out to my from the concentration:

• God is still shaping you: life in your 20s is primarily about what God is going to be doing in you rather than through you. This is the time of your life where you are figuring out who you are and what God is calling you do. Your calling is not just about what you do, but who you are and what you are becoming.
• Get to know yourself better- find out what your passions are. There is a quote that we talked about and that I have talked about before about where the deepest needs are and where your passions meet is where God is calling you. I just love this!
• Stay connected to others in community- wherever you are sink your roots in deep no matter the length of time you will be there. This really stuck out to me because lately I've been thinking how I won't be at Drake much longer and then I'll be moving about for the next year so it doesn't exactly matter what I'm doing. Even though I'll be in these places for a short amount of time I need to be present and loving people and finding people who I can be in community with while I'm traveling around.

During our lunch break we headed to the Butler area and ate at the Ripple Bagel Deli and it was SOOO good. Haley ate here on a college visit and said it was good and so we decided to check it out. After that we headed over to the DG house at Butler and asked for a tour. Our tour guide was really nice and did a great job showing us around the house and explaining things even though we just dropped by. I love looking at other DG chapters and seeing the similarities and differences. Their house is a lot bigger than ours and has more of a typical sorority house feel in my opinion.

After supper back at the hotel we had large group time. The speaker was James Choung and he did a great job. The talk was on the "good life" and what exactly does that mean. It focused on the story of the rich man who was told to give up all his wealth and follow Jesus, but he couldn't do it. I feel like this has been in theme in my life lately through Urbana and Greek Conference and other things. To follow Jesus means to give up everything and follow him for the good life. It's not what the world says it is, but it is so much better. I think that has been hard for me to accept lately. I love having plans and everything mapped out and control so it's really hard for me to trust God's plan and timing for my life and to be ok with giving up that control. But if I really want to follow Jesus that is going to be what I have to do. I'm still not sure what exactly that looks like in my life, but I'm excited to continue to say yes to God in all the small ways and figure out what his plan is for my life.

After that we had a dance party and the theme was country clubbin' so we all got dressed up in our preppy attire and headed to the dance party. It was actually a lot of fun dancing and hanging out with everyone. Then after the party we headed to our room and chatted for quite a while before we went to bed.

Sunday:

We woke up, got ready, and headed back to Des Moines. It was an 8 hour car ride back and so it was nice to chat some more and also rest a little. I'm not the best at sleeping in the car so I didn't do that, but still just got to rest and relax before coming back home.


Here's some pics from the weekend:

First Week of Classes

On Monday my last semester of college classes started. It's crazy to think that this is the last semester of classes and then I start rotations in May for 1 year and will graduate in 2014. When I started college it seemed like the end would never come, but it has really flown by. I know everyone says that about college, but when you decide to go to pharmacy school for 6 years and watch the majority of your friends graduate and start their "real' jobs it seems like you'll be in school forever. 

I still obviously need to pass all of my classes this semester (which I hope I can do) and then do the year of rotations, but the end is near which is both exciting and scary. I really can't wait to find out where my rotations will be and what I will be doing for the next year. I hope that rotations will help me narrow down exactly what I want to do and if a residency if for me. I also hope I will be in a variety of locations so I can decide where I would like to live after school. All of these unknowns are quite scary, but I know that God has a plan for me and I need to let Him work and all I have to do is say yes to him.

Now back to classes.... 

The first week went pretty well. I was really hoping for a snow day on Wednesday since all the other Des Moines metro school had the day off, but had no luck. I had class in the afternoon and the roads weren't too bad by that time so I made it to classes safely. I'll give you all a little run down of my classes this semester so in case I talk about them in later blog posts you'll know what I'm talking about. (this probably won't happen since I don't really talk about my classes on here, but you never know)

Advanced Pharmacy Skills and Applications (APSA) lecture and lab: this is a class where we learn skills that are important for pharmacists such as: counseling, dispensing, vitals, history of present illness, etc. On Monday we talked about cultural competencies and resources you can use to learn more about another culture.

Therapeutics III: this is the third and final class in the series, which teaches us how the medications that treat different conditions and what side effects to expect, dosages, etc. Right now we are learning about oncology, which is an interesting topic, but also very confusing and difficult.

Quality Improvement in Pharmacy Practice: we have been talking about health care and how in the US there really isn't a system and there should be more done to have consistency throughout the health care system. We also discussed about what quality means and if it is different for the consumer than it is for the company.

Clinical Laboratory Medicine: in this class we talk about common lab values that we will see in practice and how to interpret them and what to do to treat abnormalities. I think this class will be really helpful when I go on rotations.

Advanced Psychiatric Pharmacy: this class goes more in depth in psychiatric disorders as well as how to treat them than our therapeutics class. On Friday we talked about stigmas associated with mental disorders and also played a review bingo of common medications prescribed for mental disorders.

I think I'm going to like a lot of my classes and they will all be helpful next year on rotations. It's also really nice to only have 16 credits this semester and I have already noticed how much time I have to get stuff done. This will probably change once things actually get started, but for now I don't feel like I'm drowning in homework, which is good.

Since I don't really have any pictures to add about school. For some reason I don't take pictures in the middle of class, maybe I should start? I'll add a picture of when I went to Minnesota a couple of weeks ago and went ice skating.

Weekend in Waterloo/Cedar Falls

Last weekend I went to the Waterloo/Cedar Falls area to visit my friends Traci and Deb. As most of you know Traci used to throw at UNI and I would go watch her in the first UNI home indoor track meet each year. Even though she is no longer involved in track (and is no longer in college) I still went to the track meet to keep the tradition alive. Traci, Deb, and I all went the meet. Traci watched while Deb and I chatted. After the throwing was over we headed around the dome to find things that had changed and also see if we could spot anything with Traci in it. We were in luck-we found her name on a board for spring honor roll and also a picture of her with the rest of last years team in the trophy case. I tried to take a picture of the team picture, but it didn't work because of the flash and lighting. I did however get a picture of your name so you can all see how famous and smart she is :)

After the meet we headed back to Traci's house to decide what were were going to do and we watched some tv. I also introduced Traci to marcel the shell with shoes on and also I told my kids I ate all their Halloween candy on youtube. They did not find Marcel the shell with shoes on as funny as I do, but with time I think the will appreciate it more.

We ended up going over to Deb and Aaron's and Aaron made us some chili. We were also introduced to their pets-a bearded dragon, turtle, and 2 cats. As I am not really an animal lover I did not get close to the bearded dragon or turtle and only interacted with the cats when they came to me. There is a picture that Deb took of me with one of the cats that is on facebook where I only look slightly terrified.

On Sunday Deb, Aaron, Traci, Danielle and I all went to church and then went out to eat for some tasty Mexican food. Then I headed back to Traci's and hung out with her for a while until it was time for me to head back to Des Moines. It was a lot of fun to catch up with Traci and Deb (and Aaron) and see what they all have been up to. I only saw Deb briefly in Hampton when we were both there since her wedding so it was great to spend some time seeing what she is up to. It's also always great to catch up with Traci and see what her life is as a "real" person with a full-time teaching job.

When I got to Des Moines I headed to Courtney's house and we went to Sleepy Hallow and went snow tubing. I had never been snow tubing before this experience, but it was a lot of fun. It was a little too cold out though, so we didn't stay too long. We ended up going quite a few times down the hill though and decided it would be great to check out another time when it is a little warmer out and also with a few more people.

TV Shows/Books

I've also used this time on break to catch up on tv shows that I've been meaning to, but haven't had time. I started off by finishing up season 2 of Once Upon a Time. I started watching it in November and fell in love so if you haven't watched it yet you really should. The first season is on Netflix and then abc had all of season 2 online, but I'm not sure how much longer they will have it on for.

The second show that I finished watching was How I Met Your Mother. I started watching it this summer, but wasn't very consistent with watching. I have seen most of the episodes on re-runs, etc. but it was nice to see them all in order and know what exactly is happening and I've seen all of the current seasons episodes.

I'm currently watching Parenthood. I watched the first season as it aired and then I stopped watching (I'm not really sure why), but started watching again during this current season. So now I'm catching up  and really enjoying it.

The last tv show that I'm really excited about starting up is the bachelor. It premiers tonight so I'm really excited about that. I loved Sean on Emily's season and so I can't wait to watch him as the bachelor.

I also just finished a the book Gone Girl. I've read a lot of places that it's a great book and Carina and Isaac got it for me for Christmas. I was really excited to receive it since the waiting list from the library was really long. It's a great book with lots of twists and turns so I would really recommend it if you like that type of book.

Urbana 2012

I spent the December 27-January 1 in St. Louis for Urbana 2012. I'm still processing my experience, but overall I really enjoyed it. Urbana is a missions conference that Intervarsity hosts every 3 years. I also went in 2009 so I sort of knew what to expect.

The theme for the week was the great invitation. We studied the chapter of Luke. The beginning of the week challenged us to accept God's invitation to us. We need to accept Him and look at ourselves and what is holding us back from accepting all of Him before we can share this invitation to others. As the week went on we learned more about how to extend that invitation to others and how we needed to go and share the good news with others.

It's amazing to be with 16,000 people worshipping God in multiple languages, listening to speakers from different countries. They also have a variety of seminars that you can go to about a lot of different topics. The ones I went to were based on healthcare. I wasn't as impressed this year with the seminars as I was in 09.

One of the things that we did this year was called a join-in. We partnered with community workers in Swaziland and packed medical bags for them to use as they work with HIV/AIDS patients. The had videos telling the stories of how these medical bags came to be and we were also able to hear from one of the community workers. It was amazing to hear her story in person as well as some of the other people affiliated with World Vision and the medical packs. It was amazing to be able to partner with these community workers and package 32,000 medical kits to send to Africa so these community healthcare workers can continue to do the amazing job that they are doing.

The speakers at Urbana were also great. You can watch any of the talks online here.  Here are some of the quotes that I wrote down from the speakers that really spoke to me.

• Jesus is worthy of all our trust, all our plans and dreams, and all of our affections -David Platt
• What happens when the church believes that Jesus is really enough? -David Platt
• When was the last time you wasted time with God? -Calisto Odede
• When we act like God is dead, it is not Him who dies, but us -Ram Sridharan
• We are a lost humanity that needs to be found -Ram Sridharan
• Don't climb a tree from the top-you start where you are -Calisto Odede

The end of the week we each got a decision card to commit to what we are playing to do when we got home. I committed to a mid-year and long-term mission. I'm not quite sure what that will look like at this point in my life. I want to somehow use my pharmacy degree to do missions. This may be in an urban area or may be in another country. I still haven't figured out exactly what that will look like, but I know that I just need to continue to say yes to God and he will show me exactly where he wants me to be. 

If you decide to watch any of the videos from above I would recommend watching David Platt and Ram Sridharan's. They were both really good talks and I will probably watching them again to see things that I didn't catch the first time.