In which Rachel buys Peptochrome

Another good week has passed, though again with very little reading or corresponding with blogging buddies. Hopefully this silence will pass soon! I’ve just got to pass my NREMT exam and I’ll be back in the blogging world with a vengeance. This week I celebrated Easter twice – once with my boyfriend’s family and once with my own. I went to the park with my 1.5yo nephew a couple of times and found that he’s able to ride the zipline all by himself! I should have gotten a picture for you. AND I bought a new car. The old one was having “break problems.” That is, it shook violently when breaking. They’ve been telling me “break problems” for years, but I keep fixing the breaks and it never fixes the shake. I have brand new (like within the last three months) breaks and rotors, and had some rust filed down in there. None of it helped, and none of that stuff helped years ago when I first started having the problems. It’s like they simply can’t fathom that my car might shake when I break if the rotors and breaks have been put in properly. It’s always blame-it-on-the-last-guy. Finally, the shake got bad enough that I had a choice – get my next big 15k maintenance on my car, or just get rid of it before I crash and die. So I bought Peptochrome.

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Completed in March

In which Rachel passes her EMT practicum

This was a good but busy week. I passed my EMT practicum and got an A in the EMT class. Now I’m all ready to sign up for the NREMT (national registry exam for EMTs). I hear is the hardest test I’ll ever take in my life. I thought the MCAT would be the hardest test I took in my life, so we’ll see if the NREMT beats that. I’ll keep you updated. Otherwise the week was pretty uneventful. Filled with studying, going to my part time job at the nursing home, training for my part-time job as a medical scribe, volunteering, and tests. The highlight of the week is that it was the birthday of a good friend of mine and we went on a couple of adventures to celebrate.

Happy Easter to all those who celebrate!

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This hasn’t changed since last week!

Completed this week

It’s tempting to rush and read some kiddie book real quickly so I’ll have something to put here.

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Again, nothing.

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The Five Kingdoms book is Death Weavers – the fourth book in the series. I purchased it for a palate cleanser since my reading motivation is going down, but I didn’t actually start it. Ha! Low motivation.

The other book is a medical terminology book which I will be using in my class this summer. I got it now so I can start studying for my medical scribe job as well.

Red: The True Story of Red Riding Hood, by Liesl Shurtliff

Red: The True Story of Red Riding Hood, by Liesl Shurtliff
ARC provided by Random House Children’s through NetGalley
in exchange for a fair and honest review

In this fun adventure story, Red goes on a journey to find a magical healing potion for her Granny, who’s sick. On the way, she unwillingly adopts a friend and fellow-traveler named Goldie, finds out the secrets of the Big Bad Wolf, and generally learns a lot of lessons about the value of life. This is a cute fairy tale retelling, appropriate for ages 8-12 years. It’s a bite-sized snack for those of us who gobble up fairy tale retellings – except this story is more like fairy tale fan-fic than an actual retelling. The plot is nothing like that of Little Red Riding Hood or of Goldilocks. It uses the characters and their basic personality traits to make a whole new story. This approach to the tale makes it refreshing because you really don’t know what’s going to happen next.

This book is the third in Shurtliff’s fairy tale universe and apparently pick up where her book Rump leaves off. I haven’t read Jack or Rump, and I’d say this is pretty much a stand-alone book.

In which Rachel takes a part-time job as a medical scribe

Well, my first week of tests for the EMT class is over. These were just practice tests – one practice test for the EMT certification exam and one for the National Registry practicum. I did adequately in both, and am hoping to pass both real exams soon. On next Monday I take the real practicum, on Wednesday I take the class final exam, and sometime in the next month I’ll take the NREMT (certification exam). Then I can start looking for an EMT position!

Additionally, I took a part-time job as a medical scribe. It’s apparently another great way to prepare for a physician’s assistant program. Unfortunately, it requires 30 hours of unpaid, online training, which is due two weeks from Wednesday. I may not have enough time to get through all of it while I’m studying for my last week of EMT class. We’ll see!

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The Last Week, by Marcus Borg & John Dominic Crossan

The Last Week, by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan
Narrated by John Pruden

The Last Week brings to light the historical meaning (as Borg and Crossan see it) of the last week of Jesus as told in the Gospel of Mark. This book was very interesting, though lacked the power of The First Christmas, which I reviewed previously. The main reason for this difference is that The First Christmas told the story of Christmas by comparing all the Gospel stories, as opposed to focusing on just one. Borg and Crossan chose to focus on Mark because he’s the only one to have described the entire week in detail. However it made for a much less interesting, and more repetitive, book. Another difference was that in The First Christmas, Borg and Crossan focused a lot on why they thought some passages were parable rather than literal, and why others should be taken literally. The Last Week focused a lot less on this subject, and spent the bulk of the book simply interpreting the historical background of Mark’s Gospel for our modern times. This, of course, is a very interesting subject, but the lack of that added myth vs. literal aspect made for a much less meaty book.

All in all, I’d say each of these books has its own merits, and which you read would depend on what you’re looking for. Borg and Crossan are knowledgeable and well-researched historical Jesus scholars. So if you take the Bible quite literally and are looking to understand the historical background of the Passion of Jesus, The Last Week is the book for you. However, if you find the little “inconsistencies” of the Gospels interesting, then The First Christmas is the book for you. If you are at all interested in the subject, I would recommend one or the other (or both) of these books.

In which Rachel has her last week of EMT lectures

Happy Daylight Saving weekend everyone! Not much happened this week out here in Rachel-land. The weather is beautiful, and I’ve been able to take some nice long walks around a lake – we have 10,000 of them out here in MN. 😉

I had another moulage victim gig this week – this time I was a belligerent drunk with a tib-fib fracture and a tension pneumothorax. I got to yell at poor medical interns while they tried to convince their examiner that they knew what they were doing. It was pretty fun. My lines were “I’m going to die if you don’t do something!” “I’m going to throw up!” and “I need to sit up so I can breathe!” The rest was all ad lib. I DO wonder if I’d be able to be quite so loud if I really had a tension pneumothorax, though.

This is my last week of EMT lectures. From now on it’s two full weeks of tests. I can’t wait. *cringes*

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Season 1 of Flash and POP! Hulk were gifts for my boyfriend’s birthday. Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic is my real-life bookclub choice this month.

The Serpent King, by Jeff Zentner

Dill is no stranger to hardship. He’s dirt poor, financially supporting his mother, and seems to have zero future prospects. His father, a snake-handling preacher, is in prison; many of his former parishioners blame Dill. Yet Dill has two things that keep him getting up in the morning – his friends Travis and Lydia. The three are strikingly different but are pushed together by their mutual status as social outcasts.

This is a story about friendship, futures, and fighting. It’s the first book in a long time that’s made me just start bawling – I generally avoid crying if I can, but this book deserved a good cry. It was that moving. I didn’t just feel for Dill and his friends, I felt with them – which is saying a lot since I personally have not experienced most of the hardships that Dill and his friends were going through.

The characterization and mood of this book were what made it amazing. The characters were real. They were flawed. They got angry for stupid reasons or were sometimes bossy and blind to the needs of others. Yet they were perfect. They were just what good friends should be. They knew how to love, how to inspire, how to live. The mood of the book was remarkably well-kept. It somehow mixed the darkness of hardship with the light of an amazing friendship.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anybody who likes gritty teen realism. Personally, I volunteer for a texting crisis hotline for teenagers, and I find reading books like these helps me to better relate to the teens that text in. I am currently collecting books that I think would either be good to recommend to troubled teens, or help others in the crisis center to empathize with teens in crisis. I consider this an important collection, and carefully think about each book that I include. This one is a definite yes. Issues that I consider important in this book – religious extremism (and how it impacts youths), family members in prison, bullying, grief, mental illness, and coping mechanisms.

In which Rachel goes on an Ambulance Ride-Along

First of all, thanks for everyone who has been commenting on my blog despite my disappearance. I plan on getting back to all of your blogs soon, but I’ve been concentrating on studying for the onslaught of tests at the end of my EMT class. I have to do well or else I won’t pass my national exams. I’ll keep you updated on how I’m doing. 🙂

This week was fantastic, though exhausting. I celebrated my nephew’s 3rd birthday twice – it only comes around every 4 years, so it’s exciting to celebrate. We went to Rainforest Cafe at the Mall of America for our first celebration. Dinner there was terrible. It took about 45 minutes to get our drinks, and they totally forgot to bring my dad’s – he had to wait another 15 minutes for his. Plus, one of us accidentally ate a piece of plastic that was in the quesadillas. Of course we sent them back and had them taken off the tab, but that’s a huge choking hazard! The service was terrible, the food lacking in tastiness, and the restaurant had tables crushed together way too close so that you HAD to bump into another table in order to get out of your own.

The next time I celebrated my nephew’s birthday, I took him over to a friend’s house, where we discovered (horror of horrors) that both Netflix and Hulu had stopped streaming Doctor Who. I’m sure they announced it in advance, but we didn’t notice. We had to watch a couple of movies instead. Now I’ve bought the 6th series so that we can watch it at our leisure.

I also had an ambulance ride-along, which was fantastic. The trip was 14 hours, and we spent the whole of it in the ambulance. There were about 7 calls – one every 2 hours. None of them were particularly exciting, though we did have to handcuff two of the patients for our own safety. I was shocked how quickly 14 hours passed.

I also went to a high school production of Man of La Mancha. It was fantastic, other then the orchestra which had a fairly bad trumpet player. But the acting was superb considering it was a high school performance. Especially Don Quixote. Amazing acting and boy could that kid sing!

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A Room of One’s Own and Chasing the Scream were both purchased on sale at Audible. I’m starting to pile up books in my Audible queue through these sales, but how can I resist? I thought it would be nice to add in one more Virginia Woolf book this year, as I’m celebrating women classic authors right now. Chasing the Scream fits with my current interest in the state of the failing justice system here in America.

In which Rachel tries out being a moulage patient

This was a good week. I got lots of studying done, did well on a test, went out to dinner with the family for my nephew’s 3rd birthday (he’s turning 12 on the 29th), and tried out being a moulage patient for an EMS program.

In case you don’t know what a moulage patient is, medical students, EMS students, etc. need practice patients to assess and diagnose. Moulage patients are make-uped to look like they’re sick or have undergone trauma. This experience was fantastic for me since it prepares me for my practical exams for my EMT class, which will happen in a couple of weeks. In fact, I was moulaging for EMT students, so the test is exactly the same as I will experience myself! It’s a pretty low-brain job which pays a reasonable amount of money. I enjoyed it so much that I agreed to do another run in a couple of weeks, and I applied for a “casual-but-long-term” job doing it. It’s not the job I want after I graduate, but since it’s casual I can do it every once in a while when it’s convenient. We’ll see if I get an interview.

Monthly wrap-up

Overall, the month has been a good one. I went down to part time at work, started exercising on a regular basis, and have been doing well in my EMT class. I will have finished 8 books – a decrease from the 14 from last month. I know it seems like I should have more reading time now that I’m part-time, but I have a lot less time in the car to listen to audiobooks, and I’m spending a good deal of my new free-time studying.

Posts

Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Reivers, by William Faulkner

A Passage to India, by E. M. Forster

Lecture 6 of Stress and Your Body

Currently Reading

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I bought The Last Week and Neurotribes because I knew that I would be reading them soon. The Last Week is a great book to read during Lent since it’s about the last week of Jesus’ life. Neurotribes was on sale at Audible for a two-for-one sale, and I added on Bluebeard. Neurotribes will wait until autism April. In the Woods was a gift from a LibraryThing friend.

A Passage to India, by E. M. Forster

A Passage to India, by E. M. Forster
Narrated by Sam Dastor

Contains light spoilers.

With a backdrop of British Colonial India, A Passage to India is the story of Dr. Aziz, a Muslim Indian physician who is sympathetic and welcoming of the Brits. The story begins with Dr. Aziz meeting an elderly lady who is visiting her son with Miss Quested, a flighty, priggish young woman who wants to meet a “real Indian.” Dr. Aziz, in welcoming exuberance, gives a polite but insincere invitation to his house and is shocked when Miss Quested takes him up on the offer. Embarrassed by his home, Dr. Aziz instead suggests that he host a trip to the Marabar caves. But in those caves, Miss Quested gets lost, and in her fear thinks that Dr. Aziz has accosted her, when he is actually in another cave looking for her.

A Passage to India was a fantastic book on so many levels. With Miss Quested’s ill-advised acceptance of Dr. Aziz’s invitation (among many other ill-advised behaviors from the ladies), it highlights the differences between Indian culture and British culture. Dr. Aziz is overly accommodating, and the stand-offish British are entirely unaware of his putting himself out–they take all his welcoming exuberance quite literally.

The characterization was also quite deep. For instance, it showed Miss Quested’s priggishness by her wish to see a “real Indian,” her pronounced reserve by her interactions with her potential fiance, and her openness to suggestion by her continued accusations of Dr. Aziz (which she seemed unsure of, but which were egged on by others of the British community).

The writing style was sleek and symbolic. For instance at one point, before any of the horrifying incidents unfold, Mrs. Moore sees a wasp which reminds her vaguely of Indian culture. This wasp foreshadows the horrible events that follow.

And most importantly, the A Passage to India outlined the failings of British colonialism, the blindness and priggishness of the British impressions of Indian people, and the resulting hostilities.

I loved this book. This is my first Forster book that I’ve read, and it will most certainly not be my last.