Morning decadence
Feb. 25th, 2015 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseTechnically I have class right now, but it's my clinic-skills class, which is the precursor to entering student clinic. And since the three members of my class are all strongly ahead of the curve, and our attendance numbers plenty high for state requirements, the instructor simply had us take the final on the second day and gave us the last few classes as either practice time or time off, as we preferred. Given how rarely I get to sleep in anymore, and the fact that I've worked quite a bit at the front desk and thus already know pretty well where everything is, I picked the "time off" option. I got to sleep until 9:00 AM! It was glorious.
School continues to go well. I finished my Foundations of Massage class with full marks, so I'm officially able (if not licensed) to do a one-hour classical massage. I've been doing my best to keep learning/devising new techniques, however, both because it's good to be able to customize and because, frankly, doing the same set of moves on person after person gets old fast. I have a practice partner who's been coming over every Tuesday afternoon for a month now; yesterday, I tried some new techniques and also made a significant effort to stay present and not be mentally multitasking (which is usually my biggest liability; I'm so used to cogitating on multiple subjects at once that it's tough for me to stay in the moment). She said afterward that it was the best massage I'd given her yet, and while I'd never done badly, she could really see how I was improving. I'm pretty pleased about that. On to Massage for Specific Conditions, Further Western Techniques, and Eastern Modalities!
On the work-study side of things, I recently finished Internal Anatomy and Physiology, which was a rather poorly-designed class: we were cramming an entire semester-long intro-level class into five weeks; the textbook was aimed at high school students and thus was written in a fairly juvenile tone; the curriculum, while useful information, wasn't made particularly applicable to bodyworkers, which made a lot of the students resent how quickly we were supposed to be learning the information, especially as many of us weren't used to high-intensity academic performance. I did fine, in part because I have a bit of a background in it from my psychology courses/reading, but a lot of the other students were struggling to keep up. Because I'm me, I wrote a pretty extensive critique with some suggestions in the end-of-class course evaluation; I didn't really expect it to have an effect, but I've heard through the grapevine that once my Pathology for Bodyworkers course is done I'm going to be working with the teacher to combine the two courses and make it more applicable/accessible. I'm seriously jazzed about this; one of my biggest frustrations with postsecondary education in the past has been how the administration clearly couldn't care less about the students and their opinions, except as a source of cashflow and enrollment numbers. Admittedly, this is a much smaller (and private) school, so caring is probably easier here, but I admit I'm especially pleased they've been so on-the-ball about recognizing that I want to contribute. (This has not always been the case with organizations I've been associated with.) Maybe I'll see if they want me to stay on part-time as a teacher/administrator after I graduate.
In non-school-related news (I do still have some parts of my life that aren't school-oriented, heh), on Saturday Brian and I had a case of multi-spoon-resistant-derp - we weren't sick, exactly, but neither of us had any energy or could even really think. So we ordered Domino's and sat on the couch to watch Lucy, our Netflix rental. (Capsule review: Fun action flick, with a bit of philosophy thrown in; not as smart as it thinks it is, but eminently stylish with laudable science-forward humanistic themes, even if the premise is a bit of folk wisdom that's been repeatedly disproven.) After that was done, we were still feeling derpy, so we fired up Hulu and watched Agent Carter, which I'd been hearing good things about. Color me impressed - it's a stylish and well-shot secret-agent-noir, with some great performances, some very clever misdirection in the writing, and a refreshing lack of the usual misogynistic "action-girl" tropes. It's definitely part of the Greater Marvel Cinematic Universe (there are moments when you think you're just watching a noir but then Comic Book Trope #384 comes along and you go "oh, right"), but it does a very nice job standing on its own, and Hayley Atwell absolutely kills the lead role, with a very human mixture of determination and vulnerability. If it sounds like something you'd enjoy, check it out; I haven't heard if ABC has plans to renew it, and I'd very much like to see a full second season.
Okay, morning decadence is over. Time to get into gear and start my day. Anatomy quiz later!
School continues to go well. I finished my Foundations of Massage class with full marks, so I'm officially able (if not licensed) to do a one-hour classical massage. I've been doing my best to keep learning/devising new techniques, however, both because it's good to be able to customize and because, frankly, doing the same set of moves on person after person gets old fast. I have a practice partner who's been coming over every Tuesday afternoon for a month now; yesterday, I tried some new techniques and also made a significant effort to stay present and not be mentally multitasking (which is usually my biggest liability; I'm so used to cogitating on multiple subjects at once that it's tough for me to stay in the moment). She said afterward that it was the best massage I'd given her yet, and while I'd never done badly, she could really see how I was improving. I'm pretty pleased about that. On to Massage for Specific Conditions, Further Western Techniques, and Eastern Modalities!
On the work-study side of things, I recently finished Internal Anatomy and Physiology, which was a rather poorly-designed class: we were cramming an entire semester-long intro-level class into five weeks; the textbook was aimed at high school students and thus was written in a fairly juvenile tone; the curriculum, while useful information, wasn't made particularly applicable to bodyworkers, which made a lot of the students resent how quickly we were supposed to be learning the information, especially as many of us weren't used to high-intensity academic performance. I did fine, in part because I have a bit of a background in it from my psychology courses/reading, but a lot of the other students were struggling to keep up. Because I'm me, I wrote a pretty extensive critique with some suggestions in the end-of-class course evaluation; I didn't really expect it to have an effect, but I've heard through the grapevine that once my Pathology for Bodyworkers course is done I'm going to be working with the teacher to combine the two courses and make it more applicable/accessible. I'm seriously jazzed about this; one of my biggest frustrations with postsecondary education in the past has been how the administration clearly couldn't care less about the students and their opinions, except as a source of cashflow and enrollment numbers. Admittedly, this is a much smaller (and private) school, so caring is probably easier here, but I admit I'm especially pleased they've been so on-the-ball about recognizing that I want to contribute. (This has not always been the case with organizations I've been associated with.) Maybe I'll see if they want me to stay on part-time as a teacher/administrator after I graduate.
In non-school-related news (I do still have some parts of my life that aren't school-oriented, heh), on Saturday Brian and I had a case of multi-spoon-resistant-derp - we weren't sick, exactly, but neither of us had any energy or could even really think. So we ordered Domino's and sat on the couch to watch Lucy, our Netflix rental. (Capsule review: Fun action flick, with a bit of philosophy thrown in; not as smart as it thinks it is, but eminently stylish with laudable science-forward humanistic themes, even if the premise is a bit of folk wisdom that's been repeatedly disproven.) After that was done, we were still feeling derpy, so we fired up Hulu and watched Agent Carter, which I'd been hearing good things about. Color me impressed - it's a stylish and well-shot secret-agent-noir, with some great performances, some very clever misdirection in the writing, and a refreshing lack of the usual misogynistic "action-girl" tropes. It's definitely part of the Greater Marvel Cinematic Universe (there are moments when you think you're just watching a noir but then Comic Book Trope #384 comes along and you go "oh, right"), but it does a very nice job standing on its own, and Hayley Atwell absolutely kills the lead role, with a very human mixture of determination and vulnerability. If it sounds like something you'd enjoy, check it out; I haven't heard if ABC has plans to renew it, and I'd very much like to see a full second season.
Okay, morning decadence is over. Time to get into gear and start my day. Anatomy quiz later!
