A Rotten Beginning

I have just finished my three-week winter term class and have barreled straight into the Spring semester with nary a moment to rest my head. And if the rest of my semester doesn’t improve from the way it has started, I fear I shall be in for some miserable months ahead. There are quite a few reasons to classify this semester as having had a rotten beginning.

First of all, my schedule is the heaviest load hour-wise I’ve had so far. I am attempting 16 hours which means a total of six (6) classes. I have four health care administration classes and two business classes. They are as follows:

• HCA344: Health Systems Management
• HCA442: Principles and Methods of Health Planning
• HCA446: Health Care Informatics
• HCA447: Information Systems Lab
• FIN330: Principles of Financial Management
• MGT300: Legal Environment of Business

Second, my classes are neither placed nor timed conveniently. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I have the worst time figuring out what time I need to get up and leave in order to get there and get parked for an 11:00 am class. You just shouldn’t have to get up at 6:00 am for an 11:00 am class. But if you don’t, you have parking issues to deal with, as I found out last week.

I admit I cut it a little close. When there was no doubt that there was not a single parking place to be had in the parking lot I thought surely would have one, I ambled on to Plan B, feeling a nervous twinge in my stomach. On my way over to Plan B, I discovered a new parking lot for commuter students that I had not had prior knowledge of, and because of the time, I just grabbed it. Lots of empty spaces. I knew I would have to climb Suicide Hill, but I’ve done that before. With the added distance of several blocks from the new parking lot, however, and with its gradual incline toward the bottom of where I would begin the Suicide climb, it was almost more than I could, or at least wanted, to bear.

By the time I had reached the top of the hill and then climbed up to the fourth floor of the STH building where my class was to be held, I was in some sort of a pitiful condition. And this climbing experience was not unlike that of the climb up to the FB college retreat Sunday morning chapel service of 2005, nor that of climbing a certain mountain in Montana about ten or more years ago. The climb was bad enough, but it was the blast of heat that greeted me from the classroom that nearly finished me off.

At any rate, my classes are such that I am sprinting from one of the highest classroom points on campus down to Grise Hall (midway down the hill) to my finance class, and then back up hill again to the exact classroom I started from on the fourth floor. I have to make it to my finance class before Dr. B closes the door, so I am hoping Dr. H doesn’t ever get long-winded and keep us late. Thursdays are even worse. I go from STH (top) to Grise (bottom) to STH again (top) and back down to Grise (bottom). And because my classes don’t start early this semester, this parking thing has me a nervous wreck.

The third reason why my semester has not gotten off to a good start is simply because I am not mentally prepared. This all comes from not having had a proper break. The two weeks I had off between the fall semester and the winter semester were filled with holiday activities, including preparing for guests and then traveling—all enjoyable, mind you, but tiresome nevertheless.

My class in the winter semester left me completely exhausted. Dr. W had us do so many assignments in the narrow space of three weeks, it is a wonder I managed to get it finished. We had to write three responses to three critical readings, give a book report—both written and oral—take four exams, write a ten-page paper, and give a twenty-minute presentation on it. Talk about sapping the energy out of a person—that certainly did it!

Dr. W wanted me to go to a finance conference in Louisville this last Friday, and he told me that if I would go, he would introduce me to key individuals in the health care field. That was all well and good, and in fact, I was very interested in going. When it came right down to it, however, I decided I was too drained, both physically and mentally. I have hardly been able to get my backpack packed in time for class—much less, drive to Louisville Thursday night. I finally emailed him and backed out of it, citing the above-reasons of exhaustion. He emailed me back and said he really understands about not having had a break. It seems he is in the same boat.

Fourth—and this is where it really gets rotten—I have either LOST my PDA on campus, or it was STOLEN right out of my backpack. This makes me really sick to my stomach. I have searched every possible logical place, of which there are very few, and after speaking to numerous people about it, I can only conclude that someone else is in possession of my little PDA. I would much rather see it driven over by a dump truck and smashed to smithereens than to not know what has happened to it. I know exactly how the mother of a kidnapped child must feel.

I can’t even say at what point the thing disappeared. All I know is that I strapped it into my backpack at ~9:30 am, and the next time I opened my backpack for it that night at 1:00 am it was gone—almost as if it were raptured! So now I need to figure out what I am going to do as far as taking notes in class, as I had planned to use my PDA to do it. One of my classes has me taking five pages of notes per class period, and I just refuse to hand-write it.

And those crazy eBay shoppers will NOT let me get another PDA for a cheap price. They just don’t respect prior investments at all.

The fifth reason I am gloomy about this semester is because of the dreaded GROUP PROJECT in one of my classes. I despise group projects. Give me a paper to write instead any day!

I guess since I’ve given you all the negatives, I shall also give you the few bright spots.
• Because of a scheduling conflict, my computer lab class has been rescheduled from a hideous spot on my Wednesday schedule to a mere two weekends instead. We are literally going to knock the class out in two weekends—four hours on a Friday night and two hours on a Saturday morning. Yay! It helps me out like crazy to have the Wednesday spot cleared up.
• For only the second time since I’ve started school, I have no classes on Fridays. This is a good thing. It saves a little gas, and it FREES MY MIND.

One week down—Fifteen to go. Six weeks until Spring Break.

Trapped!

My three-week winter class started today: International Comparisons of Healthcare Systems. The class meets for 3 hours and fifteen minutes per day, five days a week. The professor is really nice, but his delivery isn’t all that smashing. So when he finally let us have a ten-minute break with an hour and a half left, I was really grateful. Rather than going out to smoke like everyone else, I decided to make use of my time Elsewhere (i.e., the restroom).

You have to understand that the building that houses my program was built in 1906, and I have a feeling that the bathroom has undergone very few changes since then. The stalls are made out of about two-inch thick slabs of marble or granite of some type (rather sporty in its day, I’m sure). Given that the wooden doors fit so tightly and have a clearance of only a couple inches from the floor, there is practically no chance of an invasion of privacy. This is an attribute of this antiquated bathroom that I never really minded—until today, that is.

As I entered the restroom, out of nowhere, I briefly recalled a certain mishap I had read on Marvin Miller’s Xanga (see 6/28/06 entry) which included his being locked in the men’s restroom in the middle of a training class for an extended period of time. I brushed it aside, but I couldn’t help but look at the antiquated lock in alarm as it seemed to give off an abnormal sensation of being extra-locked—a premonition perhaps? A mere minute later, I turned the tiny little knob to expedite my release from the suffocating cubicle. I turned it again—harder. When it failed to perform its job, I realized that indeed, I was stuck. Panic began to overtake me as I glanced down at my watch. Five minutes left before class resumed. I madly wiggled and jiggled that lock, all to no avail. I heard the motions of one other student in the restroom, and I began to realize that that person might be my last lifeline.

“I think I’m stuck in here,” I said out loud, hating to give voice to the fear that was burbling up in my throat. No response. Then I realized that my would-be heroine was washing her hands and had probably not heard me. I eyed the bottom of the door and contemplated my chances of doing a belly-crawl under the 3-4 inch space between the floor and the bottom of the door. I promptly discarded the thought, as even a Thin Person would have problems in a space that small. The only thing worse than having to be rescued from a restroom stall is having to be rescued from a Wedged Place.

I raised myself up on my tiptoes until my chin was hanging over the door and waited for the girl to come around the corner. She emerged eventually, and I recognized her as one of two honors students in my class. I said (very loudly), “Excuse me. I think I am stuck in here.” She jerked in surprise at the talking head on the door, made appropriate sympathetic noises with respect to my demise, and then jiggled the door from her side. There was just no help for it. I had been turning the little knob harder and harder with each progressing moment, and my fingers were screaming in pain.

I had been chilled to the bone mere minutes before, but now I was “hot as a biscuit.” Imaginary droplets of sweat made their way down my forehead and cheeks and dropped from my chin onto the floor: plop, plop, plop. I envisioned myself in need of the services of O’Henry’s safecracking Jimmy Valentine (A Retrieved Reformation by O'Henry), but alas, he was neither here nor there.

“I hate to just leave you here,” the girl said. Well, yeah!! I said silently, then out loud, “Please don’t.” I noticed the lock had four screws that took a straight screwdriver, and if I could just have that life-saving tool, I could perhaps rescue myself. I couldn’t think what a straight screwdriver was called, so I said to the girl, “Could you go ask someone for a flat-tipped screwdriver please?”

“I’ll go get started on it right away,” she said. She left the restroom, and I resumed my gut-wrenching efforts to turn the knob. I used my sweater as padding for my poor bruised thumb and fingers, which was absolutely no help either.

In desperation, I wondered what would happen if I turned the knob the other way. So I tried it, and with a soft, antiquated click, it opened. And I marveled at the ease with which it opened, and I’m sure my mouth must have been a reflection of this marvel.

Knowing the rescue team was on its way (no firemen, please), I wondered if I wouldn’t be better off to just climb back inside and let the rescue continue. Instead, I burst out of the restroom and looked both ways down the hall. My heroine was standing outside the teachers’ offices talking with my professor (no less). I got her attention and told her to not worry about it. “It all of a sudden let loose,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. “They [administration] couldn’t figure out what a ‘flat-tipped screwdriver’ was.” [Oops.]

She canceled the rescue mission, and I thanked her for her efforts. She joined me as I walked (almost ran) down the hall toward our classroom.

“That was the weirdest thing,” I said amiably. “That’s never happened to me before.”

Fifteen minutes into the next class session, I realized that I had forgotten to wash my hands. Some days really do need a delete key.