Meltdown

I got the job. Life is good on that front.

I am working on my workbook pages for class. I feel like a moron saying that. I swear, my teacher is a taco short of a combo platter. We seriously spend 3 hours every Tuesday and Wednesday highlighting sentences in the book. She says "turn to page 279, left column, 3rd paragraph down, highlight the sentence starting with "In patients taking digoxin...." I'm pretty sure that's not "teaching."

There's some other crap going down at school. The short version is that in our program, the pass rate for boards has drastically declined over the past 3 or so years (from 90+% to around 70%), their method of solving it is to flunk everyone in our class that has lower than an 83-84 so they don't get to take boards thus not "messing up" the pass rate. Apparently looking at strategies to ACTUALLY TEACH us the information is a bad idea. They are changing policies mid-semester. Changing requirements. Renigging on past statements. There is a testing program that they added last summer in addition to our regular classroom exams. It is supposedly a comprehensive test for each class that we take. They determined that we need to pass it w/ at least a 60th percentile score (which our director specifically said word for word last summer "this test will not hurt your grade. it will only help you pass boards"). Well, they are entering it into our grade this semester, counting it as the final. Not the percentile score but the actual percent correct. This is not a good thing. For example, in OB I got 94th percentile by getting 78% of the questions right. so i'd get a 78 as my grade for the final. In Peds I got a 61.5 (67th percentile). I didn't study AT ALL for that one. In Mental Health I got a 68.3 (83rd percentile). Again, didn't study. This is the "reason" they are doing it this way. We are not "taking advantage of this program." Well, the tests are nothing like boards. Studying all this material for these tests does not prepare you for boards. So, most of my classmates and myself have decided that we need to just take the test and hope we get over a 60th percentile. But, if you don't, you can do a remediation process that is no big deal. This has angered the director. So, this is her exacting her revenge. What it boils down to is that if you have lower than an 84 going into the final you'd have to blow the socks off the final to even stay above the 80% pass rate. Because look at my OB score. I knew that stuff. And still only got a 78. This is ridiculous. If they truly want pass rates to increase, then let's do something about preparing us for boards other than just more factual questions. Or even maybe get teachers who do things other than tell us what sentences to highlight. Most boards questions are critical thinking, prioritizing care kind of questions. Let's go over how to make those decisions. But, no, we can't just throw money to get that to happen. Not when we can just force the students to buy a $400 program that has stupid books, boring DVDs and irrelevant tests and use it to weed out the students that we should have taught all along.

In more positive news, I had a checkup today with my doctor re: weight loss. I lost 10 pounds this month. Holy crap. I really dreaded going in b/c I feel like I have gained weight. (and no, to answer your question, I do not weigh myself at home; when I do that, I end up weighing myself every day and getting crazy about minor fluctuations.) So, awesome. That's 67 pounds since last July. Go me.

Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day, the single girl's favorite holiday.