Oh Hump Day!

Oh Wednesday, you glorious Hump Day!!! For me, Wednesday is literally a great hump day as I have no actual classes that I have to attend today. The only commitment that I have right now is to visit with my resident "adopted grandparent" at an assisted living facility. I thoroughly enjoy spending time with this elderly couple so it is more of an added bonus to my Wednesday rather than a task I have to complete. Since Wednesday is the middle of the week, just in case you did not learn the Days of the Week song, it serves as the perfect day to go over the notes from class from Monday and Tuesday and be able to prepare for the classes I have on Thursday and Friday. This is such a blessing and I have begun to have a greater appreciation for Wednesday and right now it holds a special place in my heart (even though it is Wednesday and I am spending it in the library).

However, it has not been all work and no play these last few weeks. Even though I have spent much time studying and trying to stay caught up in classes, I have had time to volunteer at various events with Kappa Psi and APhA and several of us even got together last Friday night for a Potluck/Game night which was a blast!



Here I got to volunteer with APhA at a Diabetes Screening Clinic that we held at Walgreens. I was able to check a woman's blood sugar to see if she was diabetic or not. It was a really fun and great experience to get involved and interact with the community.










The other weekend I was able to volunteer with Kappa Psi at the SPCA Pawfest where we sold baked goods and all of our profits went to their organization that is devoted to the protection of animals.





















This was from the other weekend when we had our Potluck/ Game night. I opted to bake cupcakes, for those of you who know me you may find that odd seeing as I do not like icing and detest cake. However, I made funfetti cupcakes with a mix of cream cheese icing on some and chocolate icing on some and I left several icingless for myself. However I will have to admit that I did eat a cream cheese cupcake at the get together and actually quite enjoyed it :)




Okay so I know I am a nerd but I just realized I am giving a thumbs up in all of these pictures. I guess I really didn't realize how much I did that until I looked at the pics :)

So, this weekend I really did not cook a meal, rather I did some baking. Two of my most favorite things in the world are chocolate and peanut butter. I especially love the combination of the two. As I was dawdling around the condo Saturday, I decided I would make some brownies. Not from scratch mind you, I had a box of brownies that merely needed me to mix the ingredients all together and bake in the oven. However, I also had some Reese's Cups just lying around and decided I should put them to good use and try to incorporate them into my brownies. Thus resulting in...

• box of brownie mix (I prefer Duncan Hines chewy fudge)
• bag of Reese's Peanut Butter cups (here I have used the larger cups and chopped them up, it may be easier to use the miniatures)
• muffin pan
  

You will prepare the brownie mix as stated on the box. Next, after greasing the muffin pan, you will fill each muffin hole 1/2 inch with the brownie mix. This step is important because you want to make sure that you have enough brownie mix on the bottom so that when you add the Reese's cup it does not touch the bottom of the pan.








Next, since I had the large Reese's cups, i had to chop the cups into quarters so that one quarter of the cup was added to each of the brownies.










Now, it is time to place the Reese's cup into the center of each of the brownies. When you place the cup into the hole with the brownie mix make sure that you do not press too hard because if you do so the cup will move to the bottom of the pan and is more likely to burn (and nobody likes burnt brownies). After adding the cup, you will then cover each with more brownie mix.












For baking, you are really going to want to follow whichever directions were on your brownie box. For mine, the oven should be preheated to 350 and they baked for about 20 minutes. I like mine to have a chewy center, so I opt for the shorter baking period in order to achieve this.

Meals By Me Monday...

Okay…so I know today is Tuesday and I just posted a blog about meals for Monday (because I love the alliteration). No, I am not losing it, but what I did lose was my internet connection, which prevented me from posting this on Monday. I have previously been like a sponge soaking up other people’s unsecured wireless connections. I know, I know, that is not exactly moral or honest of me. However, my philosophy is that if they did not want other people to use it they would have it secured with a password, so obviously they will not mind if I use it. So the internet connection that I had been using has now been secured with a password and therefore eliminating my internet connection all together.

So, as I have begun to live on my own I have tried to become more domestic. Lately I have started to become acquainted with my kitchen that in the past has not seen much love other than the use of the microwave. So I have decided to set a day aside to blog about my trials and errors in the cooking world. My love for alliteration has lead to the “Meals by Me Monday” tagline for my blog post each Monday. So look forward to some tasty meals that I will be testing out and hopefully I will have more successful trials rather than errors :)

This weekend as I was madly slaving away over PowerPoint slides studying for my exam this morning I found myself extremely hungry and decided to raid my cabinets to see what I could make with what I had. This was really easy and quick to make in addition to being cheap and especially delicious.

· 1 box of rotoni noodles

· 1 jar of pasta sauce

· 2 cups of cheese

o I used cheddar cheese and Monterey jack cheese, another good option would be Swiss cheese and mozzarella cheese for a larger variety.

· 2 tbs of vegetable oil

· you will also need a casserole dish

First you will need to precook the noodles before

adding them to the dish. After bringing the

water to a boil add the noodles and cook them

for about 8 minutes. You will not want to cook

them all the way through since you will be

baking them in the oven later for about 25 minutes.

After cooking the noodles, drain the water

from the pot and then add your 2 tablespoons

of vegetable oil to ensure that the noodles

will not stick together.

The next step will involve the pasta sauce.

Before you add the entire jar of pasta sauce

to the noodles, you are going to line the

bottom of the casserole dish with the pasta sauce.

With the remaining pasta sauce you are

going to add it to the noodles along

with 1 and ½ cups of the cheese.

The remaining cheese will be used on

the top of the dish.

After mixing all the ingredients together

you are now ready to put it into the

casserole dish and sprinkle the remaining

cheese on top and pop this baby into the

oven to finish the baking process.

You should preheat the oven to 350 before

you begin the prep portion so it can be

preheating while you are combining

your ingredients. You will bake this casserole

in the oven for about 25 minutes or

until the cheese on top turn a nice brown color.

I would recommend you just keep your eye on it.

Friday Night...

“Just got paid, Friday night, party hoppin' feelin right booties shakin', all aroundPump that jam, while I'm gettin' down” Okay so if you were a huge NSYNC fan like me you recognize this song right??...If not, you must have been spending your time memorizing all the Backstreet Boys songs which were obviously not as good as NSYNC, but that’s my opinion and feel free to disagree. However, unlike this song, I did not get paid, which is sad much like my bank account because I have not yet started working. They are still waiting for my background check to come back. I hope the fact that I have been arrested for cocaine charges and have a pending trial for my participation in an illegal drug ring does not lose me my internship. I joke because I feel the background check is unnecessary as I had to have a background check in order to get into Pharmacy School and never mind the fact that I have been an employee of your company for the past 3 years; you did not care those years if I had a clean criminal record or not; however, that is besides the point, the point is right now I still have not started working = no money = no booty shaking = no party hoppin’ on this Friday night. Actually, to be honest, if I did have a little bit of change in my pocket I doubt my activities for the evening would differ any.

You see, it is exam round 2 for my IBHS class on Monday. So this Friday night I have been tirelessly slaving away over my power point notes and relistening to the lectures….Okay so maybe that is a little bit of a fib…. In actuality those are my actual intentions that are being avoided right now by my little friend called Procrastination. After returning home from lab today, I have suddenly found the time to do my laundry, clean up my room and bathroom, cook dinner and clean up the dishes, watch today’s DVRed Oprah episode (which was great and made me cry like all the other episodes this week), and bake brownies. Okay so maybe it all was not procrastination, I mean I gotta eat right? And not to mention, I am yet again procrastinating by making a blog post. But you know if I don’t my avid readers will be disappointed that it has been over a week since my last post, so this isn’t procrastination either right?

Round 2 will commence Monday morning at 9 am and I hope this time that technology is on our side and we do not have another system malfunction. In addition I hope to have a KO for this exam :). This exam will actually mark the end of our first module in the IBHS class. WOW, on Monday we will have only been in school for close to a month and we are already finishing our first Module and that is 1 Module closer to my PharmD!

Other than studying and going to class my life has become exceptionally boring because of the fact I have little time to do anything else. However, I have become accustomed to living on my own and I think that it is starting to grow on me. I am really enjoying the independence, even though I already considered myself independent to some degree, this is a new sort of independence. I think one of the major things that I really enjoyed about owning a condo has been the decorating aspect and I have always said if I wasn’t doing pharmacy I would want to be an interior designer. My sister insists that it can be a hobby and has already gladly promised to let me decorate her house (in the long distant future). I have recently added things to my living room that I am quite proud of. The large portrait I painted last year and was adorned in our living room in Apt 244 and I took it with me when I moved.

In addition, the little canvases dispersed within the photos were a recent paint project of mine.

And of course my Home Sweet Home, which was also hung up in Apt 244 but it stands out a little better on the beige wall here.

In addition, I am proud of my little dining room area as well :)

Now off to study!!

Exam 1 = Personal Success...

So an update from the "day that technology revolted"... we got our exam grade back this morning and I got an 86! Yay, that is a personal success!! I know an 86 is not an A; however, if you are at all familiar with the caliber of testing that the professors force upon the students at UNC, you share in my enjoyment. For those of you not familiar with the tests that are given at UNC, you would know that anything above a 70 is great and an 80 is exceptional. So, needless to say, it has been a while since I received a grade this high in a science class and I am ecstatic and flying high like this little guy!!

It is just such a different feeling than the exams I am used to. At UNC I would study and prepare for an exam like no other. Then I would take the exam while pulling my hair out at the same time because I felt as though everything I had studied was nowhere near this exam and everything on the exam was pulled from space. Then I would inevitably get my exam back like a week later and receive my less than subpar grade. Mind you many of the times I would receive a 70 and be bummed, only to find out the class average was a 55. Wow that makes sense, huh? My conclusion between these differences in testing lie with the main motivation of the professors. At UNC, the professors are more concerned with not giving out too many A's in their classes because giving too many A's ensures that they as professors are not making the material challenging enough, OH nO, it could not mean that the students actually studied and prepared for the exam to rightfully achieve that A. They choose to focus on the grade distribution among the students in their class rather than focusing on whether or not the students are learning the material. So they choose the nit pickiest questions and try to include answers to make you stumble over your pencil.

Here, I have noticed that it is more about the quality of learning we are receiving rather than the grade we are obtaining. The professors are more concerned with us learning the information and that is evidenced through their lectures and testing style. I think in the long run it is more important to have a class fully comprehend the material at hand rather than have a class that has a bell curve grade distribution.

Now do not get me wrong and misinterpret my analysis as a bashing of UNC because that is not it. I love UNC and had a great undergraduate experience there and wouldn't trade my time as a Tar Heel for anything. However, now looking at it from a different perspective, I can tell that I am at a different institution that places a little more value on their students rather than their status quo.

Now as I step down from my soap box, I just realized that I have been living up here for nearly a month!! That is crazy, time really has flown by and hopefully this next month will fly by as well as I will be traveling down south the second weekend in October!!

First Exam down.....well sort of

So yesterday I had my first exam in Pharmacy School. The exam was for our IBHS class which is Integrate Basic Health Science Class. This class meets 3 times a week and has three different modules each semester. However, each module only has two exams which meant that the exam I took yesterday was 58% of my total module grade. So no pressure, right?!! Well, in case you didn't know Shenandoah is all about their technology and have access to lectures through Itunes and virtual lectures online. So, needless to say, they wanted to expand their technology usage further to enhance the way that we take our exams. So they threw out the standard pen and paper type of exam and introduced us to their Perception software where we submit our exam answers in a secure lockdown program that locks out all other programs to eliminate cheating. Sounds good right, because now you get your exam grade instantly instead of waiting for weeks for the professor to grade them. In theory, I believe this would be a semi-good idea if it would have actually worked. So I am just sitting at my desk going along answering my little questions online and thinking things are going great, and then comes the time to click submit. So I hit the SUBMIT button and guess what appears, (no it is not my exam score), none other than a "fatal error message". So I start to get an uneasy feeling in my stomach and raise my hand for the professor and he comes over and tells me not to panic and just hit the back button to see if it would help if I could resend my answers. Wait, did he really just tell me not to panic, of course losing all my answers that I just spent the last 45 minutes answering is not a cause for panic. So I click the back button as he suggested and guess what appears, not a filled out exam form, but one completely devoid of all my answers (clearly this would be a great time to panic)!



Yet, my professor still does not understand my cause for alarm (really man, you dont understand why I am a little freaked out right now??) Instead, he tells me to just fill out the exam again and he would check into the IT problem and see if he could retrieve my answers. The next thing I know is about half the class is raising their hands with the same problem as I was having. Okay , phew, at least I had other people who were in the same boat as I was in! After 20 minutes of the IT staff trying to figure out why the technology had decided to protest and show us whose boss, the professor finally decided that the only surefire way of us being able to complete our exam would be by doing so the old fashioned way of using pen and paper. What, take a paper exam? That is so last year!! I of course, had no opposition to this method since I actually prefer this method because I am able to cross out answers and write things out. So yesterday instead of taking our first 65 minute exam, I ended up taking a 2 and 1/2 hour exam. The only downside was the really the inability of us being able to receive our exam scores, but due to the issues from the exam the professors have promised to have our exams graded by our 9 am class tomorrow.

Exam 1 down, many many more to go to get that Pharm D.