Tag: school

Another Semester Bites the Dust

If I told you I had an undergrad degree with a co-op designation and multiple terms on the dean’s list, and a public relations certificate, would you believe me if I said I still didn’t know how to be a student?

This semester was HARD. I feel like I felt an entirely new level of stress and anxiety. I’m in a hard place to trying to entirely focus on school to get the grades I need to get into med school, but also not fall apart at the seams in the finance department. This semester I had a part time job for the four months, was balancing volunteer work, with limited to social/free time, and a half course load of very heavy classes (read my first chemistry class EVER, my first university math class, and biology).

Not to mention, I’m still battling my low energy levels. I started on consistent iron supplements in February, regular B12 shots since March, and slightly more attention to nutrition. But I’m also fallen off my iron pills and nutrition in the last month. Like cliff-dived.

Today, I wrapped up my final of three cumulative exams. I definitely feel like a weight was lifted off my shoulders but I also still have this heavy feeling in my stomach. This is the first time in my academic career where I’m not absolutely relieved to be done. This leads to me to a very clear revelation that things need to change in the fall. I am not deterred from school, in fact I know this drive is ever more clear to get myself INTO med school. I am deterred from feeling this overwhelmed and having a weekly scheduled completely bogged down, every hour of the day.

Here’s to figuring out a solid plan when I head back to the books in the fall (if not this summer-I’m trying to get onto a waitlist at another school to take the next level of chemistry).

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Post Finals Brain

For the past month and a bit I’ve been in a self-induced academic cave. I was determined to do well on my finals to finish my first semester back at school with a bang. I was constantly thinking about school. Then this past Monday, I wrote two finals. And woooooosh. My brain was finally free to think of things other than academia. It was the strangest feeling.

I mentioned this to a teller at a bank recently, who was also a student, and found we had the same kind of feeling. Isn’t it strange how you can shift your mindset like this? After I left the bank,  I felt a bit odd that I could freely think about almost anything. So much so that I wasn’t sure what to think.

Here’s to getting back to weekly posts as we head into the holiday season, and soon to be new year!

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Narrowing My Focus

Going back to school this past September, has really opened my eyes to a sense of balance. There are four main areas that are top priority for me:
1. School-doing well
2. Personal relationships-maintaining them and treating them properly
3. Wellness-taking care of my health through physical activity and proper nutrition
4. Financial-my back account desparately marks it’s level of importance in my priorities

What I’ve really been noticing is that I am not managing these areas very well. Physical activity has absolutely fallen to the wayside. Nutrition, is creeping its way back up, especially with the support of my boyfriend. Financial, absolutely forced it’s way back in. Personal relationships are currently coasting, I’m not putting an extreme amount of energy into it but they are holding strong. And school. Well school is needing the majority of my time and energy, but it is not getting as much as I want to or need to give it.

I read a post last week, from where I cannot exactly remember but it was from Elizabeth Gilbert, that esentially examined where her energy goes. She originally identified as a low energy individual but upon reexamining her life she found that she was just putting energy into places that were absolutely draining.

This got me thinking. I have also identified as a low energy person. I love my naps. I always have thought there was something wrong with my physiologically causing this. At first, poorly controlled diabetes. Then I got on top of that so it couldn’t be the cause. Then I had low, but not anemic levels, iron. I haven’t addressed this, because I am very inconsistent with medication that requires me to take pills. But as I’m not anemic, I’ve deduced that the level at which I preseve my energy levels to be is far too extremely low to be attributed solely to this. My energy levels are a constant staple in my mind, but often at the very bottom of the priority list of things I need to address. So when I read this post from Elizabeth Gilbert, I stopped and looked at where my natural level of energy was going.

I don’t drain my energy obviously, to myself. I devout most of my time to school. I’m an older student now and realize how I best study, and the enormous amount of time that is needed. But even so, I realize I’m not the most efficient with this time. I need to commit to figuring out a better strategy to retain and understand the most information but also have energy remaining to address the other areas that are a priority for me.

This thought process has really shed light on where and how I spend my time. Have you heard of that saying “We all have the same amount of hours in a day as Beyonce.”? Well I am working on figuring out HOW to be as efficient as possible. It is more of an ongoing process, now that I’m focused on a goal at school. Hoping too that the learning curve is quick as I wrap up my first semester back.

Have you thought much about where your energy goes? Are you spending your time on your top priorities? Leave a comment, I would love to know!

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I’m Back!

I’ve taken a bit of a hiatus from social media in the past three months. I made a decision at the end of August to step away from a career in public relations. Let me back track a bit and explain what my thought process was.

At the end of my third year in my undergrad degree, in psychology, I decided I was not ready to pursue a Ph.D. This was definitely the right decision at the time, as I would not have put my whole being into what I was pursuing. So I took an extra 2 years to complete my degree and three (which turned into five) co-op terms. This was a great experience as it exposed me to three very different arena that my career could go. Firstly with the Canadian Space Agency (federal government; psychology focused), followed by Dixon Transition Society (non-profit; adminstrative and event based), and lastly with the BC Lions (private sector; event based). At the end of this, I discovered public relation and enrolled in short and sweet nine week pr certificate. I was lucky enough to intern and work before I started in pr, and immediately after I finished my certificate. This was a great direction for me to pursue at the time, as it hit a lot of the interests that I had: social media, building relationships, and events. However, after nearly a year and half in the industry it really dawned on me that pr wasn’t the right fit for me. I loved what I was doing, I worked with great people, but I didn’t feel like I was thriving.

I am discovering my values and recently realized that I really want to make an impact in my career. This notion led me to the idea of medicine. Now that is a whole lot of schooling. I know. And a completely different direction. So what I am doing is testing out the physical sciences. The last time I picked up a physical science textbook was in 2008. Needless to say, I am putting myself in a bit of an experiment. In the next year, I plan to finish intro biology and chemistry, and will then make a decision to see if this is the path I want to be on.

So there you have it. A bit of a left turn in my career trajectory, but a challenge and goal that I am excited and scared to take on. And that I feel is the biggest indicator of something you should do.

Now for the goals of this blog. I wanted to keep doing some of the things I was doing including attending events, meeting new people and developing relationships, and sharing ideas. So I created this space, when this name dawned on me. I’ve attended quite a few events in the past to the point where some people started to recognize me off of social media. Now I thought that was a bit weird. But I thought why not utilize my event attendance to help support my developing writing skills. And so That Girl in Vancouver, was born.

Here’s to a year of fruitful lessons, endeavors, and writing!

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