Hard Work

I've been studying real hard...honestly! Well sorta... I just had my UMAT (Undergraduate Medicine and Health Sciences Admission Test) today in Ellerslie. Because the rules are so strict I thought I better arrive there early for a change. We got to Alexandra Racecourse and sat there in the carpark, but there was no one else! That's when I realised we were probably at the wrong racecourse! So we decided to try the other one over in Ellerslie...and yeees that's the one! All the health science, biomed and a few high school students were standing outside waiting to get in.

I went over to join my friend Henry and this other guy (his name's uncommon but I should've remembered it!!). We were waiting outside for at least half an hour with everyone crowding around the entrance. Finally when it was 1.30pm people started filing in. We had to show our admission tickets and photo ID to the registration desk and then take our seats in the main room. It took me a while to find my seat!

There was an Indian lady standing on the stage who was the 'BIG BOSS' while there were supervisors standing at the end of every row. The main supervisor lady would call out to each row to check each supervisor had followed her specific instruction:

"Supervisors hand out answer sheets....Supervisor one?"
"CHECK!"
"Supervisor two?"
"CHECK!"
And so it continued right up to supervisor fifteen...

There were three sections that we had to do separately, and we weren't allowed to go back to another section to complete once time was up for it.

Prior to the test I read that we weren't allowed stopwatches into the room so I thought I'd at least try bring a watch just in case, as I didn't know whether they would be giving any time indications. At least they warned us when there was only 10 minutes remaining in each section...except for one section....

"OK everyone time is up put your pens down"

<Everyone is in a state of confusion and panic>

"Woops sorry! I mean you have ten minutes remaining!"

Towards the end this girl in my row had a coughing fit too! Because we were in this convention room there was this kitchen behind us and I could smell something delicious being cooked! There was also a little rattling going on and then..

(a little) CRASH! (a dropped glass maybe?)
and then someone saying
"Oops!"

What about the test? Well the test wasn't too bad but because you only have about a minute and a half to answer each question and for some questions you have to read half a page of text, it meant having to work really fast! The most difficult section was the last section which involved patterns and sequences.

At the end of the test I was waiting outside with Michael my German friend, when my old intermediate school friend (who knows Alice!) Lance came up to me to say hi! WOW he has changed! He's now taller than me with longer hair and glasses! That was good catching up with him.

We finished at about 5.30pm, which was way past the time I had expected to be finished by, so I was trying to find the bus stop along Great South Road, and thanks to Alice (my guider!) I managed to find it after checking out four different bus stops! I just missed four Downtown buses along the way though... I ended up back in the city at about 6.30pm, which meant I missed out on watching the Rutherford College Advanced Debating team defeat Dio to be in the GRAND FINAL! CONGRATULATIONS YOU GUYS!!!!!!

People!

I was going to have my first Health Psychology tutorial on Tuesday, and so I was going to do my best to try meet some new people. As soon as my lecture was over, I caught the bus to the medical school in Grafton. At the reception I tried swiping my card but the red light kept showing and beeping and wouldn't let me in! This other girl was having the same trouble as me! We ended up running through after someone else successfully used theirs.

I got to my tutorial class to discover I could only recognise one guy who I didn't really know from health science. It turned out that I was in a class full of pharmacy students! But that was OK though. Good to broaden my horizons! I got to know this Chinese guy Stephen who used to go to Avondale College (grrrr) and this other guy doing second year pharmacy called Lenny. I know I know why do I keep making friends with guys????? I'll try work my way around the room next week! The health science guy who I recognised but didn't know (although I think I must've talked to him once or twice before an exam) came over to me to talk for a little bit after the lecture though.

We were just learning about different research methods and guidelines for them. A little experiment to see if chocolate helped improve memory was conducted, but I think it was too inaccurate to be taken seriously!

I caught the bus back into the city with Stephen and walked with him to Sky City Metro before I had to go back into the city to sort out my student allowance. On my way back I caught up with Jacqueline who had just finished for the day! So I waited around with her till her mum came to pick her up. I then walked back to the city to sort out my allowance and then caught up with Alice in the Information Commons.

While we were talking and watching movies on her laptop, along came Hussein! We were just catching up for a little while before along came Amber from Rangeview/Rutherford! I tried to introduce them to each other and get a general conversation going amongst them without excluding anyone (sorry Alice! She was a little left out in that one!) Eventually Hussein and Amber had to go, so it was just Alice and me again.

Alice wanted to check out a few shops so we went up to the street and while we were waiting for the free bus, along came Grace, one of Diane's friends I met when I was with her, who was now at Auckland University! She still remembered me, despite not remembering my name! I introduced them to each other, when along came Amy, back from Hong Kong! We were just having a little conversation (well I was trying to get one going amongst them all) when the free bus came. It was so full though. Alice and Grace managed to squish in, but there didn't look like much space left, so I decided I would race them to Britomart.

And I beat Alice there! Grace got off at Sky City though. So Alice and I checked out a few music stores for a CD she was looking for, but when she couldn't find it we walked back up Queen St towards her bus stop. We took a slight detour to the arcade though to try out DDR (like Singstar, only dancing????). It was my first time so it was a bit of an experience! My dancing skills were shocking compared to Alice's though, and so my rating was only a measly 'C'.

After Alice caught the bus home I stayed in the city for a while to study before meeting up with Hamish to try catch a bus to Diocesan School to support Aonghas' debating team against Howick. Once again though we had trouble catching the bus as it went straight past us! Luckily my dad was giving Chen a ride there, so I texted Chen and asked him to get our dad to pick us up.

We got there only to just miss Rutherford's first speaker (Rose) speak. I think I was getting a little too into the debate when after the Howick's third speaker spoke and tried dismissing every statistic the Rutherford team put forward as 'made up', I turned to Chen and probably said a little too loud...

"OH...MY..GOSH...<ramble ramble ramble>"

I think I'll tape my mouth shut when I go to the next debate. Next debate you say? Yes because they beat Howick and are now in the semifinals! CONGRATULATIONS YOU GUYS!!!

We're All In This Together!

So everything is getting off the ground again. Teaching recorder classes on Saturday morning (thank goodness I finally found a piece my recorder class liked - Charconne from The Fairy Queen by Purcell) and uni.

On Sunday we didn't go to church though as we had an orchestra performance in the afternoon. Fortunately the audience was big enough. We performed pieces such as Ballet Egyptian, In the Hall of the Mountain King and other pieces. After, we had some afternoon tea which got me full!

We then visited my uncle at Auckland Hospital. I'm actually not exactly too sure what he was in there for! Our cousins Janice and Korina came by not too soon after. Auckland Hospital looked like a cool place to work! Too bad I probably won't end up (working!) there.

This morning was FREEZING! My car was covered in ice, and I woke up later than usual, so I had to catch the later bus. I got dropped off at the bus stop to find all these Rutherford students. Then. along came Zahir! He looked pretty flash in his prefects uniform! The bus was supposed to come at 8am but it was 8.10am by now, so I was about to walk back home when I thought I might wait a little longer just in case. Fortunately, the bus WAS late! So I caught the bus and only missed the first few minutes of MEDSCI.

That was lucky too, because we were learning the female reproductive system today! More specifically we were learning about the whole menstrual cycle and what goes on downstairs. So now when you girls are cranky or wearing less clothes, I'll know why ;)

I got a bit of a surprise later in the day when I was catching the bus to Tamaki to find my uni friend Kevin on board! It was only just last week when my other friends and I had speculated that he might've switched course, but apparently not, he was just in London on holiday! I met this other girl Sheena from Singapore who was sitting next to Kevin who is also doing Health Science, and discovered that she is in the same MEDSCI lab class as me, so now I know at least one person who will be in my lab class (sorta...)!

After we got back into the city I walked with Kevin to his lecture before coming across Sarena and her friend, and then Nikki, and then Alice! We were all just talking about the menstrual cycle for a little while!

We then went our own ways, I walked Alice to the bus before going back to the library to study a bit more and receive texts from eeeevil girl!

Not So Bad Meeting

I discovered that I have most Fridays off for the first half of this semester! So I was supposed to not have to come into university at all on Friday, but because I didn't know till the night before, I had scheduled an appointment with the guy in charge of scholarships Mr Raphson (ex-Mt Roskill Grammar principal) for Friday morning.

I managed to get into university early on Friday morning and went into the meeting expecting Mr Raphson to criticise me for my bad results. He ended up being pretty cool and not too bad! He was just checking up on me to see how I was finding university, how I was progressing and making sure I knew of the standard I had to be achieving at.

He also asked me if I had any current part-time jobs, and after I told him I taught music and that my parents were suggesting I do some volunteering, Mr Raphson told me about how some students he knew volunteered at community hospitals. This led me to think about possibly volunteering over at Starship, if they wanted my services!

After the meeting I went into the Information Commons to do a bit of study until Alice had finished all her classes and then met up with her in the Information Commons. We sat at this table where another girl Chloe was working at. Alice somehow knew her and introduced me to her. She's doing pharmacy at the moment and so we were just having a bit of a discussion about reproductive organs, periods and menopause while Alice was eating.

She left a while later (not because of our discussion of course!) and Alice and I kept talking and eating, when we realised we were both friends with this guy Lance! I knew him from intermediate school while he was Alice's childhood friend! Alice told me later that night that after she told her friend about me knowing Lance (because her friend knows Lance as well), her friend told her that her friend's friend knew me too!

Potty Talk

For MEDSCI we're studying about organ systems, so what better organ system to study first than the reproductive system! We're starting off with the male reproductive system, which has led our lecturer to make heaps of sexual references. Here are a few of his ...interesting...comments (not accurately quoted):

"Guys think about sex every seven seconds. Well today we're going to be thinking about it for fifty minutes...in this lecture!"

"So when you've got nothing better to do on a Friday night you can go on the net and read up on oxytocin!"

"When a boar ejaculates he releases half a litre of sperm"

"I find the female reproductive system more interesting than the male's....scientifically..."

The lecturer also used one of those long balloons to demonstrate erections!

He told us that while his colleagues tend to frown upon it, he thinks Wikipedia is a good source of information. However, I'm not too sure how comfortable some people would be with searching for penis or ejaculation or sperm on the internet just in case someone else stumbles across their history! (Better clear it guys!)

Tomorrow's topic: spermatogenesis!