Student SPHere 2008-09

I'm thisclose to the end of the semester, and I'm feeling good about it -- but, though it's strange to admit, I totally wish I could take my last final right now and just be done. My epi exam was Saturday AT 8AM (ugh), and it was tough but could-have-been-worse tough, and I'm just glad it's over. I finished up a CHE take-home exam which didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would over the weekend. Now I'm just waiting for biostats at 8am on Thursday. A little nervous? Yeah. Studying like crazy? Not exactly. But at 10am Thursday I won't even care.

Of course I've been trying desperately to distract myself from finals, preferably with things I can pretend are productive, educational, helpful, etc. This morning, a big group of CHE ladies went to Common Roots Cafe on Lyndale to "study biostats," which we did for a few minutes and you can imagine how it went from there.

Then The Boyfriend and I headed -- through the nasty snow -- to the Science Museum, just for fun. A Texas transplant, he hadn't been there before, and I wanted to see the CSI exhibit before it's over on Jan. 4. Very cool. Maybe cooler if you're 10, but whatever. And I was totally impressed with all the health stuff! I shamelessly went through all the Disease Detectives activities to diagnose fake patients with malaria and e. coli.

Last week, some CHErs and friends headed to 80s night at the Shout House (dueling piano bar, highly recommended) to celebrate the last day of classes...

The Boyfriend and I made our annual Minnesota (and new this year -- Texas!) Christmas cookies to send to his fam...

And we, of course, laughed at our dog who decided to eat his new run for a midnight snack...

Otherwise I've just been looking forward to my weeklong post-finals nap, lounging with my fam up north and doing nothing. Well...almost nothing. Since I'm incapable of actually doing nothing, I'm working with the Minnesota Department of Health's refugee health program on evaluating some health education videos and other materials for refugee and immigrant groups. My car is full of boxes, and I have a huge bag of VHS tapes -- good thing the 'rents still have a VCR! I'm still deciding (very quickly, I know) whether I want to try to use this as my field experience or wait until the summer.

And I'll be attempting to run as much as possible in preparation for the Polar Dash 10K on New Year's Day -- and praying that it's not absolutely freezing, dumping snow, pelting freezing rain or any other torturous winter thing that only Minnesota knows how to do.

Happy holidays to everyone! Enjoy break, and stay warm!