Polysomnographics are hard
Feb. 12th, 2009 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydyI've just taken my second test in the Anatomy and Physiology of Sleep and Breathing. This is a tough course. Nothing in the General Ed stuff has prepared me for this. I got 87.50% on this test, which is better than the 80% I got on the previous test. 78% is passing. 92% or better is an A. Doesn't look like I'll be getting an A in this course. And I'm studying, too, harder than I've ever studied for anything in my life. Clearly I need a new strategy, but I don't know which one.
And the other course, Fundamentals of Polysomnography, is tough too. I missed two questions out of 16 on our first quiz, I think. Haven't gotten it handed back yet. If we get them back. The A&P course doesn't hand things back because it's all online. So you don't know what test questions you missed. Grr. Fundamentals is trying to teach how to read the wavy lines on a polysomnograph. This is much tougher than anticipated. The differences are subtle. I feel very unsure on some of the basics, like identifying sleep spindles and K complexes. It all looks like noise to me. I'm assured that by the end of the semester, I'll be able to do this. I feel very uncertain.
I don't like this. The courses are interesting, but I'm not grasping the material fully. Too much technical detail. I'm much better at big-picture stuff. I wonder if I've chosen the wrong profession to train into. Surely not. I'm just not going to be a star. Disappointing.
And the other course, Fundamentals of Polysomnography, is tough too. I missed two questions out of 16 on our first quiz, I think. Haven't gotten it handed back yet. If we get them back. The A&P course doesn't hand things back because it's all online. So you don't know what test questions you missed. Grr. Fundamentals is trying to teach how to read the wavy lines on a polysomnograph. This is much tougher than anticipated. The differences are subtle. I feel very unsure on some of the basics, like identifying sleep spindles and K complexes. It all looks like noise to me. I'm assured that by the end of the semester, I'll be able to do this. I feel very uncertain.
I don't like this. The courses are interesting, but I'm not grasping the material fully. Too much technical detail. I'm much better at big-picture stuff. I wonder if I've chosen the wrong profession to train into. Surely not. I'm just not going to be a star. Disappointing.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-13 12:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-13 01:43 am (UTC)K.
not grasping the material fully...
Date: 2009-02-13 08:24 pm (UTC)Lots of things are basically hard; they take a year or so of practice to get anywhere at all, for anyone. I can easily see how learning to read wavy lines driven by brain activity would be in that category.
Does you program of study let you, or can you, attach technical detail to concrete nouns or narrative of some kind that attaches (even spurious!) "why" to the detail? That can often help with a big cloud of apparently unconnected technical detail.