Semester Books

My Year 3, Semester 1 Notebook. 

Another semester about to wrap up, which means that I've completed yet another semester book.

What is a year book? When I started at CCNM in the Fall of 2010, I found myself learning so many cool things that I needed a place to document them all! Plus, my mind was racing at the start of CCNM and I find journaling (and blogging!) to be very therapeutic; I'm the type of person why needs to write things down. I wanted something small enough that I could carry it with me too (I don't always bring my laptop to class). I decided to start bringing a little notebook around with me where I could jot down these important notes because some things are just too important to be lost in the kerfuffle of course notes.

What I have included in these books over the past 3ish years: funny things profs said or did, blog post ideas, to-do lists, goals, memories, inspiring quotes, fun facts, reminders for fourth year, and future practice ideas. Many of my interesting tid-bits were taken straight from these notebooks!

Don't forget that ACE-inhibitor drugs cause coughs... purchase a tabletop dishwasher for tea mugs in my future clinic... recommend the book The Easy Way to Quit Smoking by Alan Carr to patients who want to quit smoking... talk about orange peels on the blog... 

...these are a few examples of things that are written down daily in my semester-long notebooks (I thought I would have one book per year, but I guess there are too many cool things to document during my time at CCNM that I ended up needing a new book every semester. The book featured above has two unfilled pages left and there is only one week left of classes: what perfect timing!

Now when it comes to time to look back at my time at CCNM, not only do I have this blog, but I'll have eight little notebooks to remind me of what was important, inspiring, blog-worthy, and so on.  I am especially grateful that I kept a running list of "future practice ideas" because almost daily something comes up that is important but I know that I'll forget about if it doesn't get written down. I also don't want to have to rummage through thousands and thousands of course notes to remember what is the best supplement brand of 5-HTP (a mood enhancing supplement), for instance. Hopefully I've kept the best notes in these little books, which means I'll only have to read eight little books instead of potentially hundreds in order to find out that brand (which is Natural Factors, by the way).