I Broke My Brain Again!

*I started this post last week, but forgot to finish it.*

On March 11th, I hit my head on a crossfit machine, and received another stupid concussion. I was so angry. I mean, first I catch a softball with my forehead, and now I hit my head on a silly Glut-Ham machine... this is just insane. My family has been making fun of me for it like crazy. This is the machine that I hit my head on...

Your hips rest on the semi-circular pad, and your feet are locked in the cylinder looking things behind that. You bend at the waist until the top half of you is perpendicular to the ground. It is called a Back Extension Exercise.

I took my glasses off for this because they kept sliding off of my face. Unfortunately, I have TERRIBLE depth perception without my glasses, and when I went to do a back extension, I went too far and hit my head on the bolt on the bar perpendicular to the ground. My forehead was hit in the same spot as before. I lost vision for a few seconds (which happened when I caught the softball with my forehead), but then everything went back to normal, so I completed the workout as usual. When I got home I got a HUGE headache, and I felt sick to my stomach, which are two symptoms of being post-concussive. The next day at school was terrible; I could not focus at all. So I called my Mom on my way home for lunch and she scheduled an appointment for me after school. The doctor told me I was post-concussive and that I could not do crossfit for 7-10 days. I resumed workouts right at 7 days, and I have been fine since. I had a lovely little bump on my forehead right above and between my eyebrows. It was just lovely.

So I guess the lesson I need to learn is to wear a helmet everywhere I go because clearly I am not capable of protecting my head and brain from this dangerous world.

Thoughts on the Future and The Troubles of Being a Music Student

I am honestly am getting tired of people telling me that I am selling myself short by the career choices that I am considering. Awhile ago we had parent-teacher conferences, and my chemistry teacher told my mom that he thinks that my decision to be a CRNA is foolish. He thinks that I am selling myself short by not pursuing Anesthesiology. With all due respect, he is the foolish one. Every time he brings this up, I explain to him that the reason I want to be a CRNA is because I am more interested in the nursing aspect of it. I want to be a nurse, and he just can't seem to wrap his brain around that. It really frustrates me. I mean, I know he's trying to push me to higher achievements, but what if I don't want to be an Anesthesiologist? The beauty in my plan to become a nurse and then go to CRNA school later is that if I decide that anesthesiology isn't the right path for me, I always have nursing to fall back on; whereas, if I go to school to become an Anesthesiologist and decide it's not for me, I don't have anything to fall back on. I've tried explaining this to him multiple times, but he doesn't seem to listen to me. However, he is helping me a lot by preparing me for college. Here at Kearney High, an Advanced Placement (AP) Chemistry class is offered. This class is for seniors, and it can count for college credit through UNK, and since I am, as of now, planning to go to UNK, it should work out rather smoothly.

Speaking of classes for next year... DON'T EVER MOVE IN HIGH SCHOOL! It is sheer craziness to try to get all of the required classes in my schedule because different schools have different graduation requirements, and some classes don't transfer very well. For example, Health is a freshman class at Kearney, and it is required for graduation. I took Health in Ogallala. It went along with my PE class, but for some reason when Ogallala sent my transcripts to Syracuse, rather than "PE/Health" it just said "PE", so I can't use that for Health credit, so I will be retaking freshman Health.

We have been working on putting our schedules for next year together these past few weeks, and it didn't work out very well at first. We have block scheduling, which means that rather than having eight 45-minute periods, we have four 90-minute blocks. It is really awesome when it comes to taking core classes, because I only have to be in a class for a semester for it to count as a year, but it absolutely sucks if you are in band and choir. All music ensembles have rehearsals that are 45 minutes long, the only problem with that is that there are very few classes that are 45 minutes long as well. Next year, I will have Wind Ensemble, Chorale, and KHS Pops (That's our show choir.) to put into my schedule. As I was putting my schedule together, it just wasn't working out. I had multiple teachers tell me that I should drop one or two of my music classes to fit all of my required classes in, and this just made me upset. I worked my tail off to get into the highest level band, the highest level choir, and the highest level show choir, and I am not willing to give those up. Last week I went into the councilors office, and she came up with a plan to save my music classes. I will have to take my Health class online over spring break, and I will have to take Political Science (grad requirement) and Psychology online over the summer. It's not exactly convenient, but I would much rather do this than lose all of my music classes.