I’m taking some online prerequisites through a community college as well as a nurse aide class in an ugly strip mall an hour’s trip from home on mass transit (bus and train).  I’d like to go to nursing school eventually; but due to the shortage of nursing instructors, schools are very selective.  Due to that, I’m a wee bit edgy if I think there’s any possibility I won’t get an “A” in a prereq. Stay with me here…I recently took my first quiz in my nutrition class.  I guess I was the first in the class to attempt it, and I emailed the professor afterward to point out four major errors with the exam, i.e. It covered material she said would be on quiz two; there were 22 questions instead of 15; it gave me a score of one percent because it put a decimal before the 91% and then rounded up.  The professor said she’d fix these problems which she did except she let stand the erroneous grading of a question.  It asked “Which of the following countries…? A. North America…” I chose an actual country as the answer and informed her that North America is not a country, and therefore “All of the above” is not a possible answer.  She said she recognized my confusion(!) but then marked it wrong anyway.  Hell hath no fury like Katie in a semantics battle. I emailed again, and she eventually relented.  While I waited for her response, I fretted over the future of my family…This class was supposed to be an easy A.  If I get a B in Nutrition, I’ll probably fail statistics and pathophysiology and everything else.  Maybe there’s still hope.  Did the syllabus mention extra credit? Ah yes.  I can write a third paper – three or four pages in length.  Here’s the topic:

Choose a specific topic that interests you from Chapter 18 Food Safety and Chapter 19 Global Malnutrition. Define the topic you select, describe the important issues surrounding that topic, and make a recommendation for resolving this problem in the next decade. Follow the essay guidelines that are published in your syllabus.

So yeah, it’s after midnight and I still have psychology homework to do.  And I have to rise at o’dark 30 to take the early bus to drop off my granny nursing shoes (I’ve been stung twice recently in my lower right leg, causing my ankle to swell.  Combined with the shoes, I’m a lovely sight to behold.) at UPS to return to Zappos for a larger size, before getting on the train.  But I couldn’t sleep without commenting on that extra credit assignment.  The brain trust that is the community college Intro to Nutrition class is supposed to solve world hunger in a decade (in 3-4 pages, I mean, be brief about it). Why didn’t anyone ask me sooner?  But now that my professor gave me that extra point, I guess I don’t need to solve the world’s problems for extra credit.  Sorry!

Also, we learned to wash our hands in the nurse aide class today.  My life is AWESOME!