More Snow!

The snow is still here! It was great while we were off school, but now it's becoming a bit of a pain. This morning I thought it was going, but it fell again during the day. I heard on the radio that it's going to melt over the next few days but the "Arctic weather" will be back to haunt us by mid week next week! It's bizarre, I have never seen such dramatic weather!
   On the upside, the snow makes everything so pretty and Christmassy! :) and we've had some amazing icicles because it has been so cold.

Snow!!

I woke up at half six yesterday morning freezing, wishing that I could just curl up in my duvet and go back to sleep. Waking up cold always puts me in a bad mood. I opened my curtains and saw that it had snowed and suddenly all my anger disappeared. It was crazy! Christmas songs immediately filled my thoughts and I forgot that I had to go training for a while. For once I loved being up so early. The estate was pure white, and my footsteps were the first to tread on the snowy blanket. I really should have taken pictures at that time.
 The snow fell again last night and the paths were really slippy as I was going babysitting. Hopefully it will stay and get us a few days off school :)

   

The Korean War Project

I finally finished my powerpoint this week and presented it to Ms. McHale's 3rd year class today. I was a bit nervous because I don't really like talking in front of big groups, but you just get on with it. It was a relief to get it finished. Now I have to make a start on my local history project which is due in a few weeks.. it seems like there is no end to the projects!

Course in Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin

Last week Aoife and I went to an "Introduction to Paediatric Hospital life" course in Our Lady's for TY students. We got the 7.15 bus into town each morning and then got the 123 out to Crumlin. On the first day we were happy to see some familiar faces, old friends of ours who we know from years ago. It was really good to see them again :) We were given a timetable which laid out the week ahead of us. Each day we had talks from around 6 - 8 different representatives of the various departments. There were far too many to name them all! After my week of work experience in Connolly Hospital, it was interesting to hear the different perspectives from doctors working in a paediatric hospital. I also really enjoyed the talk from one of the nurses in particular, who really sold the idea of doing nursing to me.
   We were in lectures for the whole week apart from the first day, when we were given a tour of a few of the labs. We got to see a child's kidney tumour. It was absolutely massive. I had no idea how big they were! It was so weird looking too, it was a weird whitish colour with green and black wiggly edges. We also got to look at blood through a microscope. Most of the talks were really interesting. Some of them were good, because they made me realise that I definetely did NOT want to go anywhere near that specialty! I was glad I did the course, because it opened my eyes to other courses I might be interested in such as Pharmacy and Psychology.
   After the talk and my work experience, I have decided I would really enjoy the day to day work of a doctor. After talking to so many different people in the health profession over the past few weeks, I have learned just how much work I will have to put in over the next ten years or more if I actually want it. I am naturally lazy though, so I'm still unsure whether its a career for me!

Work Experience Days 3, 4 & 5 :)

Each day I was at the hospital from 8 (or sometimes before if we were early) until 5:30. Every night when I got into the car, it suddenly hit me just how tired I was. Each morning, I went to the morning case hand over meeting first thing. Then I went on ward rounds with the team, and after that I did different things each day. I loved seeing the patients each day, as a lot of them were there for the duration of my placement. Most of them were really friendly, and some of them talked to me. I really enjoyed intereacting with them, and I learnt so much about how to talk to patients. Each day I ate with the team. I really liked hearing their stories and banter, and they were all so friendly I didnt feel too out of place. Whenever we had an interesting case, someone would always explain the technical stuff to me. I learned so many medical terms and conditions that I had never heard of before!
    On Friday I got to go to Cardiology for a little while, and I got to see an ECG, a stress test and a heart echo being done on patients. It was really interesting. It was amazing to see the heart as a 3D moving shape, and all the valves from various angles, rather than the flat picture in our science books! Over the week I also observed and assisted the intern when she was taking blood from patients, and I learned how hard it can be to get a good vain! One poor patient had to have the needle put in 4 different places befroe we got any blood! I learned a good technique from one of the S.H.Os about taking arterial blood so hopefully I wont forget it!
   Every day I was excited going to the hospital. Every day was different in it's own way, and I loved it for that. Every patient brought a new challenge to the day and although the days are long, the hours actually fly by. Even the doctors who have worked there for years say it. It was really nice to see how thankful the patients are for the care the doctors give them, there are loads of cards around the place and often the patients and their families shake the hands of every doctor on the team before we leave them.
   I loved talking to the doctors, and I was so grateful for their honest opinions. It was great to get an insight into their personal lives, and I saw how much commitment the job requires. They gave me really good advice, and they told me of ways to  do medicine if i don't get the points. I had an amazing week :)

Work Experience Day 2 :)

      This morning I arrived at the hospital at 7.35a.m, 25 minutes early. It was kind of annoying that I was early again, because we didn't expect the traffic to be so good. Still though it's much better than being late! :) I walked around for a while, and then went to my locker. At 8 I went to one of the conference rooms, where I met my team and many other teams. There was free tea and coffee and some breakfast :) One of the consultants presented cases to everyone, and the crowd made suggestions on how to progress with the patient's treatment. After that, all the other teams left and Dr. Wan, who I was working with yesterday made a presentation to the endocrinology team. It was about a case study on a drug used by patients with type 1 diabetes. Afterwards, there was a discussion about the drug, and then the ward lists were handed out.
     We began the ward rounds after that. I liked seeing the familiar faces of the patients we had yesterday, and seeing how they have progressed/regressed since yesterday. The most senior member of the team from yesterday was not with us today, and there was a more relaxed atmosphere about the team. The doctor who took his place as leader of the team was really good with the patients, even in one particularly difficult case.
     After the break, I was with Carmel for a while, and then she asked me and Ali the sub-I to do some flow charts. It took us a while to find a free computer and to figure out the programme for checking labs, but once we got the hang of it we got them done pretty quick. We did that until two, and then we had lunch.
     After lunch, we found Carmel again, and she was very busy. She asked Ali to get some bloods from a patient, and I went with her to A&E. I spent the rest of the day running tests with Carmel. I watched her change a catheter and take blood from an artery. She taught me how to use a blood analysis machine. It was really cool, I never knew you could put a needle of blood straight into a machine and it would tell you the amount of each constituent contained in the sample straight away. My day ended at 5.30. I think I learnt a lot today and I found it really interesting :)

Work Experience Day Uno :)

I got there half an hour early this morning. I met a nurse at the door to the academic centre who directed me to where I was told to go. I went to that office, butthere was no one there yet, so I decided to go for a walk around the grounds. It was absolutely freezing out and my breath formed little White puffs in the icy air as I walked. I could see a few patients in the A&E waiting room, but apart from that the hospital seemed as though it hadn't really woken up yet.
At nine, I went back to the office I was supposed to go to, but there was still no one there. I was kind of expecting this, I don't know why, it seemed too quiet or something. So I just walked back to the top of the stairs where there was a woman using the photocopying machines. I asked her if she knew where The woman I was supposed to go to was, and she didn't know who I was talking about so she brought me to a nice man called Noel. He tried to find the woman, and when he realised she wasn't in, he showed me how to use the pagers and phones to contact the team and gave me a locker. Then he told me where they were, and just as I was about to leave him and try find them in the maze of buildings, he said "sure I'll come with you for the walk". I was so happy when he said that because no doubt I would have got lost as soon as I left the academic centre!
We met the team in the redwood ward which has nice red curtains, and Noel went back to the academic centre. The team then went around the wards checking on the endocrinology patients who were mixed into wards among people with all kinds of things wrong with them. It was really interesting and fast paced, sometimes I felt sorry for the patients because although I knew the doctors cared about them, they didn't really look at them when they spoke as they were writing and Reading the charts.
We had a break for about 15 minutes in the cafe, all the team together. There is a student doctor called Ali on the team, and it was his first day today too. He is quiet when the other doctors are around but he's really nice, and I'm glad he's there because sometimes they forget I'm not a medical student and ask me the questions! So I just look at him and he answers.. They probably think I'm just a really stupid medical student haha..
After the break, I did filed charts, ordered tests, found patient records and x-rays and loads of other stuff with an intern called Carmel. She is absolutely lovely (and she never forgets I'm not a medical student so she expalains everything :) we walked around really fast and were constanty rushing from patient to patient, but it was my favourite part of the day. Carmel had to take blood from a woman with really bad alzheimers, and the poor woman kept screaming because she didn't understand what was happening. Her husband was with her, and bless him he was so cute he was so patient with her, and you could tell he really loves her. The. He was asking if she had made any progress and if Carmel thought she'd be disharged soon. When she said no his tone just dropped. That was the saddest part of the day :(
After loads of rushing around with Carmel, she told me to go have lunch with kassan another member of the team. He told me about where he went to college and asked about my life. I had been a bit wary of him initially, but he's actually really funny.
After lunch, I went to the clinic with kassan, where I worked with Dr. Wan for the rest of the day. It was much more relaxed than earlier in the day, which made me realise how tired I was. Dr Wan explained everything really well as he read the charts, and the. The patients woukd come in for a consult. Afterwards he recorded his notes on his taperecorder and explained his diagnosis. The patients were really friendly, and although some of the cases were similar, I found them all interesting. The clinic ended at 5:30 and my day was over.
Tomorrow I have to be there at 8 for breakfast and a meeting. I'm excited to go back, I just hope it goes as well as today :)

Dublin Institute of Design

On the Friday before midterm, my mini company group went to Dublin institute of Design to meet with Brendan Dwyer, an architect who agreed to give us advice on the design of our spoover. He was really nice and listened to us intently. He gave us paper and we each sketched what we imagined the product to look like. He then got us to begin making a basic prototype our of easy to carve wood and clay. We examined how existing products work and recorded their faults. We made a list of functions we want the product to have and got a sense where we are going with the company. Overall it was a very productive and positive day :)

Accord Workshop

This morning a woman called Margaret from "Accord" came in to give us a talk. We talked about relationships and how there were many different types of them. I thought it was really good because Margaret was very open with us and told us stories from her own experiences. She let us decide what we wanted to learn from the day, and gave people the opportunity to ask annonymous questions. I didn't really find it boring because Margaret was really friendly and open. I think the talk was a good idea :)

Mini Company Workshop Wednesday 20th October

     We got the bus to Naas and gathered in the theatre with our groups. Orla chose a few Managing Directors to speak to the group about their mini company. We thought about how we would advertise our company, and we looked at bad forms of advertising. After the break, the Marketing Managers had to speak. Ruth told the group about our mini company and our product the "Spoover". Tomorrow we are going to Dublin Institute of Design where we will meet with an architect called Brendan Dwyer, who has agreed to help us design our Spoover. I am excited for tomorrow, and hopefully we will have a prototype of the Spoover soon so we can start looking for a manufacturer! :)

Colour Me Beautiful :)

Yesterday, Friday 15th of October, we had a workshop with two women from colour me beautiful for the first few classes. It was really good. We were divided into groups depending on our hair, eye and skin colouring. There was a model from each category selected to go to the top of the room where the women put collars of different colours on them. It was really obvious that some colours are not meant for certain skin tones. I was told I am a "soft". I would never have thought of wearing some of the colours they suggested, and it was good to find out what didn't suit me. I won't be throwing out my whole wardrobe or anything, but it's good to know for when I'm buying new clothes :D

Young Scientist Project

This week we planned to make our placebo for our testing, but we realised it is going to be much harder than we expected. We have emialed Professor John Barrie in UCD about it, and we have been talking to Ms. O' Callaghan too. We might be changing our testing to include coco water instead of a placebo. We had planned to begin our testing next week, but it won't be happening for a few weeks now.

Mini Company & visit from Orla from Kildare Enterprise Board

On Monday morning bright and early, Orla from Kildare Enterprise Board came to visit us! She made the C.E.O of every group stand up and present their ideas to her and the two classes. When this began our group went into a bit of a panic because we hadn't decided our idea and we hadn't decided who would take on what roles within the group! Luckily, Aoife had come up with and idea on Sunday, and the whole group liked it. We appointed her as C.E.O because she knew best how to describe our product. It is called "Scooper Duper". This week we are going to make a 3D sketch of it on a program called Solid Works in our tech class. Hopefully we will receive replies from people we have emailed about the production soon :)

Geography Project

This year we have to do a geography project on countries we would like to visit. We are in groups of three. I have chosen Australia as the country I would like to visit. I have always wanted to go to Australia, especially since I saw the movie "Australia" which made me want to visit more than just the typical tourist areas in Australia. I hope to see kangaroos in their natural habitat, and go scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef. I have a budget of €4,000 for the four months which I will spend there, so I plan to volunteer somewhere where I will be fed and given accomodation, or else get a job for a while. Here are some pictures of what I hope to see :)

Carlingford :)

 We met in Esso at 7a.m on Monday morning. We were all really excited for the trip! We arrived and quickly sorted out the rooms and met the guides who told us the plans for the two days.

         The first activity my group did was the highropes. There were three different ones. The first one I did involved climbing up a wooden pole which had pieces of wood jutting out so you could climb it. When we reached the top we had to stand on a wooden platform which was only a square foot. That was the easy part though. Then three others climbed up and we had to pull each other up and cling on to one another so no one fell. I was the last one to go up, so it was very difficult to stand up on the platform, but I managed it in the end. The scariest bit was trying to stand up without knockng the other three off! Then we had to link arms and slowly lean back off the platform. Although we were wearing harnesses, the adrenelin was still pumping! Then we had to move to holding each others arms, and then hands until we were almost in a star shape. Then we let go and were lowered to the ground. The second one involved climbing up rungs in a wooden beam onto a sloping beam (with nothing to hold onto!) up more rungs and onto a straight beam, then up more rungs and onto a tightrope! Jacob's ladder was a huge ladder of horizontal wooden beams suspended from rope. The spaces between them grew larger as we climbed higher. We were in teams of four and it was really funny because we had to pull each other up, and we nearly fell off loads of times! The highropes was probably my favourite activity.

       That afternoon, my group went kayaking. Most people went in a "double frenzy" which had two people, but there was an uneven number, so there was three in mine. It was great craic because it was really windy and we kept crashing into one another! We stopped near a castle and got out and played a crazy game where we had to crawl under each others legs run up to one of the instructers and spin around really quickly ten times! I was so dizzy after the spinning that I ran straight into the stack of paddles and fell over! It was very embarrassing, but hilarious at the same time! When we got back to the boathouse and put away the kayaks, we went pier jumping! The wind was so strong there was little water tornadoes! I loved the thrill of it, even though the water was very cold. We jumped off the pier and then the pier wall, which was higher.
     After dinner that night, we went on a hike. We set out in our wellies and rain jackets, because it looked like rain was coming. When we were halfway up, we reached the cold mist. The early morning and the day of fun began to catch up on us all, and we got really tired. When we got back we had chinese :) And we were all so tired we fell asleep pretty soon after that.
        The next morning, we did orienteering at the bottom of the mountain. After luch we went to the challenge course. We were divided into teams and we had to do loads of team building activities. It was really fun and our leader was great craic :)
    Overall we had an amazing time! :)

Social Development Day

On Monday 6th September, our class had social development day in the library. We made posters and had discussions about personalities. We learned more about personality types and we played a game where we got 8 cards each, 2 blue 2 red 2 yellow and 2 green. We had to give them to away to people depending on if what it said on the card matched their personality. We were then divided into groups based on which colour card we had most of. It was interesting to see how similar some people were to the description of the typical “yellow” or “blue”. I was surprised at the groups others ended up in though so I don’t know if the groups were completely accurate. Austin told us how to motivate ourselves and gave us a special cheer to use if we need to mentally prepare for something. We had to share our most embarrassing moment and our three biggest achievements among other details with the class. It was funny to hear some of the stories, and it allowed us to learn more about each other as a class. Overall it was a good day! :)

Thursday 2nd September

We returned to school on Tuesday 31st August. The TY classes for this year are called Amina and Emnet. I am in Amina which means truth and honesty in an African language. Ms. O' Callaghan is our tutor. The class is made up of everyone who did Spanish in 3rd year, and so I know most people in the class already. I kind of wish we had been mixed up more because I don't know many people from the French class very well and it would have been nice to make new friends. I am happy I am with my friends though so I can't complain. We plan to design a dress in Home Ec. and enter the B.T Young Scientist competition in Science. We are hoping to go on a history tour and we have projects planned in many subjects. On Monday, we have Social Development Day. We have been told not to ask older friends about it, so I am excited for the surprise of what we will be doing.  In Music, Ms. Gilsenan has planned for us to form bands or music groups, and hopefully by the end of the year we will have composed and recorded our own music and a video of us performing it. I am kind of excited about this because hopefully I will get the opportunity to learn a new instrument. So far I have a good feeling about this year :)