PT Olympics

PT Olympics have been a tradition at Marquette since the 50's when the program was established.  The classes compete in a Tug of War, Scavenger Hunt, Trivia, and multiple sporting events like volleyball, basketball, bag toss, and soccer.   As you can see, my class, the DPT-5's are pretty much annihilating everyone at Tug of War - even the DPT-1's and 2's teaming up could not defeat us!
I think it is pretty cool that Marquette PT has traditions of student-planned events that have lasted this long.  Others include Senior Farewell were we get up and poke fun at our professors, Pinning Ceremony in year 6, and initiation of the 5's into our ATB "fraternity"  Alpha Thera Banda.  It's getting to be time for all these events to happen and we have professors who graduated from the program 10-20 years ago who go all reminisce-y when they hear us talk about it.

I may or may not have an automatic in at both the Orthopedic Residency programs at the University of Utah and at the University of Southern California because of one of my professors knowing people at both places.   Now I just have to make sure I do REALLY good in his class so he writes me stellar letters of recommendation.
I get used to it, being here all the time, but every now and then we are reminded what a big motherfucking deal some of our professors are in the PT world and we all take a step back and laugh.   They are all like, "Oh yeah, I'm quoting so-and-so here in lecture because he is is world-known for his work in this.  We get together ever couple of years and talk biomechanics of gait."   Just like it's no big thing.

This semester is great.  Orthopedics, Kinesiology, Physiology of Activity, Patient Management: Documentation and Reimbursement, and Evidence Based Practice.   The first three I'm SUPER interested in, and the last two are taught by awesome professors.
Still hanging out in the PT clinic four hours a week giving free injury evals as a volunteer position.  I'm hoping that after I take my Boards and become a Certified Athletic Trainer they'll have to pay me to do it, but either way it's nice to keep my foot in the door.  I'm trying to bridge the gap between the Athletic Training Program and Physical Therapy programs here - after football season with my high school last year that was it for AT.  I miss it a lot and I'm trying to find a way to get back into the athletic training room and work with the athletes here again.  I just need to find a way to get in at a time where I'm not taking away from the experiences of the undergraduate ATs who are actually assigned to the teams.

I haven't slept through the night since I got back in August 4 weeks ago.  I'm hoping that clearing up some things in my personal life will help with that, cause I'm ready to be done being exhausted all the time.

I just don't have anything to say anymore.

PT Bar Crawl

So what happens when you get approximately 150 Physical Therapy Graduate Students together and provide booze? Students that are all stressed out beyond belief and are being told daily to STOP FREAKOUT OUT and that all the meetings we are setting up with our professors are starting to prevent them from doing work?

Mass chaos mostly.

The nerdy kind.

Where no one can dance and we make anatomically correct references about said bad dancing and comment on how we all should have put on gait belts before we left.

On the way from bar #1 to bar #2. Everything is going well at this point and we are still trying to take nice pictures. During this time, there were jello shots on the bus and we started chanting "I. I believe. I believe that we. I believe that we will drink. I believe that we will drink! I believe that we will drink!" Cause that we what people cheer at the basketball games. Except it's "win" and not "drink." Close enough.

Actually. That's a lie, there's wine on my shirt. So this happened much later in the night but apparently Mandy and I are good at pretending to be sober.

Ah whatever. Let's just continue.

Then they pulled out the boxed wine, and Mandy (from the first picture) and I got REAL EXCITED, cause we are classy-type ladies. Except drinking from a bag on a moving bus when someone else is controlling how much wine pours into your mouth is hard.

And you end up covered in wine. Sticky, but you smell good all night.

Also there was a bottle of strawberry vodka being passed around. I don't remember what I was saying to Lisa at that moment in time, probably something about how awesome it was that both she and I were getting drunk as a skunk on the bus and not actually spending money.

Or we can pretend I'm impersonating a T-Rex.

The line to get into the 3rd bar was taking forever so this fine group of people and I went over to Applebee's. Mostly because we wanted to use the bathroom there instead of waiting in line at Rusty's Old, and thus had to pretend we wanted drinks. Except then Long Island Iced Teas were only $1.99 and Margaritas were only $2.99 (and I love me a margarita) so we ended up staying at Applebee's for a good half hour.

It was at Rusty's Old that I half climbed/half got pulled into the bar through a window. This may or may not have been the point in the night were I ended up with the giant mystery bruise on my shin.

It's ok though. Cause I'm in COLLEGE.

Lisa kept trying to be all *cute* and *take nice pictures* and we were all "NO! WE HAVE NO NICE THINGS HERE!!"

The camera belongs to the bleached-blond girl in front, so I really have no idea who took this picture.

The moral of the story is that I actually go out and do things this year. I don't hate Milwaukee anymore and I really truly love my class and love what I do.

library

Another post!?! What is this madness???

In all reality, I just want to show off the fact that we have bookshelves build into the wall by our pretend fireplace. I wish we could use it, but Weigand says we can't, and you never upset Weigand. House rules.

When I'm a real adult and have my real adult house, I'm going to need a room that I can just fill with books. I'm not sure what kind of books yet, but I want lots of them. I'll put really comfortable chairs and those mini hot plates you use to keep your drink warm in there. Put that will my ALL THE COUNTER SPACE and large back yard with giant garden, me looking for a house is going to look like the scene from Time Traveler's Wife.

Walk in, "nope. next."

"Don't you want to see the rest of the house."

"No, this doesn't have enough counter. Next"

"Nope."

"Nope."

"Nope." ".... YOU HAVEN'T EVEN GONE INSIDE YET!"

"There's not enough room for trees AND vegetables. Next."

Yesterday I was part of a research study my advisor is doing that compares muscle activation of a Curve (self-powered) treadmill and a normal treadmill. The Curve claims there is greater Glute Max and calf activation than a regular treadmill.

I haven't seen the compiled data yet, but I can tell you that self powering a treadmill is HARD. Because of how my ankles move (or don't move really) I had to run on my toes the whole time to hit the belt high enough to run as fast as they needed me too. So I was on a good uphill the whole time.

I can't tell you how much more my muscles were activated, but it took the same amount of effort, measured both by heart rate and my own perception of how hard I was working, to run 5.5mph on the Curve as it did to run 7.2mph for ten minutes on a normal treadmill.

I had 5 transmitters the size of tick-tak boxes put on 5 different muscles (under the blue tape): Glute Max, Quad, Hamstring, Calf, and Anterior Tib. Then there were 8 reflective markers on each leg: toes, both sides of the ankle, shin, knee, leg, pelvis in front, and pelvis in back. And athletic tape totally covering my shoes because they have reflective bits on them. Stylish, I know.

I mentioned I was interested in helping with research and not just being a guinea pig so I talked with the guys running the experiment for a while after. They showed me the results, which was awesome. In the lab we were in, there were about 12 cameras picking up the motion of those markers. Which they turned into a 3D stick image of my legs running on the computer. It was like how they show movies being made when people stand in for mythical creatures and such, but it was MY LEGS RUNNING! Awesome.

Even better than having my own skeleton on the computer, was that my advisor mentioned that he would look into seeing if they needed any more help with the study once they got all the data. It would just be analysis and plugging numbers into Excel, but at least it would get my foot in the door as far as research positions go.

Which would be freaking sweet to see all the research my professors are doing on body mechanics and stuff.

Grandma Dee's Rum Cake

Nailed it.

I think this is actually my Great Grandma's aunt's recipe. Which means that it has that "passed down" delicious factor that you just can't get in anything else.

Having said that, those ladies were not counting calories, I suggest you stay away from this cake if you are. There's a cup of both butter and sugar in the glaze alone. :D

You should probably also stay away from this cake if you are pregnant. The 3/4 cup rum in the cake bakes out, but I put an extra 1/4 cup in the glaze after I took it off the heat.

That's how we roll in this apartment.

The glaze didn't coat the cake as well as I would have hoped, but the glaze is hard. My mom's been making this cake for as long as she's known my dad (36 years) and it's still hit or miss with her. But this is supposed to be a bunt cake, and the glaze is supposed to go on before it comes out of the pan, then cool and harden to the cake in the pan. I didn't have a bunt pan, so I think I improvised pretty well, putting a layer of glaze on the bottom, between layers, and on top.

It just needs some vanilla ice cream. Yummy!

This was the first time I've ever had a "beater" [don't have a mixer so it was technically a whisk] from this batter. I now understand why my mom didn't let us have them as kids, even though with every other recipe there was, my brother and I each got a beater and she got the spatula.

Now I just have to make sure I don't eat the whole thing myself before my roommates get home.

Check out the awesome water bottle I got at the Career Fair last night:

For the past four years I have been going to the Health Sciences Career Fair to get the free stuff: water bottles, pens, highlighters, magnets, more pens, some candy, chapstick, ect. The kind of free crap that people just love to print their name on and give away. This year, I actually expressed a slight interest in some of the companies that had clinics in Phoenix, and I may have actually found a clinic that I would like to spend some time at. It is specifically a Sports Medicine clinic and is directed by an Athletic Trainer, although they do see other general outpatient clients too. However, I found out that I don't get to do as much outpatient as I thought, and in order to pass my Board Licensing Exam (scary) I have to do so much Acute and SubAcute Rehab. Bleh. Acute rehab is like post stroke and old people. Geriatrics? DO NOT WANT.

Next year I suppose I will start asking what they like to hear in an interview and about the interview process in general (ex. Is it appropriate to ask what your salary will be?).

One good think I learned though, if you get further specialized (which I plan on doing) in either Orthopedics or Manual Therapy (the two I am thinking about) "You pick where you want to work and you name what you will be paid."

But the moral of the story is I now have a snazzy aluminum water bottle.