Road to Radiography

I finished up my summer semester in clinical today. All I have left to do this semester is go to my clinical conference with my instructor tomorrow at noon, and then I get to kick back for two weeks off. Today was another one of those painfully slow days at clinical, but I did manage to collect the Simmer’s T-Spine comp. I finished the semester with 7 extra comps that roll over to my 15-comp requirement for the fall semester, so that’s a good start. I will only need 8 comps during the fall to meet the requirement for the top grade.

Tags: 3rd Semester, Clinical, RAD-131 by John Setzler
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I can’t believe I haven’t posted much here lately, but I have been rather busy. We’re almost to the end of the summer term. This is the last week of class and clinical before I get a nice long two-week break before digging back in for the fall semester. I’m busy this week preparing for my physics (RAD-131) final exam that is a combination of two tests rolled into one. We’re having the 5th test of the term and the final all on a single test, so it’s worth two separate grades. That test is at 10am on Wednesday morning. I have clinical on Tuesday and Thursday, and then my clinical conference on Friday.

Overall, clinical has gone well this semester. I have not gotten the number of comps I had hoped to get, but I still have met the requirement for the best possible grade. I’m currently six comps ahead of schedule, so that means I already have six out of the 15 I need for the fall semester. I got my Upper GI comp last Friday, but it doesn’t look like I’ll get the barium enema comp this week. I’ll have to save it for the fall semester. I know where I’m going to be for my clinicals this fall and I’m confident that the barium enema comp will come from the second of my two rotations.

I’ll post again later this week after the exams are over unless something interesting comes up in clinical…

Tags: 3rd Semester, Clinical, RAD-131 by John Setzler
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We dove into RAD-131 (Physics) today. We had about 6 hours of lecture. This first physics class doesn’t have a lab associated with it, so we’ll be having lecture on Monday and Wednesday for the next 5 weeks from 9am to 4pm with a lunch break in the middle somewhere. The good thing about today’s lecture is that I haven’t seen anything I don’t really know yet. Most of what we covered today was basic math review, units of measurement, and we started into the physics fundamentals segment as well. One advantage that I may have in my favor is that I have had college level general physics in the past. Our instructor mentioned today that nothing we would cover would require any more math than the algebra level. My last physics class used algebra for some stuff but it also dug into trigonometry and calculus as well for a lot of the problems we solved. This stuff can’t be too mathematically complicated if algebra will cover it all. He even told us that we could make a list of formulas that we would need on a 5×7 index card and use it on the tests. That will take a lot of the work out of it, but most of the formulas I looked at today were familiar anyway.

We have our mid-semester clinical conference tomorrow afternoon, so I’ll get to leave clinical a little early. I have all my paperwork in place for that. I took the mid-semester film test online this afternoon and made a 93 on it.

It won’t be too long until we are welcoming in a new set of first-year students. They should have an orientation day sometime in July, and we will get to meet all of them.

Tags: 3rd Semester, Clinical, RAD-131 by John Setzler
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I’m a little over half way through my two-week break before the summer semester starts. I have enjoyed the time off so far, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the week as well. Last week, I visited the Kangaroo Conservation Center in Dawsonville, Georgia. The above video clip shows some of that place. It was really interesting and there are over 300 kangaroos on site, as well as other Australian wildlife.

When I start back to class next Monday, I’ll be taking Radiographic Imaging II (RAD-122), Radiographic Physics I (RAD-131) and my third round of clinicals (RAD-171). My clinical rotation will be in an out-patient imaging center and I’ll be in from 8-330 on Tuesday and Thursday, and from 8-12 on Fridays for the duration of the 10-week summer session. I have all of my books ready to go. I purchased “Digital Radiography and PACS by Christi Carter and Beth Veale” on Amazon.com and saved about $8 from the school bookstore price. I also purchased “Radiologic Science for Technologists by Stewart C. Bushong” used on Amazon.com and saved about $50 from the school bookstore price. I purchased the workbook that goes along with this book new from the school bookstore earlier this week. Fortunately, my total book cost for the summer semester was about $110 with the savings I got from Amazon and buying a used book. I’ll probably start reading in these books tonight or tomorrow to get a jump start on the semester. I don’t have a syllabus for either class yet, so it would be hit and miss as to where I should start. Maybe I should just enjoy the break :)

Here’s another video clip from the trip to Georgia… This is the Fountain of Rings at Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park…

Tags: 3rd Semester, RAD-122, RAD-131 by John Setzler
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