CRT Stress

Well, I finally did it. I finally registered for my CRT exam. We were allowed to start a week or so ago, but I honestly didn’t feel ready. Ever since I graduated, my brain has mostly refused to let me do anything that relates even a little bit to school. I know I said I missed it, but it’s kind of a mixed bag right now. I’m trying to be good about staying studied up on everything and forcing myself to look things over in small pieces several times a day. Anything over a half hour right now and I lose interest. I hate that it’s gotten like that and I know it’s a mental block I have going on. Maybe in the end, I keep wanting to put off the exam because I’m afraid of failing it. I’ve never had such a high-stakes exam before and if I can’t pass this, I can’t work. I know I shouldn’t worry about it, but that’s what I’m good at.

I’ve been dealing with a lot of the stress by working out as hard as I possibly can. I really love my gym time, and I can spend so much more time there than I could before. I’m more motivated than ever to do everything I can to get into shape. I can thank my new doctor for that. He’s the only one who has ever actually helped me try to tackle the problem. Going to the gym every day has also been a nice way to get out of the house (which is probably causing me the most stress right now). What I should do is make little “cheat sheets” of respiratory information and formulas and study them while I’m running. I can prop them up on the machine and it’ll give me something to do when I’m working out alone. Other people bring magazines and books and the gym staff doesn’t seem to mind, so I might as well bring stuff to study.

Speaking of study, I finally got around to ordering a kanji dictionary to aid in my Japanese studies. Japanese writing can be a little tricky when it comes to kanji. You have to learn two syllabaries (think alphabet) with 46 basic characters representing sounds in the language. Some of the 46 can be combined with each other, and some have sound changes when you add certain markings to them, so the real number is much higher for each one. Katakana is the one used for loan words from another country or for foreigner's names (and there are a surprisingly large number), while hiragana is what you can use to write everyday Japanese in if you don't know kanji. Kanji are the more advanced characters you can use to write an entire word instead of using just the hiragana (the sounds). I believe there are around 2000 kanji that are used commonly in everyday life, so it takes some time to learn them. You have to learn the proper way to write the kanji, the different pronunciations, and what the kanji itself means. It sounds like a huge undertaking, but once you get going, it's not so bad and it speeds up your writing. Right now I only know about 100 of them, but it has been a couple of years since I've had classes. The kanji dictionary will help me to learn more of them. I can use it to look up unfamiliar kanji while I'm reading and it will tell me how to pronounce them and the meaning. I think it will be a wonderful tool and I should have ordered one a long time ago.

I’ll be updating again next week after I’ve taken my CRT exam. By then I should finally be able to call myself a respiratory therapist!