Aannd I’m baaack! I haven’t even looked at my poor blog in ages, let alone post. The hosting server was sick for a bit there, and I was trying not to think about to much besides my studies. But the good news is, everything’s better and I’VE GRADUATED!!!!!! Yes, you heard right. I have officially finished my course and now have a certificate IV in Veterinary Nursing. I am so relieved that it is over, as well as excited to see what the future holds. Currently, I am working as an animal carer at an animal boarding facility and loving it. God willing, I will soon be able to find a day of two at a local clinic as a nurse to compliment my current job.

Last time I lurked here (March last year), I wrote the following, but never posted it. It is titled “Loving yourself & Loving the world”:

I was reading an entry that I had written in my journal soon after a friend of mine passed away from suicide. The first line was “If I had one more chance to see you”. I then started flipping back to when I first learned of her death, coming across some notes I had written from a sermon I had heard at the time. One of the quotes that I had noted was “There is no one more deserving of your love than yourself.” It got me wondering that if people loved themselves, and I mean truly loved themselves, would they commit suicide? As I have never contemplated taking my own life, I do not know what emotions those who have go through. But that does not stop me wondering.

One thing I do know, God has called us to love the unlovable, those whom others can not, or will not love, to love those who can not love themselves. How many lives will we save, both eternally and here on this earth if we truly take up the cause of Christ?

Often we can not see the trees for the forest, or in this case, the people for the poverty, overcome by the enormity of the issue. “Love the one.” Heidi Baker once said, and it’s the truth. We will not be able to solve all the world’s problems in one day.

Look at the example that Jesus set. The one person that could solve all of the world’s problems (I am not referring to man’s separation from God and his sinful state here) without raising a sweat, did not. Rather, he loved the individual. Jesus did not look at all the sick and hungry and throw his hands in the air, saying it’s impossible to fix all those people, no, he touched one person, at a time.

Now I am not saying that there is anything impossible with God (there is nothing impossible with him!), but Jesus could have done that, just as he could have healed every single person on the planet, as well as fixed world hunger and banished poverty from the face of the earth.

“Now how do I love the one?” I hear you ask. “Do I have to go out to the streets and help the homeless? Go to Africa?” Yes and no. So how do we love the one? Well, it is important to remember that the world is hurting, and it’s not just the homeless, the sick or the poor. My friend was none of these, but she needed someone to love her. I am not saying her family did not love her, they did and still do, immensely. I am talking about a love that takes people aside and asks them how they really are – no strings attached. People need us to just sit and listen to them, no preaching, just listening. They need to know that they can trust us not to share with other people what they have told us. They don’t need condemnation or judgement.

Now I’m preaching at myself here, as well as speaking from personal experience. It’s something that God is teaching me how to do, love people. And I’m not talking mushy stuff here. I’m talking about hard core, uncomfortable, willing to put-myself-out kind of love. The kind of love that is willing to drop everything and talk to someone on the side of the road in the cold. The kind that gives away the shoes on your feet, stops and helps that person with the flat tire or breakdown, the kind that speaks life, not death into a situation, the kind that gets on your knees at three in the morning because God woke you up with a burden for someone.

True love, the way God designed it, is something that the world craves and can only imitate. When one speaks of love, the world thinks of sparks and fireworks, not sacrifice. Yes, that is true love – being willing to lay yourself down for others, not necessarily your friends, but those you do not know. This is love.

I pray you will have a great weekend.

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It has been a while since I have posted. It’s been a combination of things, mostly study though. Now that I am nearly finished, I have decided to blog over the next few months about my study experiences and the little tips and tricks I have learned during the past couple of years. While I will be giving out specific tips for Open Colleges Vet Nursing students, I hope that students from other courses and RTOs, online or not, will be able to take the more general ones and apply them (or modify them) for their own course and RTO. There is no one size fits all solution however, as everyone is different. It may be a case of trial and error, but I encourage you to find the methods that work best for you. Please bear in mind that I have only done the one course, so my experience is limited. In addition, I have have never studied on campus, so I shall not compare the two options. Okay, so here we go.

First of all, how does it work? Well basically, most of your materials will be online as well as your assessments. You may also have to to work placement depending on the course.

My first tip would be to make sure what is required of you. Go through that course overview. Count up the number of units. I wish I had done that when I started. Instead of working out that a unit a month would just get me finished when my course expired (24 units in my course), I worked of the number of study periods (6), assigning a number of months to each. The problem was, that there is a different number of units per study period, and I ended up stretching the time I had set. While life does get in the way, sometimes fear and procrastination (Hands up if you suffer form this. Mine is as high as it possibly can go) does too. Knowing exactly how much of what can help combat this.

Go through all of the materials and documents/assessments that are open to you when you start. Currently, when a new study period is opened, I go though all the assessments in that study period and add up all the questions (and sometimes print them out) in that study period. I also write out the question numbers on a piece of paper (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc) and circle them. Once I have done a question, I cross out the corresponding number on my sheet. It’s a trick a fellow student shared on the facebook group that we have (student owned, I’ll talk about that later) – and it works. So much so that I have even done a sheet for my portfolio (physical evidence document), as well as slightly modified it for my self.

Make sure that you connect with your fellow students in some form. Whether this is face to face or online, participating in study groups, social pages, having study buddies or all of the above, having peer support is very important. Of course, there maybe more methods of getting peer support than I have mentioned, but make sure that you do get some form of support from fellow students in your course in particular. For my course, one of the students started a closed facebook group. Our Trainers and Assessors, as well as the Course Coordinator or members and admins of this group. it is highly regulated to ensure that the group remains supportive. Naturally, students are not allowed to give away answers to other students, but they are allowed to offer ideas to enable the student asking for help to think about the question in a different way, etc. This group is the way I have found works best for me.

Next week (Part 2) I shall talk about making use of the materials and services provided, as well as your relationship with your trainers.

Blessings.

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Quite a few times I have wondered what I have gotten myself into. Yesterday was the official start of my course and I was given access to the assignments. When I had a look at what they were, I was hit with the jitters. I was so nervous and stressing about it. A chat with Mum and my brother Jono, (He moved to Dalby a few months ago. Who’d have though he’d beat me moving out of home?) and I was feeling much better. Time to hit the workbook again I think!

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