Pro-cras-ti-na-tion
Pro-cras-ti-na-ay-shon… (sung to the tune of Carly Simon’s “Anticipation”).
Nothing like a pile of work to make me wonder what’s on TV? Anything new on CNN.com? Anyone sent me an e-mail? How ’bout now? Now? NOW? Actually I made myself go to the town library today where there is no wireless internet connection to distract me. Which worked for a while… then I realized that I needed something off the internet. The good news is that my one paper is just about finished up. Sixteen pages of APA-formatted goodness right there. I think I might finish up tomorrow when I’m not so sick of looking at it.
Anyway, I remembered something fun about clinical last week… I got to administer meds for the first time. Of course giving pills isn’t particularly interesting (which isn’t to imply that it’s not fraught with room for error, I had to look up all those meds before I gave them and know what they were for). But I did get to flush a PICC line and give an insulin injection. The nice thing about insulin injections is that the needles are really small and the patients are used to them… it went really well, I must say. Huge confidence booster.
Okay, so Dancing with the Stars is on right now and I’ve got to say that this must be one of the best things on television. It’s really impressive to see people with no dance training out there giving it their all. I never thought that ballroom dancing sounded very interesting, but watching these people having so much fun out there makes me want to go find myself a dance class.
We get by with a little help from our friends…
Break ended up being less of a time for relaxation and more of a time for reflection on things I didn’t have time to think about during the hectic weeks of nursing school. Reflection is a good thing, of course, but it’s a challenging and emotional process and takes a huge toll when it’s uninterrupted. I got back to school on Tuesday and one of my friends grabbed my shoulder saying, “You’re too skinny… what happened over break?” I told her it had been a rough week thinking about everything. I’d thought about calling her up and seeing what she was up to, but I didn’t want to bother her. “You should have!” she told me. “We have an open door policy at our house… I’m just home during the day with the babies. You’re always welcome to come over, I hope you know that.” Acceptance. I know I don’t open myself up to it often enough. I would rather be alone than risk hearing “No, thanks.” Sometimes I think I try to protect myself too much. Luckily I’m usually content to be on my own and it doesn’t bother me. But there are times, like now, when you need that circle of people to rally around and lift you up. It felt good to have someone offer to be in that circle.
This Saturday I went up to the hometown to hang out with my best friend from high school. We both had a lot to talk about and I ended up staying there until 1:30 in the morning. It consistently amazes me that our lives have taken different twists and turns and yet we have remained able to connect and support each other through it. We had a good amount of time after her kiddo went to bed to share the things that have been going on in our lives. It helped me to think about my own situation in new and different ways, which is a good thing. We also talked about taking a weekend away sometime this summer. I think we’re both in sore need of a vacation.
Then today I got a surprise phone call from my old roommate. She’s in school full-time, too, so we don’t get nearly enough time to catch up with our busy schedules. But it was nice to have a chance to talk. She was so much fun to live with. We could talk for hours railing about the weirdness of the world and the people in it and at the same time marvelling at the beauty and wonder of it all. She’s been a relentless cheerleader in my life and that feels pretty darned good especially when all you feel like doing is flipping the bird at the world.
So, friends are good. However, procrastinating writing papers is not… I’ve been doing it for weeks now, so here goes a feeble attempt at working on it some more. Here’s to Risk Analysis Theory as a Tool to Evaluate the Usage of Complementary Therapies (or something like that). Yeah, that got you excited, didn’t it?
Welcome to the world Samantha K.!
Just wanted to give a shout-out to my friends up in Maine who had a little girl this morning. And Mom was so organized she had the e-mail ready to go to announce the arrival!
Welcome to this crazy place Samantha and best of luck to the new parents. Good thing you’ve got so much energy C., you’re gonna need it 
Now off to mail you a present.
A personal whine
So I try not to bring other people into my blog too much since I figure if they wanted to be blogged about they would have done it themselves. But in case anyone is wondering about my vague allusion to my personal strife a few posts ago, T and I split up a few weeks ago. Like I said I don’t want to get into details on a public blog, but suffice it to say that it’s put a damper on an otherwise happy point in my life. I’m actually counting down the days until break is over and I can go back to school and immerse myself in everything there. It’s not that I don’t have plenty of work that I could be doing right now, it’s just not feeling urgent enough for me to actually do it. I’ve been half-heartedly reading my way through chapters on diabetes for pathophys/pharm for days now. I can’t say that it’s nearly enthralling enough to get my mind off everything (hence the reason I’m still not through the reading), though it does make me think about improving my eating habits. Sigh. So, that’s what’s up in my world. It just… sucks. Life isn’t quite as much fun without him around to share it with.
Halfway through first semester
It’s hard to believe. I said good-bye to my classmates that aren’t in my clinical group today. It will be nearly two weeks until I see them again. It’ll be lonely without them… seriously.
Last week was almost like a break. We ended up having our Tuesday evening class cancelled, we had our Wednesday class called off to give us time to work on the assignments due this week for that class (ha! I did them yesterday), then Friday clinical was cancelled due to the weather. I have to admit that I got damned bored. Four channels and nothing on. Apparently if you’re home during the day you’re either injured (and need a lawyer to get you what’s rightfully yours) or you’re a lazy bum with no job. Did you know that YOU can become a medical assistant in less than a year? Of course in reality you’ll probably get a job that earns a whopping $10/hr if you’re lucky and you’ll be trying to figure out how to pay off the ridiculously high tuition that these “career schools” charge, but they don’t tell you that. Instead they show a bunch of whiny, pissed-off chicks who complain about the fact that they’re STILL in college (yeah, a four year degree takes four years, imagine that) or that they’re stuck in a dead end job doing retail. They don’t happen to mention the fact that there’s not much upward mobility in medical assisting, either, (without going back to school) and if that really IS your career goal you can probably find a program at a community college that won’t cost you your first born. The advertising seems rather predatory if you ask me. Oh well, I guess that’s what I get for watching daytime TV.
Anyway, school is going well. After the curve on my pathophysiology/pharmacology test I got a 98. Woot! I also got my annotated bibliography back yesterday and ended up with a 96, which was a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t sure what to expect on that. The first assignments for each class are always a little nerve-wracking. I’ve got three papers to work on over the break, one for the nursing theory class (no comment), one for our clinical inquiry, which luckily the annotated bibliography relates to, and one for pathophysiology/pharmacology.
So, reflections on the first half of the semester… it’s really not as bad as I feared, or as it seemed at first. I’m not sure if they just threw more at us during those first few weeks and the workload has lessened or whether we’ve learned to relax and that sometimes we just need to let the nonessential stuff slip. It’s a lot of work, to be sure, but completely do-able. In fact, I’m thinking of trying to find a part-time job. Of course I figure the stuff I can get is probably going to be of the $8/hr variety, which almost makes it not worth it by the time I factor in taxes and gas money, but a little cash is better than none, right? A sick part of me is tempted to get in contact with the old company and see if they’ve got anything temp or work-at-home or whatever. I’m pretty sure they’d at least pay okay.
My classmates seem to be gelling more as time goes on. Of course now we’re only all together two days a week when we’re on campus, but everyone seems to be getting more comfortable with one another. The clinical groups seem to bond a little more since we’ve shared experiences and have had to learn to trust one another more, but the increased comfort seems to spill over into the class as a whole. A couple people are even planning our first party for the end of this month.
I’m enjoying classes for the most part. There’s one that I absolutely can’t wait to be over, but the others are all pretty enjoyable. I’m definitely glad I’m doing this now (not earlier and not later) and that I’m pursuing it at this level. It’s definitely academized nursing in large part. But it’s fun to be back in the classroom and to be able to be unapologetically idealistic about our future career. I figure there’s plenty of time to become jaded once I’m actually getting paid.
