Quitcher bitchin…
Okay, now that I’ve said that, I am going to proceed to do just that. I was hoping that our two weeks away from the classroom would give everyone some time to rest, recharge, and come back ready to go. But it seems that a lot of frustrations from first semester have boiled over into this one. I’m as big a fan of the gripefest as the next person, however, there comes a point when I want to tell people to just suck it up and deal. Though it may be academia, it’s still the real world. Let’s all act like adults here.
I’m so tired of listening to the complaints and the whines and the “it’s not faaaaiiiirrrrs” that are going around. Yeah, the program is not as organized as we would always like it. Yeah, different teachers have different styles and sometimes you just have to silently roll your eyes at some things. But A) it’s rude to outwardly display animosity to a professor. Use your words and state politely what your issue is and how you would like to see it resolved. If that does not work, head up the food chain. Ever heard the phrase “You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar?” And B) this is the way life is. There are ups and downs and you have to adapt. Wouldn’t it be easier to get to the adaptation part faster than wasting time whining? Oh and use your brain! If something doesn’t make sense, consider what the person might have meant, i.e. if a test is listed as being on 6/12 on one page and 6/21 on another and you know that we’re NOT IN CLASS on 6/21 then it’s probably safe to assume that the professor made a TYPO (*gasp*!) and it would be appropriate to say, “Excuse me, may I assume that the date on this page is a typo and that the test is actually on the 12th?” rather than sighing loudly and saying, “Why are the tests listed on two different days?” Another example: I’m not excited about taking a course online, either… if I had a choice I’d be in a classroom. But we don’t have a choice. So we can either sit there and fret about the what-ifs –what if the internet crashes worldwide? what if there is a power outage someday? what if I get carpal tunnel from typing, go blind from looking at the screen, and get cancer from the laptop permanently glued to my lap? — but the reality is that we’ve got five weeks to do this thing… let’s just do it and try to enjoy it and learn something from the experience (even if it’s that online learning sucks and we were right to try to avoid it).
I just get frustrated sometimes because I’m really grateful for this opportunity. Of course I get annoyed with the disorganization and I get overwhelmed with the work at times, but I decided to pursue nursing in a direct-entry masters program for a reason. It’s not a perfect program, by any means, however it’s got a lot of great aspects to it. We have the opportunity to learn about so many things and I think this education, if taken full advantage of, can go a long way in making us into great nurses. I look at the things I’m learning and I see how they can benefit me even if five years down the road I decide that I don’t want to work as a nurse anymore. My time will not have been wasted both because of the education and the overall experience. I want to be with other people who are excited, too, people who take the risk to be open-minded, acknowledge that we have a lot to learn, and approach it with a certain zest and eagerness. Of course part of this is selfish… it’s easier to be motivated when those around you are. But I really wish that we can all pull together and approach this with a bit more positivity than has been demonstrated thus far.
Back to school
Well, the two weeks of freedom are over. Nothing particularly exciting went on, but it was good to have the time to decompress and catch up on sleep. I had a dentist’s appointment down in Beantown and decided to stop in the old office while I was there. It was definitely weird to wander through… and embarassing to admit that I briefly forgot which floor I used to work on! Yeah, I think we can safely say that part of my life has been largely deleted from memory! But if nothing else talking to people reminded me of why I left and reassured me that I made the right move (not that I ever doubted that!).
The cleaning frenzy never quite occurred, but the house is in a better state than a couple weeks ago at any rate. My parents came over yesterday to help me with some projects including changing a lightbulb in the microwave… you’d think this is a relatively easy task that does not require parental involvement, but I swear GE superglued the damned things in. It took us about half an hour just to base of the old one out. What a pain. Then we had to replace the washer hoses per the condo association… now I see why the condo association didn’t do it themselves! But I washed a load of laundry last night and there were no leaks or anything so we must have done it right! We also put up some decorative shelves in the master bath. I’ve only had them sitting on the floor for three years now. In other exciting house news, I got an early birthday present of a new bistro set for the deck. It matches the siding and decking just about perfectly. Now that the monsoons have stopped maybe I can actually get out there and enjoy it!
In other non-school news, I might get a fur-baby soon! My aunt called to let me know that a friend of hers has two litters of kittens she’ll likely be looking for homes for soon. One litter is about 5 weeks old, the other was just born last week. So I’m not sure when that will happen… it will depend on which litter the kitten comes from.
Today was the first day of summer semester. We’ve got three courses on the books. The first is entitled Nursing & Change in Health Services and is one of the core graduate nursing courses. It’s about health policy at the macro level. I’m actually pretty excited about the material since it will be a bit of a way for me to integrate my previous career and the new one since we’ll be talking about finance, insurance, etc. It’s a totally online class, which will be interesting. I’ve never taken an online course before. But this isn’t one of those online courses where you can do the work whenever… we have deadlines every three or four days, so we’re on our toes! It’s also an extremely shortened course… one semester in five or six weeks. Whoo! The second course is Care of People with Severe and Persistent Mental Illness. We had our first lecture today. The professor definitely seems excited and interested in the material and I’m looking forward to it a lot more than I was initially. We have two clinical sites, one group will be at the state hospital, the other two on a mental health ward… which is where I’ll be. The two sites should have pretty different experiences, since one is largely made up of involuntarily committed people, who are there for a long time, and where people are treated regardless of ability to pay, while the other houses people who are actively seeking treatment, are only there for 3-5 day stays, and which does not accept patients without insurance (I’m at the latter). I’m looking forward to hearing about everyone’s experiences. Our clinical instructor mentioned that we’d also get to do rotations in different areas including the group that assesses people who have come in (through the ER, etc.) to determine whether they’ll be admitted, referred to resources, etc., the chaplaincy, and outpatient oncology. Our final class (but worth the most credits) is Collaborative Care II: Managing Acute & Complex Care of Individuals. I’m looking forward to this class, too, since we’ll be getting more in-depth on the issues that we started getting into in our health assessment class. I’m not sure where we’ll be doing the clinical component of that course, but we have a couple weeks of lectures first.
We’re off to a running start. And I should get down to some reading now for class tomorrow. Full speed ahead!
Wall Street Journal Article
My mom sent me this article today. It’s kind of long, but a fascinating read about a 2nd career nurse. Lots to think about here, from the reasons that encourage us to make the change, the challenges of becoming a nurse (even after the official school part is done), the joys of nursing, and the occasional realities that the former career just pays better. The last point is an interesting one that I’ve pondered from time to time… what if I do this nursing thing and then decide that corporate life wasn’t so bad after all, either pay-wise or lifestyle-wise? What would that mean?
If you have the time, check it out.
So much for escapism
Perhaps, when picking out books from the library, I should pay more attention to the critical praise quoted on the back… like the one that says “Resolutely anti-escapist…” Wouldn’t you know that I was looking for escapist fiction, something light, chick-lit even. Instead I just finished this novel that made me feel physically suffocated while reading it and had me questioning our very existence. Um, yeah, not quite what I had been looking for. Here’s hoping that “Freakonomics” is a bit more lively and less depressing.
I made it through the bedroom in my cleanup process today and got a lot of laundry done. Tomorrow I’ll tackle either the kitchen or living room. I figure there’s no point going nuts and cleaning everything at once. It’s supposed to warm up the next few days, too, so I’m thinking I need to evict myself from the house and get out for a drive (or at these gas prices, perhaps a long walk) and enjoy the weather since I’m beginning to think that I won’t be doing much reveling once classes start up again. I thought this first semester was heavy, but I’m realizing that the NCLEX stuff is really going to be going to get into full swing this summer, so no slacking off (I want to do well in all my classes, of course, but the ones that the licensing exam focus on take a bit more precedence!).
Oh, and I forgot to mention in my last post that I found out that a friend of mine from the program will be leaving… again. She sent out an e-mail to the class this weekend saying that her husband has been offered a job out of the area and they will be moving in September. This is the second time that she has left the program as she’d started last year only to find out she was expecting twins. I’m excited for them about the opportunity, but it’s sad for me since she was one of my classmates that I felt I more closely identified with. I’m friendly with all of them, but sometimes I feel that my experience is far removed from those of the others. It was one of the most surprising things about starting this program, actually. I expected a few more corporate drop-outs, more late-20s-to-late-30s people, more people like me. Instead there are some perpetual students and a lot of recent grads. I’m strangely on the upper edge of the age range. I’m in no way trying to denigrate their experiences, because I think we all add something unique and different to the program. But sometimes I feel like a bit of an island in the midst of all this because I’m not living with my parents or sharing an apartment with four other people and my prior experiences have nothing to do with healthcare (and, yeah, I left a well-paying job to do this). And I feel like I should apologize for the fact that I’d rather take out student loans to cover the mortgage for the next year before I’m gainfully employed again than give up my home, economically responsible though that idea may be (okay, is). Having M in the program, knowing that she’d worked in an environment very similar to my own and had a home life that involved grown-up responsibilities gave me a sense of belonging that I sometimes feel is lacking. But anyway, I do wish her the best in their new journey, and hopefully she can find a nursing program where they move that will allow her to finally go all the way through.
Can it be?
I made it through. Like, I really, really made it through first semester. Okay, the grades aren’t in the books yet, but… it’s out of my hands now. I took my last pathophys/pharm test Saturday morning (58 out of 60, woot!). It feels extremely odd to not be procrastinating schoolwork right now.
So, what do I have planned for my two weeks off? Well, the condo is in major need of cleaning/organizing. I scrubbed one of the bathrooms so far. It’s such a pain, but it feels so good to have it done, sparkling chrome and toothpaste spatter-free mirror. So, there’s the requisite dusting, mopping, vacuuming, throwing out… I’m also hoping to get the spare room organized into a good working space for school. I’ve found myself having an extremely hard time getting motivated to study at home, so I’m hoping designated study space will help. I’d also like to get the porch decorated. Every summer I think about getting some plants out there to liven it up some, but I never get around to it. So that would be nice… it could be my secondary study space, if I got a table and some more comfortable chairs.
Other than that, I need to get my criminal background form sent to the state police so I can start my LNA licensing process. I’m hoping to go visit a couple friends of mine who had a baby a couple months ago. And I have a dentist appointment down in Boston (never got around to getting a new dentist), so I think I might go down there for that day and play tourist for a while, maybe stop in at the old office to say hello. I got a couple books out of the library the other day for some fun reading.
Speaking of books, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time on Amazon acquiring books for the summer. I also lugged a stack of books over to my parents’ so that my dad could list them on half.com. I wasn’t expecting to rid myself of that many books, but when you use some of them to read, oh, one chapter, it kinda becomes an expensive doorstop. Or when you have two fundamentals books, I mean, fundamentals are fundamentals, right? Don’t need one for each eye. Not to mention that one of them was like a nursing manual, which is all well and good, except for the fact that you’re not likely to whip it out and plop it next to the patient when it comes time to do a procedure (“Don’t worry, Mr. Brown, I swear I’ve done this hundreds of times before. Let’s see, step one, wash hands; rationale: prevent the spread of infection. Step two…”).
That’s about it for now… I’m going to try to relax and enjoy as much as I can, get some yoga in, take some walks, take some pictures, maybe try out some recipes. But (shh) I’m excited to get back to school and continue this slow but steady climb towards my new career.
Watch me pull a paper out of my…
…ahem.
(“Again, Bullwinkle?”)
Ooh, we’re so close. So close I can taste it, and it tastes like… a rum and Coke, which is an ideal combination of caffeine and alcohol (I’d go for Irish coffee except… ew, not a whiskey drinker). I’m running on fumes here folks. Sleep has been elusive the past few days. I spent a good part of yesterday locked in the library at school to force myself to do work and not daydream. I really should not procrastinate so much, but I guess I just work better under the pressure to crank up production. So I wrote two papers yesterday and put together a rather sad little poster. I do not like posters. They make me throw tantrums at 11pm in which I cry and throw markers across the room. But I got my stuff done. And then I went to bed at 1:45 to hear my downstairs neighbors, who had earlier in the evening been slamming doors and yelling at each other (as far as I could tell), um, making up. Is it evil that I was hoping that the slamming doors indicated an imminent break-up so that I could avoid the wall-banging serenade? Really, all I want to do at 2am is sleep goddammit. Instead I decided to play music videos from mtv.com loudly until a safe amount of time had passed. The good news? I found a new Tori Amos video which means she has a new CD out. Woot!
So, needless to say that Dunkie’s was a mandatory stop this morning. It’s sad when the thing that gets you out of the house on time is the pink and orange altar of the sleep-starved. Our class this morning went well. Then a bunch of us tromped over to a bar for some refreshment prior to our next class (yes, I know, it’s quite scandalous). It wasn’t all play, though. I have a group presentation and paper due tomorrow, so my group spent most of our time working on that in between sips. Our afternoon class was a the UU fellowship in town because our professors wanted to have a little party for us, so we had lunch and cake there and spent most of the afternoon on the back deck talking about our final papers (see, that’s really why I waited to write it… I wanted the information to be fresh in my mind!). I acquired a sunburn and a flat bum. But it was a nice change from the usual classroom, I guess.
So tonight I had some more cranking to do. Had to write a paper and an evaluation for my clinical class. Thankfully the paper was based off some literature I’d presented in clinical a couple months ago and that was back when I was anal and organized and had written up an outline, so I pretty much just had to flesh it out and find the appropriate citations. I finished up the group paper due tomorrow. I think it turned out pretty well. Now I just need to find something nice to wear tomorrow for the presentation and the symposium we’re supposed to attend in the afternoon. Our clinical group is meeting in the late afternoon (hopefully quickly!) and then… all I have left to do is take a test online sometime before next Wednesday. Not too shabby.
Zzzzzzzz
