Rori roars

Well, I got the lit review done after all… procrastinate though I might I’ve never *knocks on wood* managed to turn an assignment in late. I hope it turned out okay… I usually reach a point with writing papers where I throw up my hands and say, “That’s it, I give up, I’ll take whatever grade I get!” Except that I don’t really want to take whatever grade I get. I want an A, dammit.

Not a bad day, despite the paper-writing, though. There are times when I can actually appreciate and enjoy the unemployment (if I ignore the no income and boredom part). There’s something about looking outside on a cool October morning with the sun shining outside and the parking lot nearly empty (because most everyone else is at work) with the heat blasting on my head and a warm cup of coffee in my hand to really make me appreciate life’s little joys. I think the cleaning e-mails are helping with this “ain’t life grand” attitude. I find it incredibly remarkable how little things can make such a big difference. Why did I let the kitchen counter continually turn into a clutter catch-all? Well, it would start small (after some sort of cleaning frenzy): I’d drop the mail there when I came in the door, empty my backpack… always intending to put things away, but somehow never quite getting around to it. Sure, I’d shuffle through all the stuff pretty regularly (“I know that phone bill must be in here somewhere!”), but the idea of cleaning it sounded way too overwhelming. Imagine my surprise when after 3, count ‘em, 3 2-minute cleaning sessions the counter was revealed to me again! Okay, so how is it that in a total of 6 minutes I was able to clear the counter off and yet in my mind I was convinced that it would take at least an hour? Harumph. In the interest of full disclosure here, I will admit that the stuff that was on the counter migrated to other catch-all areas of the house (on and around the desk, on top of my bed)… but hey, now that I don’t need my full 2 minutes to clear off the counter each day I can use it on those areas. Man, that inner housewife is just busting to get out! Next thing you know I’ll be wearing pumps while I bake pies. Harumph. Anyway, point being that I don’t think I realized how stressed-out the clutter made me. I guess it’s just one more thing on the “stuff I have to do but have no time to do” list. It’s nice to have someone give me a schedule to make it seem totally manageable (the nag factor of the continuous flow of e-mails helps).

I did listen to the Habs games this weekend. Back-to-back wins, tied for 3rd in the East, 5th overall, top power-play record in the league! Of course I’m sure the wheels will come off come mid-season, but I’ll enjoy it for now. And my D-I school is ranked 4th in the USCHO poll this week (with 3 first place votes). The alma mater’s hockey season doesn’t start until mid-November and earned absolutely zippo points in the pre-season polls, but I’ll keep my fingers crossed that they have a better season than they’ve had the past few years.

Hockey, papers, and cleaning… well, at least I’m well rounded, if a bit dull!

Once again I have a paper to write for my research class. And every day I think, “Tonight I’m going to go home and start working on it, I’m going to spend all of my free time working on it.” But do I? If you know me at all you know the answer is a big fat noooooo. The only good thing is that at least I’m procrastinating by doing work for other classes. Of course, I’m not working on the one big project that probably needs the work the most. But at least I’m working. Right? Ugh.

Speaking of working… I’m trying to figure out a part time job. There’s a catalog company just down the street from me that’s hiring seasonal help and they’ve actually hired me, but I’m trying to figure out whether it’s going to work out or not. They want me to attend an orientation class every night for a week and I already committed to doing a college fair for the alma mater on one of those nights and I don’t want to blow that off. Plus, I have a feeling that this company wants to give me a set schedule for the duration of the employment and that’s really hard to do with my schedule. I feel like things are so variable from week to week that I don’t feel comfortable saying that I could work any Monday, Friday, and Saturday or whatever if it turns out that some weeks I might have school stuff. Not to mention that as we get closer to the end of the semester I’m probably going to be doing a lot of school work and I don’t know if I can commit much time to paid employment. The thing that stinks is that after that last week of school I could work full-time hours for the following month if they needed me to! Feast or famine, as the saying goes. So as excited as I was to think of having some sort of income, I think I might need to turn down the job. I just don’t see it working. Anyway, I’ve seen a lot of places advertising for seasonal help, so maybe I’ll be able to pick something else up. Or maybe I can find something for that month I have off. I really do need the cash, there’s no doubt about that, but the scheduling is a challenge.

Other than that, school’s school. Plodding along as best I can. Looking forward to the end more and more. Our maternity rotation ended today. I have to say that postpartum is not my favorite place. It’s okay, but I wish that we could have had more time on labor and delivery. I didn’t even get to see anyone in labor. For someone who’s quite interested in L&D, that stinks! I did get to spend a day in the NICU, however, and that was fun. I really liked it there and I’m hoping that it will work out for me to do my immersion experience next semester in a NICU.

In keeping my personal sanity, I signed up for an e-mail housekeeping group. I figure maybe if I get e-mails telling me what to do each day the house won’t devolve into looking like a cyclone passed through and my accompanying stress level (at least in terms of frustration with the disorganization) will stay down. So far I’m on day 6 and the sink in my kitchen has stayed sparkly clean and today I started a two-minute clean-up of the clutter magnet… well, one of them (my kitchen counter). The counter is far from clear, but it is amazing how much better it looks after just a couple minutes of cleaning. Tomorrow’s step is to start setting out my clothes the night before. Funny, I remember my mother trying to get me to do that when I was a kid. I wonder if it will stick now. I have to say, it would be helpful to not have to run around the house in the morning trying to figure out what to wear or whether what I want to wear is in the laundry pile or not. And it has been really nice to have a clean sink. At least that one small area of the house seems under control! Baby steps.

Now if only there was an e-mail reminder service to get me to do my homework!

Eh, what’m I complaining about being stuck at home alone. One of my friends invited me out tonight, but I’m feeling cheap. Maybe I’ll meet them out a bit later for drinks. On the upside I am listening to the Canadiens’ home opener and they just went up 1-0 in the first 72 seconds of the game. That’s what I’m talkin’ about. They got 5 out of 6 possible points in their first three games (all on the road). Make me a Habby girl, boys!

This week went okay. I’m really beginning to detest public health. Between the stomach ache that starts on Monday afternoon and continues until I’m safely on my way home on Tuesday afternoon… only to start again when I realize that I have to journal about my damned day. And my clinical instructor insisting that I rewrite my journals… twice! Hello, the clinical is pass/fail. And it’s a journal for Pete’s sake. At least I’m not the only person in my class with these issues. Eh, less than two months to this semester (I think). I’ll be happy about that. Maternity clinical was good, though. I got to care for a couplet on my own (well, with a nurse, but we had been paired up as students to start off with). That was pretty good. Although I need to work on my maternal skills. I’ve done quite a few newborn assessments, but not so much maternal. We only have two more weeks in maternity, which makes me sad. Our instructor asked for our “wish list” for the next couple weeks and I would like to get back to L&D and shadow in the NICU, if possible. It’s a long shot to do either, but it never hurts to ask, right? Actually, I’m excited to move on to pediatrics, too. I am definitely wishing that I had requested to work in the young family department of my community health agency instead of the regular home health. Perhaps I wouldn’t dread my Tuesdays quite so much.

Anyway, still need to take my pathophys course for this module… renal, yay. And we have a maternity test this week, too. I’ve actually been studying for that. Should probably start working on my lit review for for my research class, but… nah.

Not much else new. Zzz…

I had mentioned in my last post that I was unsure where I wanted to go from here in terms of the big career picture. And in terms of the big career picture, who the heck knows? However, in terms of the more immediate, small-scale picture I have started to feel as though things are coming together.

First off: the maternity-neonatal experience, both in class and in clinical, is fabulous. It’s like I finally remembered why I’m doing all of this and I’ve felt my passion for nursing renewed. I was worried that maybe I’d get into the clinical setting and say, oh, this isn’t what I thought it would be, never mind. But it’s better than I expected. I haven’t seen L&D yet, but postpartum has been fun (if boring, at times). I like the fact that the patients are, in general, very open to the education that nurses can offer. I like the fact that so much of the care IS teaching. I like the opportunity to really assess the patients’ family status and what’s going on psychosocially. Yes, this from the one who disliked psych nursing. I guess I like it better when it’s packaged with something else. And I enjoy caring for the little ones. This sounds totally sappy, eewy-gooey, something I would never say aloud, but it’s like each baby that comes in is a little miracle. S/he survived a zillion things in those ~9 months to make it out into the world and now the future ahead with “no mistakes in it yet” (Anne of Green Gables). On the frivolous side, I love tiny things, so little BP cuffs and emery boards make me go, “squeeee!” (Again, I try to keep this inside so I don’t look like a blithering fool to everyone around me, but inside, “Squeeee!!!”).

This week we also had a meeting with our advisor and one of the other faculty members regarding our immersion experience next semester. I started to get a bit nervous when they mentioned that, unlike our undergrad counterparts who will also be doing their immersion experience, we will be expected to start using our budding clinical nurse leader (CNL) skills in the clinical setting. This initially gave me a fair amount of apprehension. I’m lucky I remember how to do basic stuff right, and they’re expecting us to go in to a setting and tell experienced nurses our ideas for how they could do it better? Ack! But as I was starting to look at potential clinical placements I had a bit of an epiphany. I was looking at NICUs and had checked out the website for the major hospital in our state–not planning to go there because it’s easier to commute to the big city south of the state border, but I wanted to see what they had to say–and I found mention of a nurse residency program that they’ve recently started, which includes use of simulation situations. The hospitals I was looking at in Big City didn’t mention having such a program, but I’m guessing that they’re at the very least considering something like it seeing as they’re major teaching hospitals associated with a Fancy University. Coincidentally, my research proposal that I’m working on for my reseach class is on the use of maternity simulation mannequins in clinical teaching. I was initially thinking of this in terms of pre-licensure education, but I could easily adapt it to include the use of these in new grad orientation/residency education. The neurons were snapping here as I finally began to see how I could integrate my research in with my clinical experience to utilize CNL skills and that if I was lucky and was able to get a full-time job out of my immersion experience I could turn this into my capstone project. Of course all of this is speculative at the moment, relying on a lot of “what-ifs” to work out to my advantage. But it felt good to at least feel like I was finally understanding what the point of all of this is… why I am getting a masters degree out of all of this, why I’m focusing in clinical nurse leadership, realizing that I’m not just going to be an over-educated nurse, but that I can actually use the things I’ve learned to improve nursing. Wow.

In terms of classes… Physiology is still going well and I’m impressed by the professor’s ability to make online learning effective. She has a recipe for each module: readings from the textbook, PowerPoint presentations with notes that act as the lectures, small-group discussion board case studies, ungraded learning exercises, a graded learning exercise, and a quiz at the end. I enjoyed the initial pathophys/pharm class we took first semester, but I feel like this is an even more effective way to learn… between the repetition and application I’m finally getting a handle on things that I might have felt were over my head before.

Research is also going well as a predominantly online class. Most of our work in the online portion is utilization of discussion board, which can get tiresome in some cases, but I feel that it works well here. We each have time to synthesize the information we read and to consider our postings and responses to others and I think the dialogue has increased our understanding of the topic and has helped when it comes time to do our actual research work. I’m also relieved to see that my classmates seem to have dropped some of their gleeful antagonism of the professor. We had our second in-class meeting and while there were parts of it that seemed to drag people were actually talking about the subjects that came up in class on the walk back to the parking lot. I live for goofiness like that, just waiting for a college viewbook photographer to jump out from behind a tree to take a picture of a group of students walking while engaged in animated discussion of the usefulness of qualitative research.

I already mentioned the maternity-peds class. We had our first test this week, still waiting to find out how I did on that. Partnered with one of my classmates in clinical to care for a couplet this week. The baby had the same name as the baby we cared for last week. Weird. It was interesting to see the interaction of the family. That dad was over the moon about the baby and really sweet to the wife, too. Mom looked like she was kind of annoyed by the whole event. But I’m no one to judge… I’ve never had my belly cut open and a baby yanked out of it. We did have some fun styling the kid’s hair. She was in the nursery when we noticed some goop on the top of her head, so I washed her hair and my partner styled it into a little twisty mohawk thing… luckily dad thought it was cool when he came to get her from the nursery! There was another baby in the nursery that had a full, thick head of hair with, get this, highlights! How does someone who has never seen the light of day before get highlights? We were all insanely jealous.

Public health is okay. I wasn’t expecting this, but it’s my least favorite class of the semester… I think the topics are interesting and clinical is interesting, but for me it’s more just a class to get through. I am hoping to spend some clinical time in some of the other areas that my agency serves (telehealth, young family, hospice). That might make it a bit more interesting.

Other than that, kits are driving me nuts. One of them has been persistently naughty for the past few days, climbing the screen door, jumping on the counter (despite the fact that there’s nothing there of interest), attacking my leg any time I walk past. Both of them have found the philodendron on top of the fridge and are eagerly giving it an unneeded pruning. Stupid cats. On the funny side, though, one of them likes yogurt and apples. I was especially surprised by the apple thing… I had a core in my hand the other day and she kept licking it and trying to bite it. The next time I ate an apple, there she was again. I never expected to see a cat so excited about fruit. The other one kinda sniffed it and gave it a halfhearted lick, but I don’t think she got what all the fuss was about.