So due to the whole transport situation, ie no trains, i had to get the bus in. Now i have been getting the bus in for study and exams as it is, but 5 am starts are not exactly fun.
So i was in college for 730am. Unfortunately everything didn't begin until 10, not 9 as i thought. Que a lot of waiting.
Computers are only fine for so long, so i went up to the plush couches in the Art Deco foyer of our wonderful building. The smell of muffins, croissants and other pastry's beating down the smell of coffee from the West Coast Coffee Café on the opposite side of the foyer.
So with my music from my mobile, and a can of Cherry tango that i got for 50cent in The Spar Near Tara Street Station, i was set for some more reading of On The Road.
This however was wishful thinking. Someone spotted me. A mature student. Someone i barely knew and would be damned if i had to name them. But she felt she knew me, or of me, and had to talk.
Now this was fine for about 10 minutes, the whole catching up thing but then it just kept going, and going and going. She was the fucking Duracell bunny of small talk!
Not only that but i could barely get a word in edge ways or offer an opinion, it was mostly a spectators sport, one involving aural torture i imagine....
Not only was it a long conversation with some i barely knew but she also started including personal fears about fainting on placement in theater and so on.
She also poked me several times and ruffled my hair. In any circumstance this is odd, but she did it so frequently and so quickly that i couldn't stop it. It was off putting to say the least.
And then there was the doozy of a line "I scare men away, i don't know why." I fought a bazillion urges inside my head from giving any judgmental jab's or quips or so called honesty. I just let it slide. And i won't even elaborate on it now.
I was pinned down, interrogated in a way where the interviewer is the only one who wants to talk. Subjected to information, worries and queries i didn't have much interest in and on top of all that i was poked and prodded.
Also when there were lulls in the conversation she would talk to other people, cross the room, talk over me to people on the other couches. I had been quite content to read and pass time. And now i was included and excluded from conversations so quickly it was rattling to say the least.
One such instance was asking a girl beside me how her summer went. Now i remembered this girl from ages ago.
Late to a lecture i had to sit at the back and made quick and brief friends with the group around me. She also was late, but part of their group, and ended up beside me.
Long story short my initial reaction wasn't much, i just thought a usual back of the class type, fairly attractive and out of my price or interest range, if i had one.
Basically prejudicial dismissive of her from the get go, with assumptions of bimbo and so on and so forth. Hey i can't help it, i've known quite a few at this stage, at least 200! (From being in two nursing classes of 250, you work that out!)
But even back then when i first met her the was the obvious, "gettin' to know you" chit chat. Included in that as i relished the shelter of the back rows and the laid back less attention needed atmosphere i was reading the free-sheets. The Metro being my free-sheet of choice, the letters page!
And she mentioned her love of the letters page, and instantly made the connection of my long commute with the Letter from months previous about a bout of spontaneous hugging that occurred on one Commuter train. A great story that i've always been dubious about, knowing that train and the scowls of caffeine shortage's, wet hair, jolting and rocked make-up application and blaring earphones(those would be mine), so hugging seems alien and novel for us true "Straphangers", or as i like to be known, Full-distance-traveler-so-only-i-am-worthy-of-a-seat!
Something about her enthusiasm in mentioning the letters page and specifically that piece had always seemed worthy of note.
And then in the idle chit chat of "how was your summer" from the mature student who at length shouted a wrong name at her until she remembered the correct one to get her attention.
She came out with this:
"Oh, i spent the summer road tripping in California and am now 5 grand i debt, but you only live once."
My face may have been blank with my eyes begging to save me from this mad yabbing machine, but on the inside i lit up!
Road trips, glorious road trips. A girl i had been so dismissive of taking that daring leap, plunging into debt and just embracing the open road, and adventure.
And it was the way it was just one sentence, my quote not word for word, it was NOT a story of a J1 or trip to Ibiza and such similar piss ups. It was a genuine, here's a funny story and insight into my life while also defending myself from telling the rest of the story to any further probing. IT was snappy, it was informative, and it was down right brilliant.
Within seconds she crossed the room to buy a coffee or some such. And i could help but roll over the idea of what that road trip was, while my body automatically oogled her crossing of the room, and a fleeting eye starred longingly at the book in my lap, now closed and forgotten after the constant small talk with a stranger.
Orientation:
So we received the explanation of the new rules and documentation.
A lot of changes, and pretty strict stuff.
Basically you can't miss a day of placement unless you're REALLY REALLY SICK or have other legitimate excuse's. A lot of girls had been fobbing the system off and generally taking the piss with its apparent leniency. So now there's no room for maneuver
Also the documents have changed. BIG TIME.
Less chance of Forgery. There is now a "signature" bank where each signature is recorded and also given in block capitals, FUCK!
The documents are also all stapled together in one huge book so that your "preceptor" (person you shadow and work with all day) can see how you were on previous placements. Also a big eek.
Whats worse is that travesty of an annoyance, the portfolio, reflective pieces and on placement learning, all in the document!
No longer the days where you rush summerise an article off google that loosely covers your chosen topic and just pretending you learned something off it.
I was a semi-master at this. The last minute save, the excuses, the letting it slide, the distraction techniques, the blank faced lies, oh i was a master.
I had learned it oh so well from avoiding work in secondary school. Predominantly in Business and Art. Business because i hadn't a clue, Art because it was far more time consuming and my i gave that teacher so much hell it was the least she could expect....
Now i won't encourage what i was doing, of course not, but i had always derided the system for being so weak, for putting this insistence on people when we just want to sleep after days of slave labour. I understand it is meant to aid our learning process but frankly WE students our mules. And doing anything other than turning up and doing what is asked of us is a tall order. There is food to eat, socialising to be done only via the internet or the rare outing, there is also fuck loads of tv!
Where would i or normal nurse's be without their tv? The Home and aways, or in my case How i met your mother and Battlestar Galactica. There's Dexter, House, Gray's Anatomy, Greek and the mother of all greatness QI !!!! Work during placement, PAH!
So now we have to, it's in our documents, and the space is TINY! It's so tiny it's laughable. Okay so there's no excuse for not getting it done but it reflects fuck all! Of all the scribbled and rushed, delayed, disjointed and insulting work i forked out over the pass 3 years i learned and wrote a fuck load more than what is expected here!
I slaved over every last minute deadline for stuff that was never read, never legible, and never reviewed. Hell most of it has never appeared ever again, but i did it damn it! If i said so, anyway, there's some gaps....
The change is welcome. People will get stuff done. But generally you need to show real interest in it. It will force more and more student nurse's not to be lying habitually to avoid the responsibility of actually learning or getting any form of academia into their systems during placement.
And then the big OH Fuck. The statistics on interpersonal relationships. This is where MOST 3rd and 4th Years Fail in their placements.
Now this covers a large range of things, but is basically how you work with the Staff, the Patients and how you work as a supervised and semi-free agent and advocate of people's health and well being.
It's a tall order. To work your ass off, slip the disks in your spine, and do it all with a smile and a hop skip and a jump. Project an image of competency and so on.
I have always found this the hardest. I do all my preceptor given tasks as a sense of automatic duty. I pro-actively care for things outside of my orders out of general knowledge and experience. And i interact with the staff on basic chit chat and the order of the day.
I do not do it all with a pro-active assertiveness. I'm a shy headless chicken. I do what is asked, do what i know, and inform when i see something untoward and out of the ordinary. I make suggestions to and share the general disdain for the job, how it operates and how what is expected of us is a dream world in comparison to what we get achieved.
Do be able to extend my effort beyond the exhausting one i already put in is alien and terrifying. I'm awful at being me socially as it is. So doing it in placement with Transient more experienced authoritative figures who are predominantly female is just difficult!
I won't try and excuse every aspect of it. But as a nurse this is a large failing of mine, and it has been the main highlighted criticism ever since 1st year. It's not been lack of skill or academic knowledge. No i work well. But i don't look good at what i'm doing. I don't appear to be on top of it all. It shows that i am not confident. It shows that i am only doing what is asked. It shows that i am often just trying to avoid any more than what is asked.
Okay with patients i am grand. With fellow staff not as much. It's harder to be friendly. It's harder to be the same. It's the same small talk. It's the same what do we have to do. It's harder to step into their world and be like them. And my interests are so far removed and alien to a typical nurse it's impossible to mention them.
How do i talk about Science fiction, Debating, Politics or the internet and computing, even tv choice's are out hard to include with some.
Whats worst of all is trying to stretch this socilising and "non-sex flirting" cross culturally!
With Non-Irish born Nurse's, and the majority of these are Sub-asian or Oceanic Islanders, how do i share my chit chat gossip across a folded bed sheet to someone who i would rarely encounter anywhere else but here in hospital over a commode?
The closest i ever got to a truely extensive friendly conversation with a foreign national nurse was about Relgion. This was in ICU! The patient couldn't talk and we couldn't leave the room. We had only the radio and a "floating" nurse to help with some tasks. Otherwise we were stuck in a room together. It had to happen. We had to connect on more of a level than simple work. THIS RARELY HAPPENS!
Although it does happen with student nurse's. This is a given. After all they are all Around my Age, share the same experience, are from the same cultural background, and of course i am FAR more inclined to flirt with them or to strike up a rapport. So in essence i have to expand this to all staff members...
So IF i get into 3rd year this will be a very big fear of mine. How do i work on all of this?
After the documents were explained to us we received them.
It was a big queue and as i got mine one of girls from my Tutorial, who had seen my "oh god i was in at 730am for 10", comment on facebook, asked me with a quip "Was it Worth the wait?"
Made me smile anyway.
As i fumbled to read it at the top of the lecture theater a girl who had been sitting with me and an old classmate who had returned from Off books approached me seeking information from an email i had mentioned earlier.
Confused, lost, and without much help from staff or tutors this repeating ID student hadn't a clue where or when she was supposed to be so i helped her with getting info from an email.
After that bit of chivalry i left for lunch.
In the foyer i jacked in my music after much cable untangling. Staring at slightly familiar face's in the crowd as they passed or ate their lunch in the cafe or the plush couches. Face's such as Daisy...(more on that later)
LUNCH FEATURED IN Manic Monday 1.5/Snap Happy #9
After lunch we had our specific Hospital talks. Mine was upstairs, and the others down stairs.
I went to one of the stand up computers just to check my general emails, and any notifications on facebook to save me some credit.
As i did this Chatterbox rounded the corner. I talked with her briefly as i hurriedly battled with a bad mouse and slow computer to get what i wanted to read seen and out of the way so i could go upstairs where i had to be.
Her thing was canceled and i talked with her briefly. I mentioned my exams and assignment and she wished me luck.
I cheated and used the lift to ascend to the 1st floor, which was actually 2 storys up from where i was.
And then we had our thing.
A talk on the documents, the still standing code's of conduct and so on.
What was worse was i had had run ins with all of these CPC's before!
2 from some of darker moments of the past year, like that "sick" day in the name of Chasing Cleo on insane false interests.... Not good. I was in deep shit for that, and my whole disillusionment with the course and repeating was dragged out. So i would like to have avoided them.
We tried on Masks for the risk of Swine flu and some people had to stay behind to try on larger "HAZMAT" type ones, like in Outbreak. It all seemed a bit ridiculous, sine Swine flu is so bloody harmless! Sure it's highly infectious but you have to be pretty sick with underlying things to pop your clogs from a flu.
But of course a large scale Hospital Pandemic would be very dangerous. It's the right place for people to die from it. And the staff would be heavily exposed to it. If the staff got it they would spread it to other patients at risk, and to all of the staff and the people they interact with. It would also mean that A LOT of nurse's would be out of work, sick.
And student nurse's are breeding grounds of cross infection. Even if we're trained with better hand hygiene and warnings, we're more likely to make mistakes at crucial points or to have picked up habits from less competent nurses. We also move about a lot more and spend A LOT more time in the community, because some of the students actually have live's! So we're very likely to be sources, or victims of swine flu.
Following that i went back to the computers.
On the way down i walked passed Daisy. My eyes were not really aiming for anything but our eyes met but i kept walking.
There was an a large look of recognition in her face and i heard a failing sentence of
"Hey, how...." behind me.
I wasn't sure if it was her addressing me, or someone else, as i was walking quickly but i didn't leave the time for it to matter.
I think if it was her she got the message that i wasn't going to stop and talk, or say hello, or something like that.
What i was thinking was;
i'm going somewhere, oh there's someone i want to avoid, oh oh our eyes met, keep calm, keep walking, what, did she say something, oh no it stopped, forget it walk on, don't mind, oooh a flutter-by....
I had no real intentions in my walk passed her. I had seen her Emily the Strange Silhouette all day. And despite it conjuring up memories and the temptation to oogle i didn't, or at least not to often. She still had THAT hair cut, she still looked the same and even some of her cloths were familiar from my period of bitterness. Obviously not quite over, but then again why did it matter. There is the chance this was the LAST time i would ever see her, or at least until January if i pass.
Computers, usual routine.
Chaterbox entered, she briefly talked to people from our old year who were obtaining thier new documents and ward profiles.
Then as she was leaving she rounded the desks and talked to me some more about my exams, what came up, and the assignment. She wished me look and expressed confidence in claiming that i probably did well and so on. And i bid her a due. I probably won't see her till January, or possibly longer than that, who knows. Although the thought had crossed my mind to take her to the Next Twilight film as she mentioned it a few times. A perfect opportunity to be a good friend or prove the theory my friends and i had that she could be a lesbian. Who knows...
Then off to Society Stuff. This will follow in Manic Monday (part 2): Return to the Society....
Blogged with the Flock Browser
No comments:
Post a Comment