only on the internets

Found this via gawker.tv

Super There Will Be Blood from Tomfoolery Pictures on Vimeo.

why, hello there

Much time has passed since my last stop here. I’ll attempt to summarize some of what’s happened to me over the past several weeks, but I’ll only scrape the tip of everything because I’ve been incredibly occupied with work and school.

Late last month I began the clinical portion of the nursing program. Every Tuesday and Thursday I spend approximately five hours at a local long-term care facility doing assessments and assisting the CNAs. Last Tuesday I administered my first injection (insulin); I’ll be doing more of this and also passing meds in the coming weeks. I’d never spent much time in a nursing home until this clinical – in fact, the only previous time I spent in such a facility was early in elementary school when I and my classmates field tripp’d it to a local nursing home – and what I have seen and done has impacted me profoundly. It’s a sad place, but also, paradoxically, it’s a facilitator of immense inspiration. My experiences have solidified my desire to become a registered nurse. Every day spent at the facility is a reminder of my mortality; it further stresses the basic, human pursuit to use our brief time on this planet to do good and care for those who cannot care for themselves. It truly is difficult to find the words to express the rewarding sense of fulfillment I have experienced recently.

The school work, aside from being immense in volume, has been difficult. But this is what I expected. The first few weeks were especially difficult because everything – the workload, the expectations, the unknown – hit me, shocked me, and it took some time to find my footing, but over the past 2-3 weeks my exam performance has greatly increased, and I feel as though I’m hitting my stride with, well, pretty much everything. It’s clicking now; it wasn’t before. Exam performance is obviously important, but it’s really important when at least one exam hits you literally every week. And the amount of material covered in each exam is massive (I had two exams this week – one Monday, which covered fluid and electrolyte imbalances, acid-base balance and the integumentary system and the other Wednesday, a pharm exam that comprised nine chapters).

The phrase sink or swim has never been more appropriate than in nursing school. And thus far, this fish his holding his place in the school. (Bad pun, I know.)

xx