Yesterday's post was one of the most read/most commented on posts I have ever written. Thank you all for caring. I'm gonna answer some questions, and then we're gonna talk about better, funner (I know it's not a word) things.
The course was pathophysiology, a very difficult course at best. It was a pre-requisite for several other courses, which is why I'm being held back. There are three people in my class. Yes. Three, which is kind of a problem. I came very, very close to passing, which is probably the worst part.
Obviously, this has seriously affected me. But my friends, today we will move on. My plan of action is this - kick ass, take names and succeed in spite of it all.
Let's talk about Christmas for a bit. For the first time in 5 years, I left the north for Christmas. For the first time, I opened gifts with people, very exciting. The best part was, my darling has a niece, she is about 18 months old, and to open gifts with this child, well, it made my life.
We gave her a pretty princess play castle - the kind of tent that people set up in their living rooms, and it has pictures of Cinderella, and Belle and various and sundry Disney princesses.
When she opened the box, she didn't really know what it was, but then her father set it up in the living room for her. Picture this for me please:
A gorgeous blond child, realizing that her awesome aunt and uncle gave her a HOUSE. She doesn't really talk, but she let us know that this was her house, and we'd all best stay out.
She began furnishing her house, with empty boxes and wrapping paper (obviously), and she totally let us know (without speaking) that we WERE NOT welcome to help her.
She sat inside for a while, every now and again looking through one of the windows to make sure we weren't eyeing the place for our own, and then - this is the best bit - she started like patrolling the perimeter, giving us all the 4th degree stink eye, in case we had missed the point up to now. Hi-Larious!
I was again, and as always, spoiled rotten, but there were 2 gifts in particular that I'm still super excited about. My darling gave me a kick ass food processor (I have since become a master salsa maker) and a TORCH for the kitchen. Yep. Creme brulee is now possible. Creme brulee people!
The Help
I forgot to mention yesterday, I failed a course too in University in Nursing. The funny thing is, it's the one course I use all the time in day to day practice, it was the physical assessment course. It was just so fake and phoney doing it in the lab situation, I couldn't get my head around remembering all the weird and bizarre things which were what we were tested on.
ReplyDeleteAnd in fact, despite being in a branch of nursing where I use the skills daily (I work in outpost, out in the communities of Baffin), if you were to drop me into the practical exam today I'm not certain I'd pass... There are some of those skills I use daily, but others that I use so rarely (like the finer points of neurological exams etc.) I refer to the book to make sure I don't miss anything. In real life, you can pull out the book!
So, a school situation is so abstract that it can make it difficult to learn and remember stuff that becomes exponentially easier to get down once you actually are dealing with real live patients. There was nothing really hard in essence about the course I failed, but they were testing on little isolated pieces of things and I could never put it together (or even remember it) in an abstract situation. Once I had real patients with real deviations from the norm though, I learned it in a flash.
Luckily, I didn't get held back, just had to repeat the course the next year... but I came close to failing it again the next time! Even my lab partner was a bit disgusted with me. Nursing is a hard program, it's far harder actually in my opinion than the job is. It's a hoop-jumping exercise (or was back then... mid 80's when I went to school, I hear it's improved somewhat since then).
If you want to be in touch with me on anything about this (or anything about Nursing in Nunavut in the communities, I've been at it for a long time), leave a comment on my blog with your e-mail address, my comments are moderated so I won't publish it and can contact you by e-mail.
Hi N, thank you for writing, I feel better heaving heard from you. I'm pretty computer illiterate, so when I tried to reply to you, it would have only been posted publically. I would LOVE to talk more, but my email has my full name, and I don't want to put that here....
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