I wake up most mornings and think of the number of days that mark my return to San Francisco. Today was 39 and I thought "ooh, over the hump" then quickly edited myself "Is there a hump?"
I'm pretty well burned out this semester. I feel embittered about the fact that this program is bullshit, the lack of communication or miscommunication is astounding. I don't know how anything gets done.
Yesterday, we had a town meeting (as we do every Monday, but they're usually so stupid that no one goes.) Because only 6 of us out of the 160 remaining are anesthesia, they rarely have any info for us, or know the answers to our questions.
I had to ask a question about the mandatory leave of absence they make us take to work for a year in an ICU. They were addressing folks that elect to take a year off to work, and it's a good idea, but the school is really making it hard on them. Lots of scholarships will be lost, and if you don't file a mountain of paperwork and vague forms by even more vague deadlines, you lose your spot and have to reapply.
Then there is a pile of information down at the front of the class that everyone needed to get pertaining to their specialty--of course, except for ours. So we stood around and asked (the dean of the ETP students and the dean of the Nursing School) a few questions regarding licensure. There are two of us that are thinking of applying to schools in California, and not coming back, but would like to save our spots here just in case we don't get in anywhere else. We're trying to be sly about this, saying that we'll only work for the year there, and return, so we want to know about taking the NCLEX here in NY or in California. They almost said they will make it harder for us if we take it in California, becuase they we'd be on our own, that they don't know anything about how to get the California license registered in New York, and that we'd be on our own.
I said "and this would be different than anything else...how?" (I guess they feel like they do something for you if you have a NY license, verify it or something.) I guess I didn't do a good job of hiding my frustration there.
I'm pretty rebelious, and don't really care what they think.
The thing is they hate us. We can't get any answers from the ANES deptartment because they don't like us either. We're like step children, each of us on our own, trying to figure stuff out, trying to make the program work, trying to gather info and inform ourselves and the rest of the group on what's going on, what's expected, and so on.
Columbia is a disaster. I've never seen such disorganization. The scary thing is that they go for acreditation in 2008. Another scary thing is that several really good nurses in the MSN ANES portion drop out...that scares me--what hopes do I have after being out there for only 1 year of passing this nutty program? and if I do, how prepared am I really going to be?
As far as my talk with B about transfering to his school, I've been so busy I haven't been able to do anything but find my resume on my hard drive and look at it, wondering how it changes for Nursing. And "nursing portfolio?" is that like my skills sheet they have me taking from preceptor to preceptor, so they can sign me off on the basic things I know how to do and demonstrate well?
How do I take years of architecture and retail management and turn it into beside care? I know the fellow I spoke to last month is wondering what happened to the email he's probably expecting. I will do it, I swear, next week when I start the new rotation. It's been crazy with tests, and this rotation is coming to an end, so I have two finals this week, two group presentations.
In all, I'm broken. Like the way you get after a while in a POW camp. I don't make eye contact, I don't talk to anyone unless spoken to first, I don't do anything for any enjoyment--I just wanna get the fuck outta here and come home, where everything is better. The weather, the people, the food, the lifestyle...everything. Most of my friends are still cool, but half (literally) of my clinical group has gotten really hostile and takes every opportunity to jump down my throat every time I say anything in clinical.
I guess that's what I get for going into a female dominated profession. I'm used to men, the way men communicate, the things you say are not taken personally, there's no passive-agressive phoney niceties to your face. If a dude doesn't like you but has to work with you, you get the job done, but you don't have any extra bullshit.
Women, however, will take every opportunity to nice you to death, and then hamstring you in front of your preceptor. This has backfired, on one person in particular, twice, now. My preceptor likes me, and this person just keeps digging herself in deeper and deeper. It's like highschool, or worse, the playground, all over again.
This is really sad for me, because she's also in the anes track and I would have liked to have kept her as a friend. I've always been complementary toward her and her work, always run to her side if she had a difficult patient, always there to lend a hand, but I can't forgive the way she's mounted a little army of haters against me, though, and she takes everything I do as a threat, and belittles it, or criticizes it, in order to make herself look better...in fact, I think my preceptor is getting a bit tired of it. (which is so cool)
"Why did you guys go to Switzerland to be married?" To avoid having a wedding, that's why. I hate them. I think she understand what I mean. Check this out--it starts out slowly, but picks up after the first minute or two. I wonder if her husband is still alive?
I'm listening to the words and voice of Martin Luther King giving his famous speech, click below if you'd like to hear it and watch the slide show.
It suddenly strikes me that I was growing up thinking that racism is very much a thing of the past. When will I ever stop being grateful to my parents for continuing in their search for a home in the U.S. until they found the very liberal, and fair San Francisco?
Listening to MLK this morning, it strikes me that even in New York, these things are not so much a thing of the past. I've heard things that make me bristle. Homophobia, racism...I thought New York was progressive. Perhaps these sentiments are not native, but rather came here from more "behind-thinking" areas.
In fact, last week, a girl from Georgia proudly proclaimed that they don't celebrate MLK day, but rather Robert E. Lee day.
WTF?!
I was horrified, and almost threw up my breakfast. They're out there, folks.
How does it continue to get perpetuated this long? What's the half-life on hatered?
Maybe it's just stereotypes. I've been subjected to lots of that here. Washington Heights is predominantly Black. Dominicans, Puerto Ricans and Cubans have settled this area many years before Columbia Medical campus was here, and now they endure all the affluent White college kids influx their area, with their show of wealth and arrogance, and disregard for the local culture.
As I was not used to Black people speaking Spanish, they are still not used to Whites speaking Spanish. They still look at me as if I'm a talking dog, when they hear me respond in an effort to spare them the struggle with English (as many of them still don't speak much English.)
Perhaps these perceptions are the first step in segregation. A differentiation of us and them. I dunno. I can't wait another couple hundred years (I wish I could see it) when we're all a beautiful mocha colored mix of ALL colors.
One big human race. And nothing left to fight about. Wait...isn't that a John Lennon song?
This one's for my mom, who absolutely LOVED this song. PS: you know I can't end on such a serious note, yeah? I heard that Liverpool changed the name of its airport to John Lennon Airport CLICK HERE IF YOU THINK I MADE THIS UP! :) and they placed the inscription "above us, only sky" somewhere inside. A stand-up comic I was listening to said "what's next? at the baggage claim did they put "Imagine no possessions; it's easy if you try?" I thought that was hilarious.
Love you all! See you in 54 days, but who's counting?
I'm doing my last two rotations this semester; psych and peds. I wasn't looking forward to psych, but it's turning out to be interesting. I can see that it's going to be difficult to get an A in this class, however. There are two tests, each 50 questions, and she's likely to ask us about drug interactions or toxicity side effects and to distinguish these from mental health symptoms themselves. Many of the drugs cause symptoms that mimic other mental illnesses, so while you think to yourself "did I misdiagnose? or is this a side effect of the drug they're on?" the test is over.
As always, in a 5 week class, I'm happy to pass.
I spoke to the associate director of the school to which I would like to transfer, and he seemed really nice, very smart, and had some good suggestions. However, he asked me for my resume and portfolio, and while I have the impressive resume/portfolio for architecture, you can imagine it's too soon to have anything worth showing in the nursing realm. I'm scared to death.
Everyone here is particularly burned out, and ready to head back to California. Another anesthesia student is being very quiet about questions regarding transfer. She's also thinking she wants to not come back for the master's portion.
The weather here has been odd: warm then cold, then it warms up to rain, then it's so cold I can't stand it. I guess El Niño is wreaking havoc all across the USA and though I know it's bad for the environment, an indication of global warming and so on, I am somewhat glad that the winter hasn't been too severe.
This is a long weekend, which is great. I wanted to go check out this great trio play in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn (Stephane Wrembel trio) but it's going to be raining; depending on how bad the weather is, and how antsy I get, I may go check them out; they're there every sunday night, so I could always go later when the weather dries up.
I wish I had more to say. I am hesitant to write about my neice/father incident. Most of you know because I'm very open about it, that my father was an abusive alcoholic. So, I've managed to rid him from my life and move on, but being connected to my neice, herself a recovering substance abuser, was opening the door to this man again, repeatedly, via her myspace blog entries.
For the last few months, especially since she moved out, her connection to him has grown in such a way that seems like idolatry. It's one thing to say he's forgiven for the way he abused my mother, but there was delusion in her perception of what kind of man this truely is. I finally couldn't take it anymore and have had to delete her off my myspace account in a self-preserving move. I can't have him back in my life intrusively like this, at a time when my mental focus needs to be on school. There he was, over and over again. I couldn't take it.
Of course, the exchange with my neice was not what I wanted, but if I have to sever the relationship with her, because she's not aware of how it hurts me, then I'm sad to say it has to be that way. Her words were cutting in that she accused me of not ever doing anything for her, despite the fact that I let her come live with me, and gave her my mom's Jeep Cherokee, which I had intentions of selling. According to her, this wasn't any real, meaningful thing, because those things weren't mine to begin with.
So. How do you deal with someone who has to create their own reality of situations? My response right now is distance; to protect myself.
Whatever it becomes later on is up to her. With the understanding that I can't have her hold the door open for my father to come back and hurt me any more than he's already done. I've worked very hard on overcoming a lot of the damage. And I can't backslide now, during this very demanding year.
So, for now. I am working hard this weekend to read several chapters and dictating notes, and so on. Not sure if I'll go downtown or to brooklyn at all this weekend. I'll post stories and pics of most of my excursions if they're interesting, anyway, if I do :)
I miss you all and hope you are all having a wonderful year! Lisa
the effects of psychoactive drugs on the CNS of the wood spider. These things are studied, because the CNS of spiders is so similar to ours. Watch this vid, I think you'll see the similarities right off.
Utter and complete exhaustion again today--not because of course load, but because someone in the dorm here gets up every hour on the hour to go to the bathroom, and lets her door slam shut as she goes out and in and out and in of her room. I slept maybe a total of an hour and a half last night and I can barely keep my eyes open now, I wonder how I'm going to get thru this class today (a professor I've heard has a lull, monotone voice, and reads you the slides exactly as they are written.)
I'm torn between writting a note and slipping it under everyone's door, asking please could they close their doors slowly and quietly from midnight to six am, or just going out there in my scary, mad state at 4 am and get up in her face. I'm afraid of the latter, since, I don't want to wake up in a holding cell at the local jail.
A friend of mine (in Florida) mentioned that a friend of his just went to a really great art exhibit in Brooklyn and sent me a link to this artist's work. I'm thinking of getting my errands done today, so I can get up and go see it this weekend. check out this link:
I'll be sure to blog about that if I get to go. I was thinking that if I bring my psych book, and first checked out the exhibit and then spent a few hours in the museum cafe, reading and studying (and eating lunch?) that it wouldn't be so bad...not like I'm goofing off, anyway.
I have to start out by apologizing to those of you that I had ambitiously said I was going to meet up with. Of course, by now, many more of you are probably mad at me than not!
I got home last Saturday evening, and was SO exhausted from the semester, the travel, the time change, that I spent just a couple days just lounging around, playing with the dog, taking naps (with said lazy dog) and sorting thru my stuff.
By the time I was just about settled in, and used to the different time zone, it was time to come back.
Well, so here I am. One more semester of this crap, then integration, and them I'm free.
