Skool!

It's been a long time since I've had to forcibly drag myself out of bed before I was good and ready to get up. I'm not sure I'm a fan.

School has begun again for me. My first day was Wednesday, and that was nothing exciting. Just the standard class orientation, going over the syllabus and calendar, meeting our clinical instructors. The nicest thing about it was having the afternoon off. The saddest thing about it was realizing that I have terrible, terrible people skills, I don't know hardly anyone in my class after 4 semesters, and when we go into groups I'm always the one left trying to wriggle into a group of close-knit friends that I don't know.

Thursday we had "orientation" at Utah State Hospital... it was interesting. I convinced myself that it started an hour later than we were clearly told, so I showed up an hour late to my extreme embarrassment. Luckily the instructor was very nice about it.

Right at the end of this orientation, we had the creepiest, most mentally disturbing little project I have ever experienced in my life. We simulated the schizophrenic "voice hearing experience" through CD players and headphones. Before we started, I was very cockily thinking "Ha. It's a voice on a tape player. How bad could this possibly be?" Well, it was bad. Something about having it so loud in your head.... saying those awful things... while you're trying to pay attention to what people are trying to do... Ugh. It was awful. Demonic. Click here for a small sample of what it sounded like (Rated PG-13 for language and creep-factor). I can't even describe what it really felt like... even listening at first, I wasn't really bothered, but afterward, as time went on, it bothered me more and more. I came home and sobbed for 10 minutes trying to get it all out so I could go to work without feeling emotionally frayed. It worked. Sortof.

I'll have Community Nursing clinicals at Baby Your Baby until October, then my Preceptor clinicals at American Fork Labor & Delivery until December. Very exciting. I'm happy I got BYB for the Community Nursing clinical, because it's rather special to me. I'm hoping I can really talk to some of these young struggling moms on a personal basis and really help them.

This morning we had another orientation at the Utah County Health Dept... and for the most part, it was the driest and most boring thing I've ever attended. Most of the speakers spoke in quiet, monotone voices, the slides were in muted colors, we got handouts of fabulous statistics... ugh. I'm so glad that's over. I'm probably spoiled by IHC orientations, where they almost always feed us. They didn't even have vending machines at this place.

Work today, and then I go down to 3 days/week. I'm excited to have more time to myself, which is what I tell myself even though i know most of it will be taken up by school. Oh well. It's gonna be a good semester!