Yesterday was graduation. Yes, I graduated in December, but we only had the pinning ceremony then. This was the cap-and-gown deal. Due to having used up all my pool time (mostly on just getting through school in the first place without collapsing from exhaustion, but most recently brought the total down to near-zero by going to Aeternitas), I took off neither the night before nor the night after. Thus, the day is mostly a blur, though I do vaguely recall seeing and hugging classmates I'd not seen since December or so, so that was nice. Relying on others for pics though, as I did bring but did not use my camera at all.

Oh! One very memorable bit was seeing the prof I've been known to call Canon!Snape as grand high poohbah or whatever the official term is for the person who gets to carry the college's mace and pound it on the floor to punctuate things. That was ... very fitting. :-D

Fun was getting the voicemail after that work would like me to come in at 8pm please. I returned the call, pointed out I hadn't been to sleep yet since my previous shift, which they actually knew, and thus if they wanted me remotely functional, they'd muddle through and I'd be in at midnight as scheduled. Fortunately, the per diem who was on until 8 was able to stay till midnight. Well, fortunately by some lights. One of these days, I'd like my boss to actually have to fill in one of these gaps, as he is actually required to do but has never, ever done.

Did watch "The Rebel Flesh." Am very WTF about it. ( Spoilers! )

Thanks to a tweet from The Moff (Only matters to me, but today is the 6th anniversary of the broadcast of my first Dr Who. Blimey! But it's not the end of world ... oh!!), I also rewatched The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances at work last night. That's always fun, and I finally caught the explanation of something that I'd thought was a continuity error all this time. Jack is never shown seeing the outside of the TARDIS, so it always seemed a bit weird when he finally entered that he commented about it being "much bigger on the inside." He did, however, comment on it to the Doctor when Rose first introduced them, mentioning that he'd seen it when he'd thrown the Chula ambulance in front of them as bait and complimenting the paneling on their "capsule." Huh. Love finding little stuff like that.

Have this week off from tutoring. Plan is currently to dress all interviewy, grab a stack of resumes and the Yellow Pages, and apply in person to every nursing home within driving distance. After that, I think I'm left with making paper airplanes out of them and launching them at utter random.

Stopped at the local comic shop after graduation, ostensibly to check my folder (which had the latest DW comic, yay!) but mainly to follow up on a convo I'd just had with dawnrune about the possibility of a fic-writer meetup-and-write group along the lines of a wrimo whilst not waiting around for November. Turns out, there's already something in the works, which is kinda cool. Emphasis will, understandably, be on writers and artists who do manga/anime and gamer stuff, but open to whomever. That could be cool. In other news, I'm hoping that the added free time this week will see me finally a) trying to expand at least one or two of the drabbles I did at Aeternitas and b) trying out some of the spreads and concepts from ceciliatan's workshop on using the Tarot with writing.

Also need to write up something about Thargelia for the HTAZP blog. *winces* It's been a week already. Oops. And I need to get cracking if I'm going to do an additional choreography for Philokhoria on top of the troupe choreo I'm teaching the others. I'm thinking "Fireflies," though "Sandansko" and "Graovsko" are also possibilities. So just a few things on the to-do list then.

Hugs to all that want them, and have a great week!

In theater, hell week is (iirc) the week before a performance opens, spent chasing down every last thing that's trying to go wrong and fix it before opening night. So, yeah, with pinning on Friday, it's a bit like that. (Personal drama: dress I ordered didn't fit and clearly would look like crap even if it did. Found an outfit yesterday that I'm less than thrilled with but will have to do.)

In college, hell week is either finals week or the "reading week" some places schedule between classes and finals, which tends to become crammed with every study group and prep workshop ever perceived. Given that we took practice NCLEX exams yesterday and now have four 8-hour days of review ahead of us, it's a bit like that too.

Good news: apparently, if that practice NCLEX had been real, I'd have passed.

Bad news: I got 100% of the pediatric questions and 75% of the OB questions wrong. And I recognized less than half the drugs that came up (seriously, where did they come up with those???), though I weaseled my way around some of the questions just from the wording. All of which is apparently typical but still annoying.

Other good news: Niece's baptism Sunday was lovely ... once we found a priest. Seems there was a major SNAFU about the time of the service. I'm admittedly rusty on scripture these days, but when Jesus said that thing about the left hand not knowing what the right was doing, I'm pretty sure He didn't mean the admin versus the priests. For all that my mother drives me insane and we have reams of Issues, I do admire her pluck. How many other 70+ year-old women, upon discovering that their granddaughter's baptism may not happen due to bureaucratic idiocy, whip out a cell phone and call the archdiocese to demand a replacement be sent out? (How many have the archdiocese on speed dial, first off?) This was not how the replacement priest was found, but I still admire her for doing it.

There is also mega fannish squeefulness, some of which I can eventually talk about but not yet, some of which I just kind of can't at all without forever linking this handle with my full legal name. I'm bummed about that part, but not enough to take the shine off the squeeage.

Working on hospital residency app #3, which was late before I started due to confusing and conflicting application info. (If they don't hire me for this, I'm tempted to suggest they hire me to edit their website so that it doesn't provide date ranges for things to happen that would require a TARDIS, a Vortex Manipulator, or a Time Turner to actually make sense.) Keeping an eye on local hospitals that don't have new grad residency programs too, but nothing really there yet. (I actually wouldn't mind being in a float pool, but I'd like a residency type orientation first, with at least a couple of weeks on each unit prior to being turned loose to float, not just a few days on each that add up to a few weeks total. That just seems like a recipe for disaster.)

All of which is to say I'm sorry I've fallen behind (again) on drabbling and commenting and such, but I hope to catch up a bit once this week is done. Hugs to those that want 'em!

So, I've been on the road a lot lately with little time for my preferred method of studying, which mostly involves taking practice tests and then looking up whatever I get wrong, with a large dash of flash cards and study sheets. I always record lectures, but I mostly just scan through to things I've missed in my notes or need to clarify. With all this drive time, I actually re-listened to all the lectures for this last exam, figuring that was better than nothing.

Better than nothing. Hah!

Dude, either they just decided to go reaaaaaaallly easy on us, or I should totally have been doing this all along. Clearly, I'm going to spend from now until the final re-listening to the entire freaking semester, because I haven't seen a grade like this since 1st semester. *boggles*

Hoo, boy, have I got a lot of catching up to do! So, things that I'm grateful for, more or less associated with days on which I was particularly grateful for them.

Sun 8/15 - A Sunday with no commitments whatsoever to actually relax.
Mon 8/16 - A friend got good news on her husband's health status, which may not yet be great but is improving.
Tue 8/17 - Last visit with the in-laws of the summer. Sort of a mixed grat, but mainly that it went all right despite a near-fiasco assembling MiL's new flat-screen tv. And then disassembling it and packing it back up to be returned. After losing screws inside the tv set itself. It's actually very funny in retrospect.
Wed 8/18 - For being able to make lemonade out of lemons and spend a day at Kripalu doing yoga and workshops and hanging out with ubiquirk, whose other vacation plans had fallen through.
Thu 8/19 - Patsfan's birthday. Ummm. That we got to have a little time together despite work.
Fri 8/20 - Discovered flu shots available already! Got one before school could start nagging about it! (Later learned they've decided not to make it a requirement unless our specific assigned hospitals require it after all, but I was still very psyched Walgreens was offering them already. Regardless, it's done, and with the way the asthma has been, I should probably be getting it, required or not.)
Sat 8/21 - For the opportunity to spend a day with my new niece. I'd been feeling oddly disconnected, having only seen her at the hospital and then one other brief visit. So having a day of babysitting was actually very nice.
Sun 8/22 - That despite the rain, RI Pagan Pride Day went off well. (Note to self: next time, remember your audience when referring to Pagan Pride Day as PPD. Fellow nursing students are likely to misinterpret. *g*) Also, that people were so receptive to the Hellenic Temple of Apollon, Zeus, and Pan ritual. Usually, PPD closing rituals are a bit more open/generic. But folks were very receptive, whether they participated or observed. Also grateful to Tim for opening up the last round of libations to other Gods. Obviously, I included Kwan Yin. Another Temple member later said he'd bet someone I'd do that. My response? "Seriously, what idiot took that bet? That was a gimme!"
Mon 8/23 - I think I spent most of the day in bed recovering from the weekend. I think I've already been grateful for having a day to do that earlier this month, so I need to come up with something else. Unfortunately, as that is probably all I did, I'm not sure what else there is!
Tue 8/24 - New student orientation went well. Other GSA members showed this time as well, so we got to hang out a bit. Got quite a few people interested in joining too.
Wed 8/25 - Local library has wifi, making it a safe place to escape to whilst the landlord cut a hole in our bedroom wall. (Originally tried staying home, just at the other end of the apartment. Lungs decided that wasn't good enough.)
Thu 8/26 - Kind of covered by drive-by post: 1st day back was survived.
Fri 8/27 - Personality Disorder Role-Play Theater! No, seriously, that was the absolute best part of the whole day. The prof who designed this should do more stuff like this instead of reading her PowerPoints to us. Interactivity=much better learning experience. I got to be Adam Avoidant, which probably came off more like Social Anxiety Disorder than Avoidant Personality Disorder, but seemed to more or less work anyway.
Sat 8/28 - Angel Food Ministries. So far, I'm very pleased with the program and the site. This month, I had enough leftover frozen meats that I just got the fruit & veggie box, and it all looked good when I unpacked it. We'll see whether that continues once we get into fall and winter and things are out of season, but for now, it's working out really well.
Sun 8/29 - I'm grateful that my other niece (on Patsfan's side) is progressing well enough in her pregnancy that her shower today is still on. There have been concerns about placenta previa and possible pre-eclampsia, so this is definitely a non-trivial thing. Just about a month to go. Looking forward to meeting my third great-niece. (Well, second great-niece. Other is a great-nephew. Again, where is the gender-neutral collective for this relationship? Grrr.)

The theme for this week's quiz_sshg is buttons, and Numb is one of the twelve featured stories, not to mention possibly the source of one of the mystery passages. Took me a minute to figure out why it was selected, actually, but when I did, I LOLled.

Click the gorgeous, button-laden banner to be taken straight to this week's quiz, and have fun!



In other news, I've survived yet another validation day, though with a warning to do more (er, any?) lab time on suctioning so I'm less a nervous wreck in front of a live patient.

The area where I live had a very large Haitian population, thus so does the college I attend, and I have quite a few long-standing "regular" tutees who are Haitian. One of these students came to me for chem help yesterday. The tutor who'd taken her appointment request earlier had already tried to say something comforting and warned me not to say anything about the earthquake, as she had tried to say something comforting/encouraging and had been asked not to bring it up again after the woman had broken down and cried.

This other tutor also asked how we could offer some sort of meaningful support to all our fellow students who have loved ones in Haiti. Honestly? I haven't a clue. The ones who are still coming on campus are probably mostly in a similar headspace: terrified of what news they'll eventually receive and trying desperately to keep on with life anyway.

Same student is coming back today. The most I can offer her specifically is a couple of hours of getting lost in the solving of gas law and solution problems.

Maybe I'll stop by Student Support Services on the way in to see if they have any suggestions.

There are few things I find as torturous as knowing someone is in pain and not being able to help.

Got the signed copy of the "course substitution" in the mail today. They took Practical Criticism in lieu of English 102. W00t!

Also, they're running Wintersession courses in January, so I've got tutoring hours for the month. The only class running that I could conceivably tutor is the Pharm course I just finished. I honestly wouldn't know how to tutor it other than to show someone how to use a freaking index, but okay. Meanwhile, there's a ton of data entry that needs doing, so that'll be me. Extra money, double yay!

And after tonight, I have just two more shifts of regular work for the year, then I'm off until literally New Year's, when I'll be in for midnight. Looking forward to pretty much just collapsing into a heap for a few days somewhere in there.

So, I mentioned that this past Thursday appears to have been Southeast Connecticut Fail Day. The more I look around, the more I think the whole week has been International Fail Week, but I've got enough to rant about.

Dunno why I didn't go ahead and write this yesterday. Did I mention this was a rant? Logic has no place in it. So why was I waiting to be coherent? *shrugs* Though not being incoherent is a reasonable goal, hopefully acoomplished.

The language fail and race fail went hand in hand, as they are often wont to do, when we had our "Intro to Geriatric Nursing" lecture, and thus, there was the age fail to go with them. The size fail appeared to come directly out of left field. Here are some of the comments my classmates were making that had my blood boiling. Did I mention that I ended up stuck with a seat back in the "chatty corner" of the classroom this semester? So most of this didn't filter up to the front to the prof. I wish I could say the same for myself.

Lecture point (and actually, this was in the ortho segment before we even hit geri): The various arthritic diseases have huge health care costs associated with them, and the incidence of arthritic diseases and disorders increase with age.
Classmate: DNRs would fix that.

As someone with an arthritic disorder, can I just say thanks so much for that? While I'm a firm believer in DNRs, I can't say that they're particularly applicable to arthritic disorders in and of themselves. In fact, I can't imagine where in seven hells that comment came from, and I probably don't want to know. What I do want to know is why this classmate is going into nursing at all with an attitude like that.

Lecture point: With the changes in demographics, geriatric nursing is a growing specialty.
Classmate: Something I didn't entirely make out that included "fat nursing" accompanied by a sneer and several giggles

Dear classmate, I'm not sure if your problem is with overweight nurses or caring for overweight patients. Either way, I'd like to point out the numerous times you've thanked me for saving your academic ass. Look back on them fondly, because I'm not all that inclined to give any future repeat performances. Sincerely, your fat classmate who sits two seats away from you

Lecture point: Also, the demographics within the aging population are changing, and there is a growing need for nurses with the ability to speak more than one language. Some statistics about racial demographic shifts. A classmate up at the front of the room shared that one of the computerized med systems automatically gives both Spanish and English drug info.
Several classmates: Various comments about that being "just wrong" and "learn the language" and other crap.

Dear classmates, WTF? No, seriously. I realize the immediate area here is pretty white-bread, at least until you get a bit closer to New London. I remember being hugely weirded out by that when I first moved here from Boston. So I guess I shouldn't be quite so surprised that there are folks still just starting to get used to the idea of not being a 90-something percent majority and resisting like hell. But can I just point out two reasons why, even if that's your attitude overall--which is still in dire need of adjusting, imo, because whether you like it or not, these demographics are shifting and you can either adapt or get left in the dust--it has no place in healthcare? First, when people are hurt or sick, they're going to have a harder time communicating in a secondary language, even if they're otherwise pretty fluent in it. (Never mind that with several dementias, they may very well totally lose a language they were once pretty fluent in.) Second, if a nurse needs to look up a med, and his or her first language isn't English, wouldn't you rather they had the option to read it in their own language to make sure they're not missing some critical nuance? Of course, given the demographics of our immediate area, I'll grant that Creole, Polish, French, and Mandarin are at least as needed as Spanish, if not a bit more.

So there's the race, age, size, and language fail. Then, on to work for the other two.

Client 1: You can't say stuff like that around her. She's religious.
Client 2: What kind of religious?
Client 3: Oh, I'm non-denominational.
Client 2: Then how can you call that religious? You have to be some kind of specific religion to be religious.
Client 4: Hey, everybody has their beliefs, and you have to respect them.

Huge round of applause for Client 4 in my head. So, that bit of fail was interrupted early, and without me or any other staff member having to intervene. I do wish I'd caught what "stuff like that" referred to though.

Not much later, yet another client was commenting on what they had on television. Key phrases included, "They're all gay on there" and "that's disgusting." Mind you, this is a client I've had to have the, "Whatever your opinion of any particular person or group may be, derogatory remarks towards or about that person or group are not appropriate or acceptable, and you've signed a code of conduct agreeing to that" conversation with. Repeatedly. All I had to do was walk into the room to get an apology out of said client for this behavior and acknowledgment that it was inappropriate. Several other clients appeared relieved by this, at least two of whom had probably been trying to work out how to respond to this themselves.

Then I looked at the tv to see WTF they were watching. I'd been thinking probably Will & Grace, with Buffy as a close second (though that would normally have inspired a witchcraft rant from this client either instead or as well). I'm too out of touch with what's on regular broadcast tv to have any other guesses. It appeared to be Tom & Jerry. Yeah, I don't know either.

And of course my fail in all of this is that other than the very last incident, I did nothing but fume and resist the urge to slap people. Not that I could've done much else during class, but there could've been a conversation or two afterwards. Bleargh.