Lily’s New Strange World Today

I am not doing very well at all. If it weren’t for how much I love and enjoy being with my son, I really would end this shit once and for all. I am not in a good place. There are so many things that I would be gratified to be studying. I want to hone my short story and article writing abilities. I want to study e-commerce and web design. I would like to earn a radiology technician certification.

I know that many, many people will not understand but I hate this nursing program with a passion. Maybe if it was run different I would just tolerate it even if I’m not into it. It is nothing like the EMS program, which I enjoyed. I have been doing health care for years, but I feel like I am being thrown to the sharks unprepared. I want to just walk away and I almost did yesterday. It would have felt great for about an hour and then the reality of the troubles walking away would bring me would have come crashing down.

I have enormous amounts of student loans already owing for being involved in this shit. I have a feeling that I’m going to fail it anyway and not out of stupidity, believe it or not. I’m always very quick to call myself stupid most of the time. But I am just not getting this. Maybe my fellow students are more into it than I am and that’s why they’re getting it. I’m not getting it.

With the EMS class we practiced all the time, but it was not with a stick up the ass attitude like in this program. We had fun every day! The instructors made it fun and interesting. We were always practicing our skills and if someone cracked a joke or a smile, it was welcome. We got together after class once a week. We genuinely liked and supported each other and we liked our instructors. Our instructors loved emergency services and it showed. However I noticed that many of them had an attitude that nurses had a stick up their ass and thought themselves superior. I don’t think its true in all cases but I’m certainly seeing it in some of my instructors.

On Fridays we are in class for a morning and afternoon session, from 10 AM to 4 PM. I had a bastard of a sinus headache in the morning. My eye felt like it was going to fall out of my head and it felt like someone had buried an axe in my skull. I missed the morning session but went in for the afternoon. The instructor chewed me out in front of the class and berated me for turning in my assignment at one instead of noon. I said “you want I should not turn it in? I’m fine with that.” She told me that I should turn it in but it was due at noon. I said that I realized that. Another thing I realize is that in this class, it is better never than late rather than better late than never. And that is an ass-backwards, stupid attitude.

This program could take a huge lesson from the EMS program in how to treat students. I think I’d have more fun becoming a freaking mortician’s assistant. My great uncle was a mortician and he was one of the happiest people in the world. One expects morticians to be morose and humorless. He was anything but. This is especially interesting given the fact that all of his sisters were fatalistic, old-world Catholics, all but one of whom seemed to have been born lacking a humor gene.

I would bail on this program–I can withdraw by the eleventh of November with no academic penalty. However, there is a big complication. My family expects me to finish. The shame of my life is the fact that I have been having to receive financial help from my family for most of my adult life. This was the logic behind selling my soul and sending myself to hell, aka the nursing program. Financial independence. But I don’t even see how I’m going to get through it and I’m more financially in the soup than ever.

I have become crushingly depressed. I was writing how-to pieces for Constant Content pretty faithfully but haven’t been able to grind one out in a couple of weeks.  I had written several pieces for Associated Content . I was writing here almost daily, writing my humor blogs, even starting work on my third book. I had found a writing program that I wanted to become involved with and an online E-commerce bachelor’s degree course. I was ready, willing, and able. But I always had to stop what I was doing to continue my prison sentence, AKA nursing school, and even when I do the work I can do no right.

It isn’t even the having to be at the hospital at 6 AM, although I am not a morning person. I haven’t minded that near as much as I thought I would. It’s the feeling that every time I ask a question I’m stupid for asking it. The attitude from the instructor is “everyone else knows, why don’t you?” I ask my fellow students instead. I never seem to understand what the instructor is looking for and she’s always mad at me. I feel like a bad child. I don’t mind being challenged but I do not do well with being berated.

One of my litmus tests for whether or not I actually want to do something is to ask myself the question, would I continue doing it if I suddenly had enough money to live comfortably for the rest of my life without ever having to work another day. With writing, the answer is yes, absolutely, although I would not write the how-to pieces any more. I find them boring, but I don’t hate them.  I would still take the writing skills and e-commerce courses. I would not start the radiology technologist course, although if I was already involved, I would probably finish it. I would give notice at work but would finish out my time.

When it comes to the nursing program, I would march in, tell my fellow students good luck and it’s been good to know them, and then I would be gone like a freight train, gone like yesterday. Gone with a grin on my face and a spring in my step. I might even skip my fat ass out of the building like a gigantic child. I would be dancing and singing. I would be on an emotional high that would carry me along for a month or more, right over the usual depressive parts of my cycle. I would be very, very happy.

Does this tell you something? It tells me a hell of a lot. Not only do I really not want to be a nurse, but THIS PROGRAM SUCKS ASS! The way they do things and the attitudes of some of the instructors is the worst. Unfortunately, that’s pretty well the way it is all over. There was a show on PBS last night about a nursing program in New York City where their goal is to mentor the new nurses and make them want to stay at the hospital for a long time. I wondered out loud why there were no longer hospital based nursing programs. It would make a lot more sense to hit the ground running in the environment where one might well be working, to work side by side with nurses who would ease you in to doing the steps necessary for your job rather than throw you on the floor after only having you shadow for a day and say “have at it.”

I guess in spite of the financial burden (I would likely be filing for bankruptcy) I would be relieved if I failed. Then I would be outta there. I was prepared to go the distance even though I’m really not into it. But it’s kinda hard when the distance is along a road filled with potholes, barb wire, land mines, and snipers.

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