First Day

Well, the first day of school was interesting, to say the least. There were no pleasantries, no easing us into things. We started with a new professor who came from the upper level, and she seemed very unimpressed with us and our knowledge. She lectured in quiz form (hello, new material and first day of the semester!), so that we had to take notes from her quiz questions to complete the lab for Friday that I assumed we were going to get to ask questions about (wrong!). She questioned what we learned last semester, got snarky when one of our current professors tried to tell her what she was "reviewing" was something we hadn't learned yet, and never cracked a smile. Remind me to never be in a room alone with her!

After that fun time, we signed some papers, were reminded about SNA and all the extra stuff they want us to do outside of class in our free (Ha!) time, then we went over math questions that were sent to us in December. That was frustrating for me, because there was one question that the professor and a student struggled to answer for about ten minutes, but I didn't bother to raise my hand, because I don't work the math problems the way they want us to.

We went over the syllabus, other professors talked, then we went to lunch. After lunch, I had lab, and it was supposed to be on physical assessments and focused assessments. We walked in, and it was the new professor from this morning who was in charge of the lab. She attempted to divide us into groups of three by numbering off. It took several attempts, and we were all getting frustrated. One room was physical assessment,where other professors were sitting at different beds. The other room was where we had focused assessment scenarios. We all got into
our groups and started going through our scenarios. One person was the nurse, one was the patient, and one was the observer. We were to go through the scenarios together, trying to figure out how we would focus our assessment for a particular symptom in a client.

Our new professor walked around the whole time, but never stopped to check on
anyone, or to offer any feedback. After we had done three scenarios,
everyone went and kind of stood in line outside the other room,
waiting for our turn to do the physical assessment. It was 2:00 by
then, and the next group was coming in at 2:30. I was beginning to
worry that I wouldn't get out of there in time to pick Zach up. Four other professors were in that room at different beds with a mannequin. Apparently, one professor was just making them pretend, but I could see that two others were very thorough in what they expected.

We started to get loud (a few girls), and the teachers doing
the physical assessment were starting to get annoyed with us. The new professor walked over to another one, and they started having a discussion.
The only thing that I could hear was that our older professor was saying that
we would never finish, and why didn't we just do the skills check-off
in clinical, since that's where we normally do it. They sat there and
argued for a good five minutes while the rest of just stood around,
not knowing what to do. It was pretty awkward!

Finally, it was said that three of us at a time would be with a
professor. Another student and I went to one of the stations, where a student already was. She finished her assessment, we watched, and we were done. I
didn't get signed off, but didn't care, because I was ready to go. Strange!

Tomorrow, I have clinical orientation at the hospital, am off Thursday, and have two or three different labs to prepare for Friday. I learn to give injections Friday, and am excited/terrified. We'll see how that goes!

Zoe did not handle Mommy not dropping her off at day care well this morning. She screamed and cried, and apparently threw herself at the door as I left. She whined and cried all day at school, and had just woken up when I picked her up. She threw a fit because I wouldn't let her bring her nap mat home, and made herself limp so I couldn't strap her into her car seat. She yanked her paci off and flung it into the back of the car. A bag of chocolate-covered pretzels finally soothed the savage beast, and she was okay until we got home. She found her dress-up clothes, and threw a fit that her Barbie headband wouldn't stay on, and later had to be sent to time-out because she got mad and threw her toys. Darren's dropping her off again tomorrow; watch out!