No, really - what is your EMERGENCY?

This used to be the journal of a nursing student at a prestigious 4 year university that will still remain unnamed. This is now the journal of a Registered Nurse working in an Emergency Department in a major US city. All names have been changed to protect the stupid and the mean. There is no educational value in this journal, sometimes it will be downright mean and catty - this is where I come to vent!

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

This past weekend

Well, as previously reported, we finished the spring semester on Friday. We still don't have grades for that last final which blows my mind since it only had 30 questions on it. Anyway, there was a fair amount of celebrating this weekend, not quite as much as originally intended, but still a respectable amount of alcohol was ingested.

Friday night we had a Nurse's Wrap Party at a local restaurant/bar that was kind enough to open early for us so we could start drinking at 3:00pm. I have some friends who are not normally big drinkers but were totally plastered by about 5:00pm. Actually, my friends and I are not regular drinkers anymore, but when we go, we go big. I thought I was going to be driving later that night, so I didn't drink much. This was more of a pre-flight for later, so I left a little early to catch the bus to my house and get ready to go out later. I'd been home about an hour and another friend (Julia) called and asked if I had heard from the two (Mary and Sue) who were totally plastered by 5:00. Come to find out, Mary and Sue left the bar to walk to Mary's house. Mary only lives about a 10 minute walk away. 45 minutes and 2 cell phone messages later, we hadn't heard from them and neither was answering either cell phones or home phones. I started to get a little worried that they were passed out in a ditch somewhere. I later talked to Sue and she said they got a little lost (I really don't know how), and that Mary had to stop and pee in the woods. Sue had also received a phone call from her mom and promptly told her that they were lost in an alley and she was drunk. Boy was her mom proud! The evening ended with me, Julia, and her husband meeting up with some Aussie's they know in a nearby town (complete with a post drinking meal at the Waffle House), Sue and her roommate rallying and going out again later, and Mary "asleep" at her house by 10:30pm. Since I left the original party early, I apparently missed the drunken fools. But, we had class on Monday and there were pictures. Sue still doesn't remember lifting up her shirt to show off her stomach for the camera......

This was my first weekend in 18 months where I really did not have any school work to do. I started taking the last of my pre-req's for nursing school in January 2004, took my last final for those on a Saturday in May and started nursing school that Monday. Ever since, we have been in class. It was weird. We all just kept thinking we were supposed to be reading something or writing a paper or doing a study guide. Or in my case, since I procrastinate through the weekend, chastising myself for waiting too late to read something, write a paper, or do my part of the study guide! Class on Monday made up for the fun we had over the weekend. It was so painful, I wanted to cry. Fortunately we only have to meet in person for this class twice. Anymore, and it might violate some clause of the Geneva Conventions. It was fun though to hear about Sue giving the smackdown to Army Barbie when she started to mouth off! I'd pay to see that again!

I almost forgot: we have assigned groups for my summer school on line class. We had to meet in these groups on Monday. I hate assigned groups. Not that I don't want to meet new people, but at this point (one year in), I have met the people I want to be friends with. Also, I hate having to do group projects for grades with people I don't like. You never know what their skill level is, and normally I just end up doing everything myself because I am type A and a perfectionist. I have a circle of friends that I trust will put as much work into the project as I will and I am confident we will get good grades. We think the same way and we understand each other and what to focus on. I just have not had good luck in nursing school with assigned groups.

I have two people in my group that I absolutely can not stand. I mean, CAN NOT STAND. One is PWS (butt crack, flipping off the teacher) and the other one doesn't have a nickname yet. She cried last year when she didn't pass one of her practical exams and blamed it on the TA that taught the class because he didn't read the instructions verbatim. The test was on things like making occupied beds, sterile gloving, standard precautions, not hard stuff. If she had spent enough time practicing, she wouldn't have had a problem. Besides, I really hate it when people blame others for their failures. So I had to listen to her run her suck about what she is going to do this summer and what kind of nurse she wants to be, blah, blah, blah. Then PWS, the queen of stupid and inappropriate comments, made a typically PWS comment. I had mentioned that I was in the Marine Corps and had been for several years. She pipes up in her silly Valley Girl accent and says, "They, like, have girls in the Marine Corps?" (Read that in a squeaky voice with plenty of up inflection at the end.) I (and the rest of the group) looked at her with disbelief. Here is the rest of the conversation:

Me
: I'm just going to pretend like you didn't just say that. Rewind, erase.
PWS: Well, they don't have women in the SEALS.
Me: yes that is true, but we aren't SEALS, those are Navy and special forces.
PWS: I've just never seen one. Really?
Me: Uh, yeah, we've been around pretty much continually since like WWI.
PWS: Well, what do you wear?
Me: (sarcasm) Little ruffled coulots and white gloves. Oh and cute little hats. We serve tea on a tray to the guys, kind of like Donut Dolly's.

Sometimes it scares me that these are supposedly college educated people and they are socially and culturally clueless. I mean maybe I'm being too harsh, is it not common knowledge that all of the services are co-ed now?? There is even a series of commercials and print media that feature Woman Marines. I don't know, blows my mind.

Well, I'm off for a very mini vacation. I start working on Monday and since I received no financial aid for summer school, I will be working as much as I possibly can this summer.

I doubt I will blog for a little while, please don't yell!

An aside: I find it funny that when you run spell checker on Blogger, it tries to replace the word 'blog' as being spelled wrong!

2 Comments:

  • At 12:52 PM, Blogger Kevin said…

    where was I when you were serving tea to officers senior to yourself?

    I would pay to see you do that. Not much, but I would pay.

     
  • At 1:53 PM, Blogger Shannon said…

    Ha. There isn't enough money in the world for me to serve tea to someone who is perfectly capable of getting it themselves. Besides, you are in the Navy, don't you guys have people that do that for you??

     

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