Sick

I was so looking forward to my 5 day "vacation" before school started and on day 2 I started experiencing cold symptoms. On day 4 I decided to go see a naturopathic doctor who did a hydrotherapy treatment on me and gave me some herbal supplements to help boost my immune system. Today, which would be about day 5 or 6 of the cold, I called in sick to work and am spending the day in bed.

I debated long and hard last night about whether to call in or not, but then my sense of how it's best to rest up and give your body the time to heal kicked in and I decided to take care of myself. It was a good call since now I'm in the coughing phase and I feel an extreme lack of energy. I am going to work tomorrow, sick or not because I don't want to take any more time off. Our sick and vacation time is from the same bundle of hours, so when I call in sick I take away from my vacation time.

I'm using my bed time to go between reading my nutrition assignment and book 7 of Harry Potter. Here's hoping I can finish both!

New year, new motivation

Happy new year everyone! Today I actually sat down and started the first draft of my statement of purpose essay that I need to write for my OHSU application. OHSU is the acronym for Oregon Health and Science University, which is right here in Portland, for those of you out of towners. I think the first draft came out ok and I'm happy that I got a start on it. I'm applying for the accelerated BSN program up there. I say up there, because OHSU is on top of a hill. And the application is due on January 15th.

Geek that I am, I plan to read my A&P chapter that we'll start in on next week. This term my goal is to read ahead of time. It does make a difference in understanding the lectures better.

It sure is nice to have some time off work. I took off yesterday and today, then have my normal 3 days off, so I have a little 5 day chill out before school starts up. Woo hoo!

Procrastination

I think that I've always been somewhat of a leave it until the last minute kind of gal, but this is getting ridiculous. I just haven't been able to bring myself to work on my essay to apply to OHSU. It's due on January 15th, so I still have some time, but I wanted to get it done before the next term starts and as the winter break is cruising along way too fast, so is my inability to sit down and actually work on writing the thing.

I did have one session of brainstorming, which went ok. But I need to do another session or 2 of more brainstorming and then actually get to writing it. I think I'm a little intimidated by the one page limit that I must cram the answer to four, count them four, questions. I hope it's ok to single space because that's what I'll be doing. But come on Cheryl...lets get a move on!

Maybe I need to think of some kind of reward that I can give myself after I finish the application. But then again, getting into school would be a huge reward so that I would be able to move forward towards a new career and get out of having to wake up at the butt crack of dawn and go listen to depressed and suicidal people talk about their misery. Now that I think of it, I think I'm feeling a bit motivated to write... but now I have to go to bed so it will have to wait until tomorrow.

Nursing or PA?

Lately I've been having a lot more doubt about whether I want to pursue nursing or being a physician's assistant. In thinking about nursing, I've always had the goal of moving towards nurse practitioner. I like the idea of having that level of knowledge and responsibility, and hey, the money is appealing as well. But more and more people have been talking with me about PA and the prospect sounds interesting. I was talking with my mother about it, since she's a nurse practitioner, and she said that PA is more technical than NP. The other difference is the amount of schooling. I would have to do the 18 months of accelerated BSN, then 2 (or more) years to become a NP. PA school, while super intense, is 2 years. I would have to take the GRE though to get in, and to go the nursing route I wouldn't have to take it until I got the NP part, and I'm not totally certain that it's required for that.

I think I'm going to go ahead and apply for OHSU's accelerated BSN, then see if I get in. If I don't, I'll have more time to look into different options. If I do get in, well then I'll have to decide what I want to do sooner rather than later.

Finals week results

Well it's over. I made it through the fall semester and while I haven't gotten the *official* word on my Human Development grade, I'm about 99.9% sure that I got an A which means I got A's in both my classes this term! I worked my ass off for my Anatomy/Physiology grade and all that work finally paid off. I was kind of nervous midway through the term, but was able to turn things around and do well. I have to say that it was the hardest class I have ever taken in my life. Next term I'll do the 3rd term of A&P and then I'll be done with that requirement. Don't get me wrong...it's all super interesting stuff that I'm enjoying learning, it's just hard with the pressure of wanting to get an A to be competitive in the application process for school.

Speaking of school, I'm thinking more and more about Physician's Assistant school instead of nursing. It's a super up and coming field and would be really interesting work with a good deal of responsibility. The only thing I don't know about is if my crisis line experience would count as medical experience in the application process. I guess I'll have to talk with someone at one of the schools to find out.

Work is getting to be so taxing on my spirit these days. I don't know if it's because of the holidays that everyone is freaking out, but the calls I've been getting these past couple of weeks have been super intense. I just don't have the energy to give to people anymore like I used to. It's hard because I'm trying to leave this field that I'm in now, but have to stay in it for now to pay my bills. I find that I just don't give a shit about the majority of the people who call in. Perhaps this is self protection against the stress of the work? Hard to say, but it's really hard to drag my ass out of bed at 3:30AM to do the early bird shift at this job. I keep telling myself, "but I can knit in between calls"! But this is getting to be not enough to compensate for the misery I have to hear 32 hours per week. And I just picked up a bunch of shifts over the holiday break to make money to pay my tuition in January. Why can't I just win the lottery? Oh yeah, maybe it's because I never buy any lottery tickets!

Finals time

OK everyone...I'm in the middle of finals so that's why there's been no posts and won't be any more other than this super short one. I'll be done with all my school related stuff at the end of this week and then you can look forward to vacation time musings about where to apply to school, timelines for applying, my registration nightmare with Nutrition 225, what's going to happen next semester, and how I'm staying sane through all this.

Keep on moving forward

On days like today, I wonder if I'm going to be able to work this job throughout my pre-reqs until I'm able to start a full time program and just live off student loans. "Black Friday"(what an annoying name!) is one of the busiest days of the year at my job. Most of the accounts that we answer for are closed, and so we get all the calls. While there's not a ton of clinical work to do (all the lonely people called in yesterday), the call volume is really intense. I worked for 8 hours and unless I was on one of my breaks or lunch, I was non-stop answering the phone.

When there are calls waiting to be answered because there isn't a counselor available, a little light flashes on our phones and sometimes there's a bell that rings. The bell part all depends on who the supervisor is at the time. So I can be talking to someone and I keep seeing the little light flashing telling me that when I get off that call, that I'll be expected to very quickly answer another one because someone, or several someones, are waiting on hold. It makes a stressful job even more stressful.

While my employer in some ways tries to really appreciate the employees, there is still an unspoken pressure to take more calls, often at the expense of the counselors' mental health. I mean like yesterday they brought in Thanksgiving day dinner for everyone and then today they had pizza. But there was barely enough time to eat the pizza today with the phones ringing off the hook like they were. Luckily I signed up for my lunch at the time the pizza arrived so I got a nice hot slice.

The more I think about it, the more I think that I'll be starting school full time in 2011. This means that I'll be at my job for like 2 years before I'm able to quit, and this thought is kind of freaking me out these days. On the one hand this is a good job in many ways for a student, especially since I don't have to take my work home like I have in other mental health/ counseling jobs. But on the other, hearing so much misery day in and day out is taking its toll. Not to mention the ergonomic issues that pop up after typing like crazy 32 hours/week. When I worked there 10 years ago, one of the main reasons that I left was due to developing carpal tunnel, which miraculously (I'm being sarcastic here) went away shortly after I quit.

I try to remind myself that at least I have a job, which is a lot more than a lot of people have these days. And there is relative job security where I am as well. The pay is decent for the type of work that it is and I can pick up extra shifts to make more money pretty much whenever I want to. I'm trying my hardest to think positive, but it sure is hard to do some days. Especially Black Friday.