perhaps this will shed some light on my school situation
I"ve been saying for a while that I will do an extra update on explaining school and work stuff, so I guess now is the time since those are the two worst things stressing me out. Well, maybe not the two worst because tehre are also tons of other things, but those are the two most imminnt
SCHOOL I am in the FOURTH year of my TWO YEAR grad program. Most of you know that I am going to become a Maternal/Women's Health Nurse Practitioner, but I wrote that just in case you don't understand. It's SO difficult to explain how school has been for 4 years, so I am going to try to explain it in an outline form. I want people to read and understand this, but as I first drafted it in paragraph form it got excessively long.
A-- My original intentions for going into grad school:
1) to protect myself from being forced to work in a hospital until I am 70, and get treated like crap
2) because I never wanted to be a nurse in the first place, so since I "did the right thing" anyway and finished
school wih flying colors ON TIME, I felt I deserved some security and more options for the future
3) to become more professional
4) to get it done while I'm childless, rather than abandon my children and home to do it later (hmm, childhood
issues, much?)
5) to protect my future income ability regardless of a husband's ability to acquire income
6) to provide more intimate care for my patients, to build a closer relationship with them
7) to serve an underserved population who deserves it (rural pop rather than city pop, who are WORKING poor
because they have little access to "free" goverment stuff rather than the city "poor" who hustle and
abuse the system because theyr'e surrounded by handouts)
a--- open up my own rural clinic where I would provide well-women and well-baby care in one setting so that
parents (MOMS mostly) can take their baby and themselves in in one day and get it all overwith instead
of finding daycare, babysitters, or driving around while trying to raise a family
8) to make more money in fewer hours, allowing myself to be a mostly "stay at home" mom but not be poor or
rely on a single income of my "future" husband (I don't want to work at all when I have kids, but I am
a realist and don't feel it's acceptable to be stubborn about staying home if in the end it stresses the
family more)
B--- The program didn't turn out the way they presented it (falsely) to me when I paid for it:
1) They told me I'd be done in TWO YEARS (however, that obviously didn't happen, read on)
2) They told me I could go FULL TIME (but they lied because they don't offer enough classes)
a--- few summer courses to help get caught up
b--- I still tried so hard to catch up that since they offer like 1-2 useful classes each semester, I was
finished with my entire program (including retaking those classes) EXCEPT for my
CLINICAL year, in my third year, and had nothing left to take
c--- conveniently the school or nursing kickes you out if you try to take any time off, an because of that and
the fact that my school loans would be due if I wasn't full time, I spent last spring taking full-
time classes in a totally different grad program (teaching) for spring 08
3) I started school right when I started at Childrens (which was all a lie, my orientation for "six days on
evenings" turned into "six weeks plus 2 months more FULL TIME on day shift where I had
scheduled all my classes) which killed me physically and mentally
4) I wound up on Academic Probation for like a year
a--- I will admit that this next part *only* was "MY FAULT" although mostly because of other circumstances
b--- I got below a B in two of my classes that first semester (graduate level pathophysiology, and graduate
level pharmacology--- can you blame me?!) while trying to orientate to a new CAREER
c--- they made me re-take those classes one at a time, which wasted TWO FULL SEMESTERS
d--- they only offer the clinical (required) portion of the degree EVERY TWO YEARS, and being on "probation"
meant that I couldn't sign up for clinicals my second year, and had to wait TWO MORE YEARS
for nothing other than beurocracy (and more tuition money in their purses)
e--- they harassed me for the remainer of my program
5) my advisor is useless. this is dangerous in undergrad, but at double the tuition and quadruple the
responsibility of a graduate program, this is even worse. My advisor who met me ONCE
before I even entered the program actually wrote to me that she didn't think I was "cut out" for
this program (because I had a job and wasn't living off mommy and daddy at 21 years old) like
the other girls she advised. I never spoke to her again for TWO YEARS adn planned my whole
prgram alone
6) while all of this was going on, LIFE happened. I met my husband, got screwed even more by my job, was
abandoned by my "best friend", went undiagnosed with a serious illness that is considered
similar to non-Hodgkins lymphoma, etc
7) since most of my friends had easy jobs, I figured I'd survive mine, but that's far from the truth!!!
C--- Going to school to become an NP taught me more about it
1) There is a huge stress of malpractice in this country. For example, you're the first name on a lawsuit of a
mother who smokes enough crack to kill her baby, simply because you didn't lock her up and tie
her down---- and if you tried you'd be sued for that!!!
2) One course in particular taught us that if we joined the profession (of NPs) in order to "gain more autonomy
(ie, not following a doctor who never saw the pt but following our own instincts since we KNOW
the pts)", "make more money", "work fewer hours", etc, we were in the wrong profession.
3) That opening up your own practice is an insane idea (read on for why). It broke my heart to realize this, but I
kept hoping to find a way to pull it off
a--- Building costs (mortgage, inspections and updates to bring any building to healthcare code)
b--- TROOP of lawyers (realty lawyer, business lawer, malpractice lawyer)
c--- office staff (secretary/receptionist, physican on payroll to collaborate with if needed, RN to help get
patients into the rooms and to do testing on)
d--- a HUGE time committment (being on call all the time, staffing an office by myself, enough hours to
make any money-- which means never being home-- which defeats the purpose of becoming
an NP and making better pay and affording to be home more than at work)
e--- Even just supplies to open an office (beds, all sorts of office supplies, testing equipment,
computers, phone/internet/heat/electric/plowing/landscaping/cleaning other bills)
f--- I quickly realized that at 23 (when I was SUPPOSED to graduate) there was no way I'd be rich enough or
known enough in the field to be taken seriously. It broke my heart, but I still kept thinking that
maybe there'd be a way to do it.
So. HEre I was after all of that, trying to enter my fourth year and simply survive it. I could have quit a long time ago, but I refused. I wasn't throwing away all the time and money that school stole from me, and quitting with nothing to show for two - three years of my life.
And my final year has brought with it MANY new problems and concerns. Which is what my current stress revolves around.
D--- Final Year
1) Guess who is in charge of my clinical year? MY ADVISOR WHO I HAVEN'T SPOKEN TO IN TWO YEARS!!!
This is the one person who decides to make or break me!!! God hates me
2) the only date I could get married was the saturday before school started, so that and the honeymoon
put me behind in teh semester by two weeks
2) I am required to take two lecture classes-- one in fall, one in spring. These aren't so bad
3) I am required to take two seminar classes-- one in fall one in spring. These aren't so bad, either
4) Each semester I have to get THREE HUNDRED UNPAID CLINICAL HOURS
a--- first of all, 300 is a rediculous number
b--- they are unpaid. Doctors get paid when they are in school and most of them are useless
c--- my crazy advisor is one of my preceptors!!!!!
d--- my site schedule is the craziest in the ENTIRE program and the other girls agree
i) Planned Parenthood clinicals
~ precepted by my "advisor" and sometimes another woman
~ they take place randomly in Buffalo, Niagara Falls, a "mobile unit", and West Seneca
~ mostly STD testing, birth control, pregnancy testing in young minorities (for people
who one day will be my patients at the hopsital becasue they don't take care
of themselves!
~ Although I have never been offered to participate let alone pressured, I am
constantly prepared to staunchly refuse supporting abortion in any way
shape or form, evne if it means filing a suit with the ACLU after they take
my degree away!
ii) "Private" Clinicals (witholding name for privacy of practice)
~ one preceptor is an amazing doctor who I really love, the other is an NP who has
unique social skills but whom I'm geting used to
~ office is in Amherst
~ OB or well-woman care for midlle aged women or older women
iii) Student Health Center at UB
~ one preceptor who is smart, calm, and fun
~ at UB , obviously
~ mostly late teens, birth control, some STD, mostly teaching
My God, this has taken me over an hour to do because LJ is super SUPER slow and jumpy (hence all the spelling errors) and I'm gona flip out. I'll finish more later
How I feel about clinicals emotionally
Craziness of locations and changes
Prblems with amount of hours