and the Deed is Done
Act II
Episode I: The Saga Continues.....................................(9/24/03)
Well, another semester for me has officially begun, and what I thought would be bang has ended up as a long, desperate whimper. This morning, I attended my first class, my first nursing class none the less. Big, bad �Clinical Applications.� Well, I started with the lab, that is. All seven fucking hours of it. Yes, you heard me correctly, a seven hour lab. I don�t actually have the lecture until Thursday, and that bad boy is going to be 4 hours. So, I have 11 hours of class and lecture time, but the powers that be have decided they should only give me 5 hours worth of credit. Thanks guys.
Whatever optimism I had starting this semester has been duly dashed. I never thought that a staff of college educated instructors could possibly waste seven straight hours of my life, but once again, this shit hole that they call a school has proved me wrong.
We have four instructors for the course. One lady (who evidently joined the Navy reserves, and wears her ovaries on the outside) is the coordinator, or as I like to call her, waste of a human body number one. The other three sit in the back, raising their hands intermittently, to add absolutely nothing of substance. So, with four instructors, it still takes us ONE AND A HALF HOURS to go over the syllabus (which I might add is 15 pages long.) Even with all four of them working at full capacity, they couldn�t even get the fucking syllabus right. First, the front page, in all of its 60 point font glory, says �Spring 2004.� Oops. Next, they�ve managed to fuck up several pages inside the packet, so they�ve run off some new ones on the copier. In spite of having a class roster for over three months, they still didn�t make enough for everyone. So waste of human body number two runs off to make some more. She still fucks up.
Finally we receive our first break of the morning, which I desperately need since I�m about to fall asleep, and due to the fact that I woke up at 6 am, I didn�t have the foresight to pack a magazine to read. We return from our gargantuan 5 minute break, and the class breaks up into groups. We spend the next hour with Waste number three introducing ourselves and talking about what it is a nurse actually does. Don�t you think that perhaps we should have covered this before? That, perhaps if you don�t know what a nurse does, you�re a fucking moron and a waste of oxygen? Several people talk about how they want to pursue a career in �forensic nursing� so they can do crime scene investigations. When I hear this from someone, I automatically decide that they are a moron. We are a nation driven by our media and brainless television that tries to act like it�s intelligent. You could learn more from watching Mac Gyver than an entire seasons worth of episodes of C.S.I. or Medical Examiners, and that statement isn�t meant as a compliment for Mac Gyver.
They have managed to waste almost four hours of my time when we finally break for lunch, and I scamper off to the local Subway for (finally) some �intelligent� conversation. When I return, bursting from Mayo slathered goodness, we begin a lecture on the history of nursing. Remind me again why this class is called �Clinical Applications?� I hear all about the sordid past of my chosen profession. About how at one time nurses were prisoners, mostly drunks and prostitutes. About how it wasn�t until the late 40�s that one even had to have a diploma to practice. This is all followed by 20 minutes of drivel on how exacting the standards of this particular institution are, stressing their �standards of excellence.� The whole time, I�m wishing that I could practice with the drunks and prostitutes. If you ask me, it would be a lot better then having to put up with these imbeciles. We continue on with their rehearsed lines of bullshit.
We end the day by watching a video all about the history of nursing. Strangely, it says the exact same things that the instructor has been talking about, thus managing to waste all 7 hours.
The longer I attend this school, the more I find my opinion of nurses plummeting. It might not be a fair deduction, since these are students after all and not practicing nurses, but unless about 75% of my class quits or fails, I�m afraid that these students may actually be an accurate cross section of the nursing community.
And that thought chills me to my very bones.