I have put off blogging for the last few days because to blog I knew I'd have come clean about why I'm home and not at the hospital right now. I could talk about some nonrelated topic and avoid the subject entirely, but really being at home passing the hours on my computer leave for some very uneventful days and therefore really the only topic worth blogging is this one.
Due to my rotations in the States my hospital schedule here kind of got messed up. To accomodate my odd schedule I was scheduled to be at the hospital during the weeks everyone else would be on break. So last week when the rest of the students were to get signed off having completed their rotation I kind of took advantage of them, slipped my paper in with theirs and got signed off myself. If the boss man and the sub-director of teaching had actually read my form they'd have seen I was scheduled for one more week and if called out on it I was prepared to work my last week, but based on experience I knew they wouldn't read it. And they didn't. That last rotation the ER was so full family members really couldn't fit between the beds lined along each wall so had to stand at the foot of the bed; so even when the rest of the students took off I decided to stay and work the shift. Maybe I was trying to justify my leaving a week early by working that last shift. Either way the interns were so thankful I stayed to help that when possible they would try to help me with my patient list. For example, for one particular patient I had already made two trips to the lab to pick up his results, both times they weren't ready. I didn't get a chance to go a third time because one intern who knew I was waiting for them had grabbed them for me on one of his trips. I felt awkward, here I had stayed to help them, and yet they were doing everything they could to make my job eaiser.
I left at the end of that shift with a whole week of vacation time ahead of me only kind of feeling bad about it. But I eventually had to tell my roommates, and upon telling one she responded, "That's how you do it Christy!!" And then I felt really bad about it. By her approval of my playing the system I realized I had stupped to that level. Sooooo many of my classmates play the system to the result that they spend very very little time actually in the hospital each semester.
I had justified my actions: 1) I'm not actually going to persue Emergency Medicine 2) Everyone else gets 2 weeks vacation, this will still be just 1 week
And now I feel weak that a "break" was dangled in front of me and I easily justified grabbing it.. And in so doing I became just like the students I didn't want to be anything like. I dropped the ball on that one. Dang it!
So I'm spending my time studying this week. Although I must admit it's kind of half-hearted. 20 pages in this book. 8 pages in that book. 5 lessons in that subject. Just kind of here and there. Not really sure how effective such studying is, but it's better than nothing. And it definitely makes the day pass by quickly. Reminds me of Jane Eyre's cousin telling her sister to divide each day into sections and fill each section with one useful task, and before you know it, you've passed the whole day...and then she goes on to make her sister cry and run out of the room, so I'll just stop here.
Hasta!
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