Frustration

I'm sure many a nursing student has felt. I'm spoiled because I had such a wonderful mentor/advisor during my undergraduate studies. She was amazing -- always had me in mind and kept me informed about many things. She was so good in fact that I still email her at least once a month to update her, gain insight and encouragement. My current "mentor" is not even on the same planet as me. And I'm not meaning that in a harsh way, but she doesn't seem to really care about anything that matters to me. Moreover she acts as if this mentor gig is a hassle to her. Moreover, I went to another professor who is a CNM and sat down with her. She's awesome. She and I spent at least an hour or so talking about various things that actually will apply to my future career. She even recommended Robbie Davis-Floyd to me. I love Robbie Davis-Floyd already. But, since this professor is new, she's not allowed to have advisees this year. ((sigh)) She's much better than my assigned mentor. Wouldn't you think that they would give students a mentor based on their interests? Or maybe their career track? I think they (they being the administration) just did eenie-meanie-miney-moe which I feel is a stupid way to assign mentors to people.

On to another topic: clinical. On Friday I had my first real patient that I was in charge of taking care of. I did very well. I was proud of myself. Suddenly it feels like all of this stuff I've been learning for the past three months is being put to good use. I'm actually remembering/utilizing the knowledge that I've gotten. Plus it's really different to put a face/personality to the imaginary "patient" we talk about. I can really see how to apply the skills that I'm learning to an actual person. The hardest part about clinicals was locating the things that we needed. For example, the Accuchek ran out of strips, but I had to find the bottle which didn't have the appropriate "chip" so I had to find another one. Or managing your time because you have X amount of tasks to do in X amount of time. I think this week I will need to be better organized, time-wise. But I did see a lot of really awesome stuff. We're on an abdominal surgical floor -- so I saw some pretty interesting wounds -- fistulas, etc. The wound care nurses let us help change some dressings. I got a little woozy. I may not be as badass as I originally thought.