I'm on the 2nd week of school- 14 days to be exact! By this time I should be better acquainted with the expectations in my 4 courses, be able to understand what I'm supposed to do in each of them and should be chugging along to submit the requirements. Right? Not really. I color coded my binders to identify which notes belong to what but it's funny because it's just like going through my kids' names- I know who I am supposed to call but I end up rattling the rest of the kids' names before I get the right one! I really have to think twice or even more for which class I am submitting a particular assignment or participating in a discussion. I guess that I should also take off this invisible 'post-it' on my forehead stating: 'Come to me for questions-I have answers!' or 'I am the Lost-and-Found!' No wonder we have a dearth of nurse educators or nurses who proceed to grad school-how do you balance work inside the home with work outside the home + so many other things that have to be juggled in between?!
As I was contemplating that last sentence the other day, a favorite bedtime story that I read to my kids is 'Henry the Duck.' He wanted to impress Daisy so he invited her for dinner. However as he was busily preparing the table, he saw an ant crawling on the wall. He didn't want Daisy to think that he his house was unclean so he had to get rid of the ant. He followed it but it crawled inside a crack-he wacked it so hard that a water pipe got exposed. He was so focused on that ant and wacked the area even harder and the pipe burst! Poor Henry-the dinner was ruined and so was his house. Well, he moved to another house and invited Daisy again for dinner. But on a wall he saw the same ant crawling again! But this time, he looked the other way!
I have to say that for the last several days, I have to look the other way or I couldn't cope with my school work. However I think that I am steps ahead from when I first posted my blog. I can't even believe that I was able to make one by following the steps described by my teachers! The world of Nursing Informatics is so abstract to me- perhaps just like trigonometry or calculus. However, as I'm immersing myself in it, I realize that it's just like the galaxy-there's just a vast array of knowledge waiting to be discovered and I need to know how to operate a high-beam telescope to appreciate it. I remember 'Back to the Future III' with all those sophisticated gadgets-can you imagine the trepidation of coming from 3 decades ago from a world of typewriters, index cards and teachers with bodies that you can see to this present virtual learning experience I'm going through? Nursing Informatics is such a young specialty that holds so much promise. The acquisition of knowledge through diverse sources of information and skilfully managing them to effect excellent nursing care is what it means to me at this point. I hope to navigate my way through this maze.
I feel you Jean and thanks for sharing. Wow, that almost sound like a support group. I think communicating this way helps us to get used to the new social media wave that has taken over the world. I am glad we have the opportunity to be exposed to what's happening now and to have the chance to incorporate this knowledge into our current and/or future practices. It is a full time job trying to keep up with grad school. I am in my 3rd semester as a distance student and I still have issues with sending multiple emails to the wrong instructors. U don't know what semester you are in but the first one was the worst for me. Everything took so long because all the technology was new. It is hard to let the ant just crawl but it is a necessary survival technique :)
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