too small a workload?

In my last two semesters of college, I’ve had courseloads of 22 credits for Fall 2009 and 18 credits for Spring 2010. This summer, I’ve got one class (microbiology) that counts for the current degree I am nearly complete with as well as my ADN, as well as two other courses, giving me a load of 10 credits, but hey, it’s summer and I’m going to be working six days a week (Sunday-Friday) as well.

So imagine my horror when I get my schedule worked out for Fall 2010 and discover that I only have a load of 8 credits.

And I do, in fact, mean horror. The best way to get something done, as many people including my father yesterday evening have said, is to give it to a busy person. I operate under momentum. The more I have to do, the more I do, and I never take breaks, because if  I stop it’s the next day before I get going again. I work through and work through and finish and then relax.

So what on earth am I supposed to do with no classes on Tuesday or Friday? Admittedly the classes I’m in are Anatomy & Physiology and Nursing I, neither of which are walks in the park, but suddenly I’m cursing the fact that my previous degree has me entering nursing school with more than half the classes done already.

I might need to take some non-required electives (that won’t even count for anything, as I have all my required electives done) just so that I don’t start failing exams because I’ve got too much downtime to remain able to retain information and stay focused.

“Too little work” is not a conundrum I ever thought I would find myself in. And yet, here I am, wishing I had a learning style that allowed me to sleep every now and then.

The Well-Attired Worker

Since I haven’t started nursing classes yet (that begins on May 24 with microbiology) and while I am currently in clinicals, my clinicals are for different healthcare training that I graduate from on May 22nd, I can’t really get to posting anything about nursing school yet. But I wanted to post something, so I got to thinking. My mind went back to a trip to a uniform store to pick up my beautiful stethoscope, a Littmann Lightweight II SE that I’d been coveting for over a year, since my time in the hospital work sector had begun. It’s not the stethoscope I was thinking of posting about, though the stethoscope is a beautiful thing in and of itself — it’s a pair of scrubs, made by the designer Kathy Peterson under her Koi label, that I immediately thought of. This pair of scrubs was longsleeved and made of a thin, soft brown fabric, with turquoise trim on the pants and a full turquoise T-shirt overlay on the top. Turquoise and brown are a color combination I tend to wear a lot, and they actually had these scrubs in the rarely-found XS size (it’s hard for me to buy anything as a 5’1″ 90-pound weakling), so now that I had bought my fancy, expensive stethoscope as a gift to myself for my unexpectedly high TEAS scores, I had something new to covet.

As I had just purchased a $65 stethoscope I really didn’t have the spare $50 for the scrubs. I’ve got a majorly limited income; going broke on one trip to the uniform store, while entirely possible for someone like me, isn’t all that appealing. Things like eating and having a place to live, unfortunately, outrank stethoscopes, scrubs, shoes, useful gizmos like EKG calipers, study guides and other such gems that can be found at these places. (The only place I can spend more money at in one go than a uniform store is Staples. I’ve got some strange shopping tastes.)

When I was trying to think of something to post about, though, that’s where my thoughts went — and just as I was sitting and contemplating if that was really a good idea, a current RN working on the floor I was posted opened up her LiveJournal account and started linking scrubs and other things she’d like to purchase when she had the chance. Well, I thought, if she can do it, I can do it. And I’ll enjoy it. Maybe it makes a terrible first impression of me as materialistic, which I generally am not, or obsessed with fashion, which I am also generally not, but it might be fun. (I’m not big on caring that much about how other people see my appearance, and I actually hate shopping; I love colors, individualism and styles, which is why I’m so big on tricking out my healthcare attire.) Google led me to the Koi website, and I was satisfied I could get to putting up a picture of, or at least a link to, those awesome scrubs. Then I wouldn’t forget where to find them when I wanted to buy them again …

So imagine my horror when going through the entire Koi website brought up no results for the scrubs I had loved so much! The closest thing I could find was a set with an identical design but different colors, which, while better than nothing was not my beloved turquoise and brown. (The more I write this the more pretentious and materialistic I feel.) At least now I know they still have that design, and those colors aren’t bad. And at least I know what I’m doing: making an entirely consumer-whore type post about stuff I like.

Hunting for other nice scrubs gave me more than scrubs to look at, though. An internet prowl brought me to a nursing site called Scrubs: The Nurse’s Guide to Good Living. On that site I found a few really good scrubs-(and-stuff-)related informative posts very much worth sharing, like:

• The top 5 scrubs fashion blunders
• Six color tips when picking scrubs
• Ten style tips from the Head Nurse, guest spot by Jo from the well-known Head Nurse blog
• Scrubs style do’s and don’ts for individual body shapes
• Ten great scrub outfits by color, for those whose departments are now color-coding things (I dread this ever happening to me, as I never ever want to have to wear white – almost anything else is fine, I understand the need for color-coding your staff, but not white! please! … and Scrubs Magazine, it seems, even has something to say about that)
• Tips for your scrubs shopping trip. As someone who is so short I need everything hemmed, I must recommend ending up with a significant other who can sew if you can’t do it yourself. It’s made a huge difference to my wardrobe.
• And while gear are not scrubs, this is a “stuff” post and I find this useful: the best 4 nursing gear items. I’m proud to say I have them all and in pretty good brands, too.

They also have an interesting series called The Perils of Beauty discussing a nurse’s image and wear, as well as something that reminds me of the more serious edition of a Cracked top ten post: historic nursing uniforms (the good, the bad and the ugly).

So now that I’ve rambled a bit and provided a whole bunch of links from an interesting site I found entirely by accident, I’m not entirely sure where I was going with this. Originally, I was just going to be talking about a pair of scrubs; that didn’t work out. I considered just linking a bunch of stuff I wanted, but that seemed too materialistic and self-centered. Now I’ve got some more informative links, and so I guess the best way to close this off is to share some of my own favorite “stuff”: scrub brands like Koi, from earlier, but also Dickie’s, which I currently wear (in solid colors — I wish I had things like the Spring Prints); Cherokee, which I’ve seen a lot of nice things from (and who are kind enough to also have things for less), and the awesome pony(tail) scrub hats from Blue Sky Scrubs, which I absolutely need some of — OR hats really don’t accommodate my hair, and I’ve got to stand in on a C-section tomorrow. I don’t think I can get one in time.

Now if only I knew yet what our school’s scrub uniform looked like. Then I could get on to talking about that.