Back to school

Now that the kids are all settled in with their classes and routines, it's my turn. This is orientation week in the nursing program at TCC. We do this for a week every single quarter.

Orientation week is not like normal school at all. For one thing, the schedule is different. For another, no one, not even the instructors, is ready to be back. There is a surprising level of being taken by surprise or caught unprepared this quarter. For all of us.

By the end of this week, I will have download thousands of megabytes of forms, syllabuses, spreadsheets, documents, articles, and powerpoint presentations. I will be in deep syllabus shock, wondering how I will ever accomplish everything on all of those lists in 11 weeks. I will pass yet another dosage calculation test. I will catch up with classmates, have my TB test read, mourn the fact that my laptop only holds a charge for 2 hours now, panic intermittently, and start losing sleep.

But all in all, it's good to be back. I like the structure. I missed the routine. I'm looking forward to many of the things I will learn this quarter, even if I do have to learn it at Madigan Army Medical Center on Friday evenings. And best of all, since time seems to skip to double speed when I'm in school, it will only feel like about 4-5 weeks and Christmas will have arrived and one more quarter will be over.

On another note, my nurse tech license hasn't come yet. And I can't start work at the hospital until it does. Several other students took nurse tech jobs over the summer and they all said their license took 6-8 weeks to arrive. It's been 4 weeks today since my application went in. That's terrible news when it comes to us EVER getting a mortgage on this house, but good news that I will be able to adjust to the school schedule before starting 12 hour graveyard shifts. Just trying to look at the bright side.

I better get back to downloading vast quantities of paperwork!