So I met with my advisor this week (right before my random systems exam) and I'm totally stressed out about the remaineder of my Master's program. The rest of it promises to be grueling in and of itself but then I have to factor in work, assuming it's possible for me to stay at my current job. At the end of the program, we have to have 600 clinical hours...Spring 09 semester is 150 and is only 3 credits, there is a class and a seminar attached to each clinical which means leaving early another day for the actual class. In addition, I'm supposed to sign up for a Health Policy course which is offered Monday nights 7p-945. I'm going to be going nuts during this semester, trying to do all of this and continue working 40 hours. It only gets worse from there....I have two remaining clinicals after I make it out of this one. Each of those requires 225 hours per semester plus class and seminar. I think by that point I'm done with any additional classes so it would be just that. It's clearly going to be an issue to take 2 full days off of work to get the clinical hours in...I have no idea what I'm going to do yet and of course I'm stressing about it already. Aside from this, we basically have to find our own clinicals, which is unlike undergrad where we could express an interest in being placed on a certain type of floor and the advisors would work their connections. Now the expectation is that we line up our own clinicals which is reasonable for the Adult Primary Care clinicals. The last clinical, however, has to be OB and Pedi which probably requires two different placements unless I can manage to find a true family practice which are relatively scarce. I have no connections in this area of the health care world. My advisors advice? Start working on it now. No offer to help me. Great. Oh, one exciting thing...we are required to have a PDA so I've started doing some research on them. I've primarily looked at the Palm model that has Wifi and the Dell one that's comparable. I'm too lazy to look up the model numbers!
So on to lighter subjects...I'm having palpitations and stomach gurgles over the last one and it's not even here yet! M and I bought boat loads of candy for the trick or treaters this year and I only had one very cute lady bug ring my bell. 1! So now, we are left with a dangerous amount of candy that is currently on the back stair well so that I don't undo all of my work at the gym this morning. M is in VT this weekend in the recording studio, so I've had a weekend to myself. I had no problems occupying myself with a little shopping, some knitting while procrastinating doing things for my class (even though I have a test this week), and catching up on my Hulu.com play list. Today, I'm getting bored though and I think they plan to record till at least 5 so chances are I'm living the single life for another day. I decided to make something fun for dinner...tacos!
Which reminds me, M and I will be picking up our first bundle of meat from our new farm share on December 1! Grass fed animals, here we come! We are going to be paying $80/month for 10lbs of meat. The meat will include chicken, beef, pork and lamb (we had the option to go without the lamb but M likes it, I'm not as big of a fan). Next weekend, we plan to go look at an additional freezer that we can stick in the basement for the extra meat.
Off to study....It's the day of reckoning. I've managed to put this off all weekend!
Hang in there! I worked full time and used my PTO for clinicals. I maxed out my student loans and am paying for them now but it's all worth it. It's hard to juggle it all and you need to figure out how to destress a little or you will burn out.
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