Fall 2011: school has begun.

Recap: I'm midway through the first week of Fall Semester, 2011. My nursing school application is in, but I won't know if I'm in until maybe March. I'm working almost full time as a receptionist at a retirement home, volunteering 6 hours per week at the hospital, and taking 4.5 units at the local community college.

New news: I decided to quit my tutoring job. I looked at how everything was shaping up, and I went to the first meeting of my phlebotomy class, and I put everything on the calendar. I wasn't going to have any days at all left when I wasn't working in some fashion. Maybe a Saturday here and there when I trade hospital shifts with another person, but no time for studying really, no time for social life, no time to keep up my garden, or lounge with kitties. So I'm giving myself one day back. Wednesday. I will still have class that night but the rest of the day I'm going to take a mid-week pause, to catch up on errands, studying, hang out around the house, and take a deep breath.

I have a carpool buddy to get to the other campus where my phlebotomy course is held, which is a huge relief. And she's very nice, outgoing, and talkative. She's had some crazy experiences...geez. At one point she was working for a dollar an hour in a nursing home about 20 minutes away, as an illegal Filipino immigrant. I have always thought of that kind of situation as something that happens in big cities, near the Mexico border maybe, but not here, not in my county. She's doing a lot better now and has a real (albeit low paying) job but now she's got a little girl and a semi-deadbeat husband to support. She's one tough cookie. Been working since she was 12.

Phlebotomy is good. The teacher is laying down some very hard and fast rules with serious consequences right off the bat, but I can also tell that she's friendly and has a sense of humor about stuff. We watched a video of all the things that can go wrong if you mess up in a lab drawing peoples' blood (and the consequences), and have been taking care of beginning-of-semester administrative stuff, and starting to go through book chapters. Today we went through that exercise where you rub fake germs all over your hands, then wash your hands like you normally would, and check under the UV lamp to see what you missed. I need to pay a little more attention to my wrists, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well I did, because I really did follow directions and wash my hands like I normally would after going to the bathroom or something (some students were doing an intense scrub down!).

I haven't been working through my TEAS studies like I planned. Things have felt so hectic, all day, every day. The test could be as early as next month so I need to get going again.

For now though, it's time for sleep.

Classes Update (for Fall 2011)

I decided that even if the 2nd job doesn't work out, I will probably be doing the CNA on the job training at a place in town this fall, so I went ahead and dropped the medical assisting class that I had on the back burner for fall semester at the community college.

In its place, again as a sort of back up, what-if scenario, I signed up for maternal/child nutrition, gerontological nutrition, and community health. These are all 3 unit, online classes. So now as my options for fall semester (in addition to whatever work I'm doing) I've got:

-Phlebotomy (2 nights per week driving about 50 minutes to get to class plus to do externship hours later on in the semester). Could get me a good job but it might take a while.
-EKG monitor technician (1 day per week for 6 weeks, driving 50 minutes to get to the other campus for a 3 hour training before I go to retirement home job). There's a possibility I could get this training at a local hospital instead, starting in October, which I would prefer. However, none of the details about schedule are out yet.

And the 3 online classes to chose between, main purpose of which would be to (a) keep my tutoring job, (b) fluff up my healthcare resume:

-Maternal/Child Nutrition (has a textbook that's over $100 dollars, unfortunately)
-Gerontological Nutrition (has a cheap textbook, only 20 bucks or so, but less appealing to me than the mom/baby class)
-Community Health (seems like a great idea to take, but again $100 dollar textbook)

Maybe, given that I'm going to have pretty much full time hours at the nursing home job for the next few months, and I'm going to feel tight on time, especially if I keep phlebotomy, I should quit the tutoring job. I don't want to. I enjoy working with the students and I feel like I am doing a good job there. And it gets me priority registration at the community college (which, in fairness, I probably won't need anymore if I go ahead and take phlebotomy this semester). Maybe if I cut my hours way, way back? :-/ Also seems like a cop-out.

I'm going to have 6 weeks to accomplish 40.5 hours of clinical externship, and the website says I need to have weekday availability to work with their externship sites. If I had all day Wednesday (assuming I stop tutoring at that point of the semester), I would be doing it 8 hours at a time, meaning I would barely get it done in the 6 weeks.

It looks like, assuming my coworker who's on maternity leave comes back on time, I could also do Friday afternoons if they could take me then. I would need time to change, plus time to travel to North County...if all the externship sites are there. So realistically I could probably start at 2pm? Another 4 hours per week (I'm guessing here). If I did that I could get the hours done in (4x12=48 hours) four weeks.

Phlebotomy is a really, really hard class to get into. So I feel like I should keep it if I can. Hmmm.

Hopefully it will all fall into place!!

Back to the drawing board

It has been almost one week since that last post.

A recap: last wednesday my supervisor at my new job told me I could not take the class I am registered for this Spring, which was previously agreed to be allowable during my interview and application process. HR got involved, and later that afternoon, it was going to be "okay" again.

Update: my supervisor terminated my position today. He did not directly reference my schedule requirements, but instead chose to attack my skills. My own assessment is that they have been constantly improving over the course of my scattered training by someone who I think would be aptly described as ADHD-Barbie. His assessment differed. I think though, that it was really about the scheduling issue. Last week, even after the HR person intervened and my scheduling issue was "okay" again, there were several grumblings and complaints made about the inconvenience.

So I'm unemployed again.

It is disappointing just to lose a new job, but especially in this case, the timing is horrible.

Last weekend, with the knowledge that things still felt a little unsettled at work but at least on the surface seemed to be resolved, I dropped the additional classes I was planning to take in Spring if I hadn't found work and sent my old boss a letter letting her know I had found a new job and wouldn't be back for Spring semester. I saved both of these tasks until the last possible minute to try to feel as comfortable as possible in the new job before I made the leap -- the courses needed to be dropped for a full refund over the weekend, and the old job would be starting back up in 2 weeks, so I wanted to give 2 weeks notice.

It is impossible at this point to get the classes back; phlebotomy was one of them, and it has a mile long wait list. A distance ed psychology class was the other, and it is full now. I am looking into taking a different distance ed psych course online through a different college, however even there I am 10th on the waitlist.

My old boss emailed me back today and said she was sorry to see me go, that she was planning on interviewing me for a promotion next week because I had been doing a great job with the students. I didn't want to go groveling back for my old job, but given this in, I informed her of the new situation and I am waiting to hear back. Hopefully that will work out. I am pretty sure even the promoted position would only be 25 or so hours per week, and lower pay, but it would at least be something. And perhaps I could pick up 1 day per week of volunteer work at a hospital to get my pre-nursing health care experience.

So I've had a rough day. I think things will work out in the end, but I'm tiring of the roller coaster.

New Job = Stress

I feel like I have been doing alright at work so far. I'm not picking up on things perhaps as quickly as they would like me to, which is frustrating for both of us. The problem I've been having with the training I'm going through has to do with both speed, and organization. There are 10+ instruments that I need to learn, all with their individual techniques, quirks, trouble-shooting approaches, rules about paperwork, etc. And the way I am being trained, they are not teaching me about one instrument, letting me practice it, and then moving on to the next; we fly around the building from one instrument to the next gathering little bits of information along the way as we go and hopefully cover all bases by the end. And there is added pressure due to my trainer leaving to go to school and wanting to be out of the schedule as soon as possible.

By the end of next week I have to have passed several "competencies" with supervision. I am getting more confident with more practice, but it is all pretty stressful, and whenever I do something slightly out of line with procedure, I get barked at. Add to that the newness of being on my feet all day, regimented breaks for going to the bathroom or grabbing a snack, and rapidly changing day vs. night shifts that throw me for a loop, and I'm really hanging on by a thread sometimes.

So that gives you some background as to where I am at right now... *then* ...

I come in today, and get word that there may be some problem with me getting "approved" to take my pre-nursing physiology course this Spring, which starts next week. I registered for this class over two months ago. There almost no hope of switching to a different time/section at this point (all sections are full). When I put in my application for the job, I put in a very clear note compounded with the pdf application stating the times and days that I could not work due to my class. I also brought this up several times, with multiple people, including my supervisor, during both interview sessions, and everybody including him said it would be fine.

But when I met with him today, he acted as if this was some big surprise that I needed that time off for my class, expressed what an inconvenience this was to both himself and the rest of the lab, told me that it would not be allowed, intimated that I had been doing a shoddy job so far in my training, and expressed that my job was on the line over this scheduling issue. WTF!

I held it together in the meeting with him, asserted over and over again that this was a necessary course for me, that it would set me back a whole year to not be able to take it this spring, and reminded him repeatedly (and respectfully) that he should have been aware of this issue before hiring me due to our multiple previous discussions.

Afterward, I went to the breakroom to take my 10 minutes and the person who has been training me was in there. I asked her if she was aware if my supervisor would ever hire three people at once with the intention of "testing" them and planning to fire one ultimately. She paused, said she didn't know, and asked me what our supervisor had said. At this point, I started crying and couldn't stop for a while.

Then, in walks the HR person, notices that I am crying, and asks if she can help. I explain to her, through my gasping crying, what has happened, she asks me clear logical questions confirming that I did in fact put in writing my need to have those times off for my class and that I had verbal agreement from my supervisor prior to being hired that it was okay. The person who is training me kept playing the politician and saying she could see both sides, but the HR woman said that our prior agreement should hold, and said that she would talk to my supervisor on my behalf and either he or she would get back to me.

I went on a 20 minute walk after that to try to pull myself together and stop being emotional. I ended up running into a friend who also works there, and we walked together and talked about what had happened, and she told me about her own issues at work. I was somewhat cheered up by the time I had returned.

I also reminded myself that I have not yet put in notice at my old job (which is on hiatus during the semester break), and that I have not yet unregistered from the "extra" classes that I was planning on taking if I couldn't find full time employment by the time the term started. One of those classes is phlebotomy, and it is quite difficult to get into, so I didn't want to drop it until I was very sure that the work situation was going to be stable and doable. So I have backup, but I need to know by the end of the week on both fronts (my old job, and the courses) if I am going to be working, or not.

I went back to work, jumped into running samples again, and when I was loading some vitamin D tests on a machine, I ran into my supervisor and he came up to me and asked if I knew what I was doing. I told him (confidently) that yes, I did. He said that he had talked with so-and-so and that they decided they would be able to work with my school schedule.

So for the time being, everything is okay.

One of the work-arounds for my schedule is that I am potentially going to have to work 6 days a week until the term is over, i.e. every Saturday. And I am willing to do that, though it will be hard to power through sometimes I'm sure, if it means everything will work out.

So that was my day. Things seemed to smooth out somewhat by the end of the day, but I am still anxious about this development, about my supervisor's threat that I need to shape up and prove myself, and everything in general. I needed to vent somewhere and get my experience down, so there you go. Hopefully the next post will be happier.

anxious about getting up early

So tomorrow morning I start a week of AM shifts at the lab, which begin at 6am. It is not that I mind getting up early, that I really just want to laze about and sleep in. I am truly anxious about sleeping too late and missing work. I have had issues with getting up at the right time for a long time now, and will regularly set several alarms as backup. Hopefully that is enough for tomorrow.

I have also been trying to gradually move back my wake-up time over the weekend to accomodate the change in schedule -- on the afternoon shifts, my body didn't want to wake up until 11 or 12. I got up for the first time at 7:30 this morning, had breakfast, fed the cats, etc. But somehow ended up back under the covers again until 9:30! At least that's an improvement over 11.

I might dose myself with a unisom tonight around 7 or 8 and see if I can get to sleep extremely early. And set multiple alarms for around 5 o'clock.