Spring Break!

I made it through my finals and am now officially on spring break! Who would have thought that only working full-time could feel so easy?

This last week at work was extra stressful too, with a barrage of needy/cranky/drug seeking/on isolation precautions patients who made sure that at least one of them was pushing their call light every 3 minutes throughout my entire 8 hour shifts. I got home cranky after those, let me tell you.

After my final today, I stayed after class to have an uncomfortable talk with my instructor that went a little something like this:

"Hello teacher, I want to talk to you about your behavior and how you might improve it in the future. You seem like a good person who ultimately wants his students to be successful in this class, right?"

"Right"

"Well then let me tell you something, when you talk during class about 'Which head do I think with' [meaning brain or penis] or about pornography, or about who might have a 'thing' for urine it is offputting to your students and makes you much less approachable. I took late points on an assignment rather than speak with you one-on-one earlier in the quarter before I'd observed you enough to decide you were actually all right."

"Oh, that's strange, no one's ever told me that before"

"Really?? No one? Not in your anonymous performance reviews, not face to face, not via email?"

"Oh only 2 or 3 students in all the years I've been doing this. I don't get performance reviews much anymore, I'm tenured you know."

"Yes,I know. Well, think about it - if you intimidate and make people uncomfortable, they're not going to come to you and tell you you're doing that. So assume that I'm speaking for any number of students when I tell you this is not appropriate workplace behavior."

"I like to joke around, it makes me approachable. Most people like it, that's good enough for me."

"It doesn't make you approachable, it makes you inappropriate. There are ways to joke around that are great, do those."

"No, I don't think so. Thanks for the chat, bye. Oh by the way how are you going to handle me next quarter?"

"I'm taking a different teacher next quarter, of course. Goodbye."

ARRRRGHHHH! I want to rip my/his hair out in frustration.

Seriously, who does that? Who in their right mind wouldn't say "Oh, I see, perhaps you have a point, I'll think about it. Or tone it down. Sorry about that."

What a jackass, right?

So then I went home for my much-anticipated post-final nap and had a nightmare that I'd been demoted from working at the hospital to working at our sister facility nursing home. Only problem is, it was full of very acute patients, including pediatric ones! In my dream, the CNA that was orienting me suddenly had a little girl start coding and casually gave her a sternum rub and then some compressions until she revived and told the CNA to stop because it hurt. Then a doc came by and said "Oh, it was probably just postural, her vitals drop when she's supine. Turn her over and carry on." I was horrified that I'd be expected to be saving children's lives one-handed and that they all took it so casually, and was tangled up in a bunch of IV tubing and suction tubing trying to get my butt out the door before I killed someone.

Stress dream, much?

Stupid tenured teacher.

Good news: quarter is over, no more teacher, and I'm NOT demoted in any way at the hospital, and I will never have to be responsible for critically ill children unless for some ungodly reason I decide I want to be, which seems very, very unlikely. Old people, sure. Kiddos, no way. Can't handle that population; the very idea makes me shake.