This semester was busy, chaotic, energizing, challenging, enriching, involved many 5am starts and a few late nights. Faculty meetings, exams, student evals.......its all done and I am ready to take a breath.
I feel like a did a bit of everything this semester, I was teaching pediatrics, care of the elderly and nurse leadership, but the basic foundation was there. I want to know who my students are first and then weed out their strengths and weakness and build on their competencies. Its interesting to those who know me well because I am not an incredibly social person. I do not seek out friends, parties and gatherings on my free time. I hate, detest, abhor Christmas parties, small talk wears me down and I feel overwhelmed in a large group. However, when it comes to students, I can't wait to get to know them. Their stories are fascinating, how they operate as individuals and as a group in extremely interesting, and watching the generational changes is something I would like to publish on (if I get any spare time that is!!). I have mainly millenials but I have also had several students who are second career nurses and their stories are rich and their experience of life seems to give them that extra edge.
One of my pediatric clinical groups was like a meeting of the United Nations, I wondered how it would go. To be honest it was challenging in places, not only if the student did not have English as a first language but also making sense of the cultural context. However, I saw tremendous growth in all my students and felt privileged to be a part of their journey. To celebrate a successful end to the semester all my students came to me for afternoon tea. Everyone brought a dish to pass, what a feast. We had cucumber sandwiches, Vietnamese shrimp, Peruvian Chicken, Albanian Baklava and good old American Pizza. Its so hard at the beginning, its exhausting in the middle when you realise you still have a great deal of semester to go, but the feeling of accomplishment at the end is like no other and motivates me to sign on for another semester.
My online teaching classes also finished up this weekend. The Care of the Elderly class has a final assignment on grief and the student must reflect on a personal experience they have had with the death of a loved one. I am found grading this assignment with the dog on one side and the cat on the other, howling my eyes out. There is something about this assignment that is so raw, so beautiful it gets me every time. Leadership class was excellent, one day I am going to design a class called Leadership and Professionalism, where the curriculum focuses on how to be a good kind and fair leader who nurtures and develops their staff and works hard at eradicating all that in fighting that nursing teams are famous for (again, something I will do in my spare time!!!)
Next semester I will continue with all four classes but it works out that I am out of the house only 2 half days a week and the rest is completed on line. Busy busy busy but in a good way. I feel blessed, enriched by what I do and ready for a break!!!! Spring semester starts middle of January. Yeah!
