Final Friday

So it's done, this semester. Monday and Wednesday I took final exams, three altogether. I kept A's in two classes, missed an A by 0.10 points in another class, so it falls out as two A's and a B.

Thursday I had a foreshortened clinical day. The day began early and everyone was still exhausted from the strain of final exams. I have been sleeping poorly and I suspect the same of others in our group. We were all exhausted--except, oddly, for the young man in our group who is normally taciturn before 8 a.m.; he was unusually peppy and I wanted to strangle him--and running on fumes. One of the women in my group showed up and I noticed, during our morning conference, that she was wearing one gray sock and one black sock.

We did a quick practice run-through of a presentation we had to give on Friday during our last class. That took half an hour. Then we talked about the grades on our final assignments and about our evaluations. Finally we hit the floor to help with the patients.

The nurse on duty hugged each of us when we showed her the shampoo and body wash and hair ties and so on we had bought for them to use on the patients in the nursing home. Later, as I was fetching raisin toast from the kitchen for one of the bed-bound patients, I overheard her telling the the kitchen manager about our gift--and that she wished we had brought some aerosol deodorant.

We finished up early. (I had told our clinical instructor that only one other group was at their clinical site--the other groups were finished with clinicals--and I think she probably texted someone to verify that before she cut us loose after only four hours instead of the usual five and a half or six hours.)

I came home and slept.

Friday--today--I was up early. We were expecting to show up to class, give our presentations, participate in a hastily organized potluck, and receive our final evaluations. But when we got there, one of our instructors--the disorganized one who has been late three times to her own clinical site--had other ideas.  Since she had forgotten her group's evaluations, she had to go back home for them, so she wanted all of us to sit and watch a movie while we waited for her.

When she announced that, I looked over at my clinical instructor (she was attending class specially to see our presentation) and I could see her usual genial expression congeal into extremely well-disguised anger. (She told me later, without explicitly mentioning the other instructor, that she was always prepared to teach her classes and I said, "Well, I'm glad you got a taste of what our entire semester has been like here.")

The sound on the movie died, thankfully, about 15 minutes in, so we ended up doing our presentations and getting our evaluations (mine was moderately stellar, if such a thing exists) and leaving at 12:15--about 30 minutes early.

I came home and slept.

I have two weeks off. That is not a lot of time. I'm not going anywhere, but I have a list of things to do that is about a mile long. I want to clear off and organize my desk, which has become a catch all. If I look over at it, I can see a mix of things up there, about a third of which don't belong there. There are medications (my own, not the patients') and cough drops from when I was sick a month ago, and stray makeup, and packs of blank 3x5 cards and my textbooks, piled so haphazardly that they are all but useless and would produce a small avalanche if I tried to dislodge any of them.
     I have to wait for my grades from the classes I'm taking and send the along to the director of my program.
     I want to go to the studio.
     I want to clean the casita so that it doesn't look like we rented it out to a cadre of destructive elves, a slide into disarray that became worse over the last 12 weeks since I began school.
    I would even, god forbid, like to go bra shopping as the one bra that I have that is not visible underneath my scrubs now looks like I drove over it a few times with my car.
     And speaking of the car, it needs some maintenance and to be thoroughly cleaned inside and out. The commute has not been kind to it.
     Ugh. And what else?
     I need to set up the printer so that I don't have to drag it out every time I need it next semester.
    I want to do some sewing.
    I would like to do some small amount of socializing since I've neglected most of that this past semester.
    And I also want to lay in bed and binge watch Netlix until my eyes fall out.

Before our clinicals ended, I was on a break with a young woman who was telling me that she was going to meet up with her best friend who was moving to another city. She said,  "I'm glad she's moving because now our not being able to get together will not be just my fault because I'm so busy with school." I laughed and she said, "No, really. She doesn't really understand. She even offered to make me breakfast so that I would go by there and visit." I laughed again, thinking of how I had to leave the house at 5:30 in the morning to be on time to the clinical site. I said, "Did you say, 'Okay, that sounds great! I'll see you tomorrow morning at 4:45!" She laughed. Both of us knew she hadn't really meant it.

On the Home: Front.

Saba is continuing to get better. After her dual rounds of surgery, she was wan and listless and it kind of scared me because it resembled how she was when she was at her sickest. You couldn't hardly rouse her for any reason. She is coming out of it now, as the anesthesia works its way out of her body. She is cranky again, has found her voice to protest what she doesn't like. She wants to go out again. She wants to push her way under the blankets again and take up half the bed with the excuse that she's sick and you have to do what she says. It's great.  We both love this little cat so much.

Dave is off tonight having dinner with his sister (she's in town from Illinois? Maybe. I don't know. We don't get along so I don't really keep track of her details) and his mother (ditto). I tried to sleep for a bit but was too exhausted to fall asleep, so I started watching Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, the Tina Fey movie, on Amazon. (I'm enjoying it so far actually.)

I'm tired.