Sunday, November 29, 2009

Still Bitter, Is There a Cost?

When my teacher failed me in nursing school, was it a blessing? I had to drop out of nursing school. I was later re-admitted, but a new teacher at the school failed me. I was heart-broken and hated her for many years . I wanted to become a nurse after my mom died, I worked as a nursing assistant for a year, got good job reviews, entered school, got good grades but had to drop out because my husband got sick. When I re-entered ( I even audited a course that I had previously taken, because I did not want to take any chances that I might have forgotten something), they assigned me to a new teacher for my clinical experience. She was an experienced nurse, but never taught before. Besides the fact that I was an experienced certified nursing assistant and had received good clinical grades previously, it was a short summer semester, so I was not worried. During the first few weeks, she expressed frequent concerns about a male student. When she seemed satisfied with his progress, she focused on the oldest student in her class (me). Now I was getting the patients with the 20 (no kidding) different meds. I had to memorize each one, with the type of drug, how it worked, drug interactions, and side effects literally overnight. Well, I did it and she said that I took too long to recite this information. She ignored other students and followed me around. One day, I went up to a new patient with my meds and said, “Wait a minute. You are not Mrs. _____. I was still holding the meds and went to the other bed and said Hello, Mrs. _________. My teacher accused me of trying to give meds to the wrong patient, and failed me. I guess it would have gone better if she had gone after me first instead of the only male student. Then I would have had time to prove myself to her. What amazed me was that she was so obsessed with me, that she never checked to see if all the other students had the required experience of giving injections or doing dressing changes. I tried to dispute her claim, but being in a Catholic School, questioning authority was useless. I was heartbroken and in shock. I loved nursing and if I had won the lottery I would have done it for free. But unfortunately, being out of the working force for so long had severely stressed my finances and I had to get a job paying more than a nursing assistant. I went back to the bookkeeping world. I am still feeling bitter. I don’t know what good came out of it. Maybe something good will happen. Are my negative feelings keeping this from happening?

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