Today I had to meet with some of my clinical instructors for clinical evaluations. It was kind of weird. I walked into the first teacher's office, and she thrust a packet of papers into my hands. It was a checklist of the various skills, concepts, etc. we were to have mastered this semseter. I scanned through it, most were checked under P for passing, with a few NI for needs improvement. Ok, no big deal. Then at the end was a handwritten section of things I needed to work on. One of them was developing confidence. Ok, I can go with that. Another was establishing a support system. What? Underneath this statement was a bulletted comment saying I needed to find a shoulder to cry on. I'm sorry...While these are valid concerns considering the semester I just endured, I find it very odd that they would be mentioned on a clinical evaluation by an instructor with whom I never discussed the situation surrounding these needs. I think it's nice that she is concerned about me and all, it was just strange. Mostly because she never came out and said what it was she thought I needed support concerning. After I read the evaluation, she asked if I had any questions or anything I wished to discuss further. No, I didn't. So she handed me a pen to sign off on it. As I signed it, I mentioned something to the effect of it being a very overwhelming semester for me. She nodded and said the thing for me to do was to spend a little bit of time each week over break reinforcing the things learned this semester. She told me that many nurses have gone through the same thing as me and been very successful. She completely lost me on that one. But by this time, I was feeling sufficiently awkward, and decided not to press the subject. I signed the paper and moved on to the next office where I had to be evaluated for my community health class.

The second evaluation was no less awkward than the first, and possibly more so. For starters, this teacher is more than slightly intimidating to me. As I entered her office, she asked if I had filled out an evaluation for a community clinical site. I stared at her blankly. Apparently I was to have evaluated one of the sites I visited for community clinicals this semster. Huh. Interesting. Having not fulfilled this requirement, I was sent next door to retreive the appropriate form to fill out. This teacher was meeting with another student, and I didn't want to interrupt, so I waited paitently in the hallway. Apparently I took to long. Suddenly I heard my name being called from the office I had just left. So I returned and told her the other teacher was busy. No problem, we'll just go ahead with the rest of the evaluation. Next question: what did you do for your service learning hours this semester? Um....I thought we didn't have to do service learning this semester? It wasn't in the syllabus. Apparently I should have inherently known that service learning hours are always required. Oops. So she asked me if I had done anything that could be considered service-like during the semseter. No, as a matter of fact I couldn't. I don't really see myself as being above serving my community or anything, I just honestly couldn't think of anything I had done that hadn't been required for class already. She brainstormed a list of possible activities I could have performed that would count. I had done none of them. Fortunately, she checked me off anyway, under the condition that next semester I perform two service learning activities. Yes ma'am. I was finally released to go fill out the site evalutation form that I knew nothing about. Feeling duly frustrated with the events of the previous 10 minutes, I hastily evaluated the worst clinical site I could think of: the elementary school where the nurse sent me home. I gave the site a very poor review, and ended with some comments about the less-than-friendly manner of the nurse there. For some reason, this made me feel slightly vindicated.

Holy cow. This semester needs to end!!!