Lately I have just been struggling. With mostly everything. I have been easily frustrated and lost my patience and been annoyed and aggravated and it was all just building up more and more.
I have been struggling in one of my classes in particular. I do not have any interest in the curriculum and you could say I'm not the biggest fan of the teacher. I just get so fed up with it. The teacher never grades our papers, which I understand especially when you have multiple classes with many papers is a challenging task. I do understand that. But I don't get why we continuously are asked to write more and more essays to just be sat for weeks ungraded:
1) by the time we do get them back many weeks have passed and the paper and its content are irrelevant because we've moved on.
2) I do not learn anything from writing. I already know how to write. And sure it's necessary to practice. But when we finally do get our papers back they are rarely marked with what was wrong and what needed to be changed. Just slapping a letter grade on them does close to nothing for me. Just makes me want to give up because even when I put effort into my papers my letter grades rarely prove it.
It is just a vicious cycle of frustration and anger and stress
And though this is a recent thing or change- the news is so sad. There are often tragic stories of deaths and other crimes. It can be really disturbing turning on the nightly news. Which often reminds me of Jack Johnson's song The News: Why don't the newscasters cry when they read about people who die// at least they could be decent enough to put just a tear in their eye.
Then there are clinicals. As much as I love them, they are hard. And I can't write about anything specifically, but a few times I have witnessed things that just break my heart. I know that the health field is dealing with people, usually sick people, and that things can't always be positive. But it's just so sad to me sometimes.
Not only that. But then I have to go back to school. And just my luck I go directly to the class I described above. At school things are so different. First off, compared to clinicals, school just seems a little tedious and useless. I know it isn't and that learning is important. But it's just a big difference going from real life people and trying to help them to text books. Plus back at school I seem to be surrounded by immature and obnoxious and rude kids. (this clearly includes lying and not telling the whole truth and trying to justify physically fighting another human. Seriously there's enough sadness and suffering and illness due to stuff that isn't inflicted by another person. There is never a reason to try to hurt someone on purpose. The thought of it alone makes me angry). They make fun of people and use awful language and also no one listens to me. I know I speak quietly but literally people never hear me talk. I'm sure most of the time, at least I hope, it is just that they don't hear me. But its so frustrating and upsetting and makes me feel useless. Not to mention when I'm trying to help out or ask for help. And I know it's still high school and kids will be kids and whatever. But I've just had enough of it.
But I know that there is goodness in our world. I don't believe it is perfect, nor do I believe it is like a movie or book. But there is goodness. Father Dennis touched on this in his homily this weekend. He talked about how comic books are (generally) very divided on good and evil and that it is obvious which characters belong to which side. He also noted how in The Bible it talks about love and goodness ten times more than it talks about evil.
I know I just talked down clinicals. But I love love love them. They are the best part of my week. I love being able to see things that we've talked about in class. I love seeing patients get helped. I love all of the staff I've worked with. They are so friendly and professional when they are working with their patients. They also explain everything they are doing and are ultimately just trying to help. Not to mention with me. They take the time to explain everything they are doing to me and answer every single question I ask. I love it. If I had the chance, I would spend my entire day in clinicals. Because it is so much better than school.
Speaking of the health field- I know that I can not do anything that has high risk levels or that has low outcomes of success. It would just be too emotionally demanding for me, because I really feel for other people when they are upset or in pain. Both the patients and their families. I just couldn't do it. But the more I read and talk about it, the more physical therapy appeals to me. It is medical which really interest me and still helping people which I want to be able to do with my career. But, the patients are rarely close to death. Being immobile would be frustrating still, but better than having a fatal illness or being dependent on oxygen and machines. I know that those people need to be taken care of and are just as important as physical therapy patients, and I have the utmost respect for the people that take care of and help those patients. Because I just couldn't. Eventually in clinicals I will go to physical therapy and I can't wait. I am hoping it will be as fitting as it sounds. ALSO! I got into SLU's physical therapy program!! Well pre-physical therapy program which gives direct admission to their physical therapy program. So exciting. Just hopefully I love it when I go to shadow them.
Using SLU as my segue (Bert from OLAB reference) I have been working on applications for scholarships. Which could be good news, I'm hoping eventually. But many of them ask about the future. It has made me think a lot about next year and about how things are going currently and I just have such high expectations for next year. I want to be in a place where people are kind and help each other without hesitation-basically like Camp Tecumseh. I'm hoping so much that college is similar. And I know that part of it is making your experience how you want it to be and getting out of it what you put in. And sometimes (like camp maybe and OLAB maybe, but most definitely not like Costa Rica! I don't know why I was openly myself without any hesitation and free to laugh loud and make friends and speak my mind) I am shy. And I hold back. But I don't want to do that. I want to express my happiness and engage myself fully in everything I do and every new relationship I build. And I know that the ambassadors that give the campus tours are supposed to be pleasant and speak of the school in high spirits- which they did at SLU. But there were many kids on the campus during our tour that were not ambassadors. And were not asked to be happy and make the school look good. Yet they still did. They genuinely looked happy. And like they were enjoying it. That is what I want. Not to mention the dream I had last night about the first week of school with just freshmen at SLU was similar to a Camp Tecumseh setting.
Other highlights and spurts of goodness within my life lately include:
-The show Undercover Boss. It is really uplifting and warming and gives me goosebumps. I love it. The boss of a big corporation goes undercover and works in all of the smaller jobs of the company. Then usually the boss is changed and has a reality check and reveals himself to the people he worked with and often rewards his employees. Definitely worth watching.
-Matt Logelin (The author of Two Kisses for Maddy) emailed me back!!!!! A personal email!!! It made me morning waking up to that!! It was so inspiring that he took the time to do that and made me feel like I was worth so much!
-Lately on the news there is air time about the Super bowl village in Indy. I love listening to the people who are interviewed who are impressed with Indy and with our airport and everything about it. It just makes me feel so good and so proud to be of Indiana.- a place generally thought of as cornfields and hicks.
-Plus the warm weather has not only been enjoyed by the people in state for the superbowl, but by all of us! I love it. I just can't wait until spring break, or spring in general.
-Plus to top everything off that has been a blessing and has kept me hanging on and kept me a little sane: this morning we had a two hour delay! And oh how lovely it was.
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