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So I got my third 3040 test back today. And I didn't do so hot on it. I thought I did okay, but it turns out that I made exactly average.
Anyone who interacted with me last week will know that this was the test I felt really, really unprepared for, and as a result was really, really stressed out about, so stressed that it was practically the only thing I could talk about the entire week, so stressed that two nights before the exam I started feeling physically sick to my stomach, so stressed that I finished my section super-early on deadline night (I usually finish around 3 or 4 a.m. in the morning, and last week I finished at midnight) because I knew that I had to go back and study. So stressed that when it was finally over, I felt happier than I had felt in at least a month.
Tonight, when I talked briefly to Alan at the library, I lamented, "I'm going to get a C in this class, for sure."
"Well, study harder," he said.
I paused, replied (somewhat bitterly), "That's the wrong thing to say," and started walking away.
He shrugged helplessly, and called after me, "It's the only thing I can say." I guess that's one of the downfalls of having a boyfriend who has a 4.0 and one of the best academic records at Tech.
But it's not true, is it? Alan could have said, "Oh, Jen, a C is not as much of a tragedy as you think it is. Employers will still hire you if your GPA is less-than-perfect. Graduate schools will still accept you into their programs. People will still think you're smart... and in 5 years, it won't even matter."
So why do I need other people to tell me this? Why do I have such a hard time reconciling with myself?
The Technique end-of-year banquet was last night, and in the disorganization of trying to figure out what to get our editor-in-chief and graduating editorial board members as goodbye/thank-you gifts, I somehow ended up being the one mostly-in-charge. So yesterday I stopped by Target and picked up a bunch of different-sized picture frames as well as two sets of margarita glasses (I thought they might make a good present for Julia, who has always been dubbed the “Technique lush.”)
We ended up not using some of the frames and neither of the glassware sets, so today I drove back to Target to return them. As I was gathering everything up to take inside, one of the boxes with the margarita glasses slipped out of its plastic bag, and fell to the ground.
I heard the sound of breaking glass, cursed to myself, and bent down to assess the damage. Out of the four glasses in the set, one of them, hidden behind the cardboard of the box, had broken. The stem was still intact, but the actual cup part had shattered completely.
Needless to say, I couldn’t return it anymore, so I put the box back into my car, and closed the trunk door. For a little while I was annoyed at myself for not having been more careful with the glassware--I've been doing careless things all week, like leaving my purse in front of 8th Street Apartments and paying the wrong credit card. But after a while I resigned myself to the loss. At one point I even optimistically told myself that it was lucky I had broken the set that had cost $9.99 instead of the one that had cost $15.99. Mostly, though, I just wondered what I could possibly do with a set of three cactus-stemmed glasses instead of four. (Anyone want them?)
When I got back out to my car after returning the other things, I opened up my trunk again, trying to decide whether I should attempt to clean out the broken glass or just leave it there for now. I also examined the damage more closely, noting just how much broken glass there actually was--the pieces filled the bottom of the divider box where the cup had once been. I guess it makes sense, since margarita glasses have wide brims and all, but it still surprised me when I picked the box up and shook it gingerly, and heard all the pieces of broken glass clinking, a little like a windchime, against each other.
Finals are next week, and all I can think about is how much I just want this semester to be over. I feel a little bit fragile, like I could shatter into pieces, too, upon impact.
Things that happened this week that are really super awesome... but that I was too busy, too stressed, or too depressed to get excited about:
1. Alan received the School of Public Policy's Outstanding Student award.
2. My sister finally got her license (!!)
3. My mom passed her American Medical Technologist test, which is an achievement that I don't think I fully comprehend. What I do know is that every time I've come home for the past, like, three months, she's been studying for this examination, and when I called her this past week, she had just gotten the news, and I have never heard her sound so excited before.
There's been a lot of drama recently with the Technique and next year's ed board; add in the excitement/disappointment of the Jackets playing in and losing the NCAA championship game on Monday, plus all the other usual weekly stuff I have to worry about like tests and homework, and it made for one of the most mentally and physically draining weeks I've had in a long time.
This Wednesday was a pretty late deadline night at the paper; I finished up my section around 4 a.m. (Thursday morning) and I still hadn't even started on my 3040 homework that was due at noon that day. Each homework is 1% of our grade, and considering that I'm currently hovering at the borderline between a B and a C in that class, I really should have at least attempted it.
But when I looked at the circuit in the first problem at 4:30 in the morning and I had not even the slightest clue as to how to analyze it, I think whatever part of my psyche that is the source of my motivation just snapped. I made a conscious decision that I was just going to forego the homework. And then I went home, and went to sleep. I showed up to class at noon without having anything to hand in, which was sort of a strange feeling.
My lack of motivation carried through the rest of the week: even though I had a big 10-page lab report due on Friday that I should have started right when I got out of class Thursday, I ended up putting it off until about 11 p.m. that night. I worked on it halfheartedly until about 1:30 a.m., went to bed with three pages written, woke up at 7 a.m. the next morning and wrote furiously until I had to leave for class at 12. I worked on homework for my 2 o'clock class all through my 1 o'clock class, and then I went to my 2 o'clock class, where I turned in the homework (which I had only managed to half-finish) and then skipped the rest of the class so that I could go to the computer lab to finish revising and print out my report. And then I went to my 4 o'clock class, turned in my mediocre report, and sat through lecture, utterly exhausted, before I went home at 5.
I'm not being careless, even though all this half-assedness does make me feel like somewhat of a loser: I'm doing well enough in all my classes (except 3040) to where I can turn in a crappy homework or report and not have it affect my grade that much. Mostly, I just don't like how I'm turning into someone who is so hurried and frustrated that I don't have time to think about anything besides what's due in the next few hours.
So I'm trying to recover right now. I have a lot of catching up to do this weekend, but for now, I'm puttering around my room in my pajamas even though it's late afternoon and reading the New York Times online and enjoying the breeze that's coming in from my open window. To Alan, my mom, my sister, and anyone else I blew off or was short-tempered with this week, I'm sorry. I'm trying.
Sigh.
At the Coliseum tonight, with 5000 or so other Tech fans, it was so hard to watch the Jackets struggle for the entire game. But what was harder, for me, was to see the faces of our players during those last eight minutes of the second half -- Jarrett Jack and Luke Schenscher and Marvin Lewis and Clarence Moore, whose names and bios I've gone from barely knowing to having memorized over the past two weeks. Watching them hurting, knowing they couldn't catch up, was the worst part.
They could have won tonight, and everyone at this school knows it.
It was Greek Week this past week, which meant that when I showed up at the Tech blood drive on Thursday with a 1:45 appointment, I was met with an unusually full ballroom of students, waiting to donate blood so they could get their philanthropy points.
So I left, and instead called the Atlanta Red Cross building down on Monroe Drive to make an early appointment to give blood the next day.
I showed up Friday morning, signed in, smiled somewhat groggily at the lady at the front desk, and went upstairs. An older, curly-haired nurse greeted me and took me back to the little confidential cubicles where they do all the paperwork and pre-donation testing. It took me a little longer than usual to get through it all that morning -- since I studied abroad this summer, every time I give blood now, I have to explain how long I was in each part of Europe, and assure them that I didn't spend enough time there to be at risk for mad cow disease. Also that morning, the initial iron test failed, so the nurse had to take an extra blood sample and centrifuge it to make sure that my iron levels were high enough to donate.
Finally, all that was finished, and the curly-haired nurse handed me over to another, younger nurse at the donation area. She asked me which arm I'd like to donate from, and I answered, "either one, whichever's easier," so she started with my right.
I've donated blood enough times to be pretty familiar with the procedure and what to expect; so I was a little taken aback when the nurse pumped the pressure cuff around my upper arm so tight that the rest of my arm quickly went numb. I was a little anxious as I watched her mark my vein with a purple pen, noticing that the mark she had made was off to the side a little, instead of in the center of the crook of my elbow from where they usually draw blood.
But you can't really argue with a Red Cross nurse, especially about something like how to take your blood -- and before I knew it she had taped the slender tubes to my wrist, disinfected my arm with dark brown iodine and was pulling back the blue plastic cover that shielded the needle. Despite the fact that I'm not squeamish about needles, I still can't bring myself to watch as the nurse actually inserts one into my arm. (I can look once it's in, though -- it's sort of fascinating to see the shiny metal of the needle juxtaposed against the organic-ness of my skin.)
So I looked away, and felt the familiar sharp prick as the needle went into my arm. I breathed out, knowing the worst was over, and I would have turned my head back to look -- but the nurse didn't take her hand away. Instead, she played with the needle in my arm a little, adjusting it, pulling it in and out.
The next five minutes felt like an eternity; apparently the blood from the vein she had punctured wouldn't keep flowing. She called over the curly-haired nurse that had helped me before, and they both messed around with the needle in my arm for a long time, occasionally adjusting the pressure in my arm cuff. I kept my eyes turned away, trying not to think about the constant discomfort of a shifting needle in my arm and the occasional pain when it hit a nerve or something. And I was very good about keeping my rising anxiety to myself the entire time.
It was when they finally asked me, "how are you doing?" and I breathed out loudly and replied dryly, "Oh, I'm fine... how is the needle?" that they finally explained to me what I had already mostly figured out: they had used a side vein instead of the usual central one, and were having problems getting the needle to draw a steady flow of blood. After a few more seconds of adjustment with no success, they called a third nurse over, who promptly said that they ought to just take the needle out.
"You can try my other arm," I offered, not really willing to have come all this way for nothing, but the nurse said, "Oh no, we've gone too far now to do that."
But before they took out the needle, the curly-haired nurse said, "Let's check your left arm, anyway," and pulled up my left sweater sleeve. "Oh," she said to the other younger nurse, "look, the vein is right here on this arm, clear as day."
"Well," the younger nurse said, clearly trying to defend her choice of vein, "I went with her right arm because Tonya was working over on that side, and there's not enough room over there for both of us to work."
"Girl, you should've just told me to get my big butt out of the way," Tonya joked lightly, but the curly-haired nurse said more seriously, "We go for the arm, not the workspace." Then she said to me, patting my arm, "Next time we'll use this one."
"Yes, I'll be sure to do that," I said, though really, in my head, the only two things I was thinking were, "That nurse had no idea what she was doing!" and "PLEASE take the needle out!" -- because for some reason, the feeling of metal constantly being moved around underneath my skin was really starting to bother me.
When the younger nurse finally pulled the needle out (I watched, critically, while she fumbled with the gauze and scissors and the curly-haired nurse talked her through it all), I choked back a cry of relief; all I wanted to do was cradle my poor, battered elbow and massage the point of insertion. But instead I obediently I pressed the gauze to my arm and raised it up in the air.
"Be sure to spend at least 10 minutes in the rest area before you leave," the curly-haired nurse said as the other one bandaged up my arm, "and no heavy lifting, keep the bandage on for at least five hours, and drink lots of fluids." I looked at the few ounces of bright red blood in the collection bag, and scoffed to myself: what was she doing, talking to me as if I had given a full pint?
Over in the rest area, I had some juice and a few nutter butters, but got up to leave in five minutes, striding purposefully toward the elevator as if to say, "I just wasted an hour; I'm not going to stay longer than I have to." I swept by the front desk lady, as she called ironically after me, "Thank you for donating!"
I was still pretty angry and annoyed as I drove back to Tech, feeling the painful tenderness of my arm and thinking to myself, "how could they have let such an inexperienced nurse take my blood?" and marveling at her excuse: "she used my right arm because there wasn't enough room on my left side?!?"
But later, I thought about it from a nurse-in-training's point of view. How do they get their experience? They have to start somewhere, I suppose -- and sometimes that results in mistakes. It was unfortunate that I had to be the mistake, but I'm not too worse for wear.
When I had those first qualms about where the nurse had marked my vein, I quieted any doubts by telling myself that all I could do was have faith that she knew what she was doing. And even though it turned out that she didn't, I still think that's true. Over the weekend, when I showed my friends the nice blue-and-red bruise on my arm and told them how I got it, some of them responded, "See, that's why I don't give blood." But this experience won't deter me from giving blood again. Medicine is one of those professions where you have to believe that the doctor knows what he (or she) is doing, because you sure as hell don't know any better -- you know?
Next time, though, I'm telling the Red Cross to use my left arm. Left arm.
The author of a weblog I've been keeping up with for a long time -- Rabi, of wockerjabby -- posted today about her father's new book.
I went and perused the website for a while, and found her father's bio:
The author of The Mapmaker's Wife, Robert Whitaker, has won numerous awards as a journalist covering medicine and science. In the past few years, he has won the George Polk Award for Medical Writing and a National Association for Science Writers’ Award for best magazine article (which appeared in Fortune). In 1998, he co-wrote a series on psychiatric research for the Boston Globe which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.His first book, Mad in America, was named by Discover Magazine as one of the best science books of 2002; the American Library Association named it one of the best history books of that year.