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Friday, August 14, 2015

What a Week...

On Sunday it all started pretty terrible. A patient at my work began assaulting another patient. Who happened to be standing in close proximity? Me. I had to perform the "handle with care" (i.e. restraint) until the other staff came.

It's pretty upsetting to the other patients. The evening was downhill from there as the violence with the patient escalated. The more experience staff took over and I was left in charge of all the other patients, some who became verbally aggressive and defiant. I had to yell and shout to assert my dominance, which I have felt just awful about ever since it took place. Some of the patients said they hated me...

By the end of the shift I really couldn't handle (real life- as in protecting teens with severe  psychological, destructive tendencies) anymore. I used every ounce of will power to not beg another staff to take over my post and let me leave.

Great way to begin finals week.

Monday: I forced myself to wake up and drive to the State Hospital at 7 am. It was the last thing I wanted to do after the previous night. I put in 5 shadowing hours, thankfully with no incident and then locked my self in the library for the next 3 days.

You can imagine my anxiety was running quite high because if I didn't do well on the final exams the last 2 months would have been a waste. I will admit there were some tears Wednesday night but I resolved there was nothing more I could do. I had to take a comprehensive Statistics exam Thursday morning and had to get a 70 to keep my current grade. I had little room for margin of error.

Thursday. I really like learning, but I hate exams. Once I got so angry and frustrated during a test I wanted to burn the testing center down. I don't have pyromania disorder, I just really don't like tests. But in the 80 question Stats exam things were going pretty smoothly. I was filling out answers fairly confidently.

When I take exams I make a list of questions I don't know, questions I might miss, and ones that I think I got right, but there is a small chance they are wrong.  I always take the test twice to ensure everything is correct and double check all my answers. I started fatiguing at the 2.5 hour mark. I was checking and rechecking, when panic set in that perhaps everything was wrong and I began second guessing every answer. After 3 hours I gave up and turned it in.

And I got an 80%.



And then the whole week did a 180. I indulged in a trip to the pool, Pitch Perfect, and got paid for my protective duties ;) I have to work the next 3 days at the treatment center, but perhaps things have calmed down.




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