I volunteered to serve as a first aid responder for a certain event, in a certain university in Oregon. The event involves young adults in a time of transition in their lives, and for the record let me just say that any names are ficticious to protect the identities of the real people and places, anyway, I saw an advertisement in my job's website that was recruiting a nurse to go to this event for 3 nights and 4 days to be the first aid responder and to log and dispense medications to these youths; I seized the opportunity!
My thoughts were quite romantic, I would have my own dorm, free meals, get paid for basically just being there, sounded so good. I liked the idea of going to a university and pretending I was a student, you know, mingling with other students, joining them in their meals and activities, how fun, and get paid! seriously! so why did no one jump on this opportunity? hmmmm! always suspect such situations, Iam more the wiser now.
I set out with my bags, my laptop, you know to do myhomework, I bought a couple snacks including sunflower seeds and yogurt. I googled my map and off I went with high spirits and much elan!, I love that word. I immidiately ran into some problems, I spilled a huge bottle of water on my camera and my car seat, was this an omen? oh no!
The google directions were slightly wrong but being the resourceful person that I am, I found the University with an hour to spare.
Once in the university grounds, vast grounds for the sake of this story, I started to panic, it is huge, and many many buildings, I had to find a parking spot and walk to the administration building where I asked for directions to my destination; I must say the girls at the front desk were very helpful and gave me a map with the "you are here" arrow, easy peasy, I thought. Soon I found that although the map was great it did not include the CONSTRUCTION BARRIERS, what up? 30 minutes later after driving in many circles and going in to restricted areas I found the building I wanted, but I had to park far, far, far away, no problem I need and love to walk; I was just happy to find the building with 15 min. to spare, I hate being late. I got there, it was a hot and muggy day, nice people introduce me to everyone, they handed me a ticket to place on my windshield so that they would not tow my car, ok, so here I go for that long walk, and I could not bring my bags because we would be handing out dorms and keys later, I started to feel that i was going to get my badly needed but much procrastinated, workout. Eventually I was in a large room where the guests started to arrive, young exhuberent youths, with incredible energy, dressed in bright yellow shirts displaying their logos, the music started, they were practicing a little welcome dance. I later found out that these young people were the leaders of what would be other young people that were coming to this event, it really looked like it was going to be fun, so I needed to get down to business, chop! chop! after all, I was here to render first aid and by the looks of the moves on the stage, there were going to be some injuries, so I wanted my first aid kit, my location etc.
First aid kit? oh, wow, there is a little problem, I heard coming out of this way-to-bubbly blond leader, noone thought of bringing a first aid kit, NICE! no worries, I will just pull banaids and ice bags out of my ass!. Blondy proceeded to tell me that all I needed to do was to log and dispense the youths medications, I see, so just how many medications can a youth have? and by-the-way, just how many youths are there? wait to I want to know this?
They scurried around looking for a box to put the medications into and a notebook for logging, and to appease me they made a little makeshift nurse station with a pretty poster that said "nurse", so sweet. I had no clue what this entailed and noone would offer any answers, they were too busy doing their part, which by-the-way was much better organized, after all they have been doing this proudly, for eleven years.
I guess, I started to think, this will be easy money, I get my dorm, with my refrigerator, microwave, and get paid to give out medications, hmmm! smells like drug pushing to me, but oh well.
As the youths started to arrive and getting in line to hand be their plethora of medications, I started logging feverishly, I started to realize why the job assignment was opened for a long time, here I was in my little nurses station with two huge moving boxes, a pen and a little worpt binder, writing names of drugs, how many, how often, etc. Frankly, if you need to take so many happy pills, and you are this young, something is terribly wrong. My thoughts started to wonder, what if they do not take their happy pills, what happens then? the word postal came to mind, but I was digressing, so I took a deep breath and just got to the task.
This will be continued for it only gets dramatically better and I am going to have to retire to my cot, "cot" being the operative word here, with my no linens because they failed to tell me that I needed to bring my own sheets, towels etc. I have gone on many hikes and I have had more linen and furniture on my backpacking trips than I have now, but that is a subject yet to be explored......
My thoughts were quite romantic, I would have my own dorm, free meals, get paid for basically just being there, sounded so good. I liked the idea of going to a university and pretending I was a student, you know, mingling with other students, joining them in their meals and activities, how fun, and get paid! seriously! so why did no one jump on this opportunity? hmmmm! always suspect such situations, Iam more the wiser now.
I set out with my bags, my laptop, you know to do myhomework, I bought a couple snacks including sunflower seeds and yogurt. I googled my map and off I went with high spirits and much elan!, I love that word. I immidiately ran into some problems, I spilled a huge bottle of water on my camera and my car seat, was this an omen? oh no!
The google directions were slightly wrong but being the resourceful person that I am, I found the University with an hour to spare.
Once in the university grounds, vast grounds for the sake of this story, I started to panic, it is huge, and many many buildings, I had to find a parking spot and walk to the administration building where I asked for directions to my destination; I must say the girls at the front desk were very helpful and gave me a map with the "you are here" arrow, easy peasy, I thought. Soon I found that although the map was great it did not include the CONSTRUCTION BARRIERS, what up? 30 minutes later after driving in many circles and going in to restricted areas I found the building I wanted, but I had to park far, far, far away, no problem I need and love to walk; I was just happy to find the building with 15 min. to spare, I hate being late. I got there, it was a hot and muggy day, nice people introduce me to everyone, they handed me a ticket to place on my windshield so that they would not tow my car, ok, so here I go for that long walk, and I could not bring my bags because we would be handing out dorms and keys later, I started to feel that i was going to get my badly needed but much procrastinated, workout. Eventually I was in a large room where the guests started to arrive, young exhuberent youths, with incredible energy, dressed in bright yellow shirts displaying their logos, the music started, they were practicing a little welcome dance. I later found out that these young people were the leaders of what would be other young people that were coming to this event, it really looked like it was going to be fun, so I needed to get down to business, chop! chop! after all, I was here to render first aid and by the looks of the moves on the stage, there were going to be some injuries, so I wanted my first aid kit, my location etc.
First aid kit? oh, wow, there is a little problem, I heard coming out of this way-to-bubbly blond leader, noone thought of bringing a first aid kit, NICE! no worries, I will just pull banaids and ice bags out of my ass!. Blondy proceeded to tell me that all I needed to do was to log and dispense the youths medications, I see, so just how many medications can a youth have? and by-the-way, just how many youths are there? wait to I want to know this?
They scurried around looking for a box to put the medications into and a notebook for logging, and to appease me they made a little makeshift nurse station with a pretty poster that said "nurse", so sweet. I had no clue what this entailed and noone would offer any answers, they were too busy doing their part, which by-the-way was much better organized, after all they have been doing this proudly, for eleven years.
I guess, I started to think, this will be easy money, I get my dorm, with my refrigerator, microwave, and get paid to give out medications, hmmm! smells like drug pushing to me, but oh well.
As the youths started to arrive and getting in line to hand be their plethora of medications, I started logging feverishly, I started to realize why the job assignment was opened for a long time, here I was in my little nurses station with two huge moving boxes, a pen and a little worpt binder, writing names of drugs, how many, how often, etc. Frankly, if you need to take so many happy pills, and you are this young, something is terribly wrong. My thoughts started to wonder, what if they do not take their happy pills, what happens then? the word postal came to mind, but I was digressing, so I took a deep breath and just got to the task.
This will be continued for it only gets dramatically better and I am going to have to retire to my cot, "cot" being the operative word here, with my no linens because they failed to tell me that I needed to bring my own sheets, towels etc. I have gone on many hikes and I have had more linen and furniture on my backpacking trips than I have now, but that is a subject yet to be explored......
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