I am officially finished with my first week of nursing school. I’m happy to report that thus far I’m averaging 93%, which is much better than I did when I was working on my degree several years ago.
I’ve run into an interesting situation in this class.
Since it’s been well over a decade since I last attended, I forgot about that phenomenon known as the student parrot. Those of you in academia know this creature comes in many forms, but the one I’m talking about is that which decides the best way to get good grades is to be a parrot any time the instructor asks a question. That is, the instructor asks a question and the parrot is so assertive that none of the other students can get a word in edgewise.
OK, I’m glad they are so smart and know everything in this simply large volume of information but could they please give someone else a chance to answer a question? After all, the purpose of the lecture is for those students who are still acquiring information into their brain to be able to listen, ask and answer questions, and perhaps learn something. Unfortunately, when the parrot speaks, one of the instructors focuses on them, and the class becomes an exchange between the instructor and the parrot.
That’s not the worst part about the parrot. Nope, this parrot has the ability to do that wonder of science fiction called shape shifting. That is it has the ability to change from one physical form to another. Friday night the parrot turned into lead sled dog. At the start of the class the bitch (dog, get it?) all on her own asked the instructor “Can we switch from having an hour for our meal break and make that 30-minutes instead…” Perhaps not the specific words, but the gist is that she wanted to change the meal time for the rest of the 11-months we have from an hour to a half hour.
The instructor, without giving any of the rest of us who might feel differently a chance, immediately put it to a vote of the rest of the students in the class. Well, what do you think happened? Yup, we ended up with a 30-minute meal break. A full one-third of us thought this was complete BS, but were not given a chance to present our case, mainly that extra half hour is being used for us to study, prepare our materials for class the following day, etc. The question was asked and answered before we could raise an objection.
For me, the extra study time while at the classroom facility is important, as we are usually given a test at the end of the evening. That extra 30-minutes to review the materials is crucial for us. So why does the person who seeming eats the book and completely understands it get to determine that the rest of us are going to shorten the day so she can go home a half hour earlier?
I’m actually pretty peeved at this. Should I take this up with the program director on Monday? We have a situation where one student is starting to pull the rest of us around on a leash, and I think that is totally unacceptable. Not only that, nursing *is not* a democracy. I think it is more analogous of a military organization. After all, the doctors write orders and we follow them. We don’t get to sit around at the nurses station, take in the orders, then take a vote as to if we are going to modify or follow them as written. That’s essentially what happened here. One structure was presented, and now it changed by mob mentality.
This said, I’m glad the parrot is absorbing the material so well, but why should I have that extra time taken from me (and the other students who feel this way) because she wants to go home early? I actually felt sucker-punched by this.
So I’ll ask if any of you have anything thoughts about how I should respond to this? I can see this is going to keep happening if someone doesn’t say something about it, and soon.