sunshine and fun times :)

Its been a pretty good week, Ive had a few days off from uni that was definitely needed. I know they are supposed to be study days but its been nice just relaxing a little.  A visit to Ks house on Tuesday has inspired me to make flapjacks for Uni. I usually end up having some form of chocolate on my breaks, but given that Ive left my job so am technically going to be £300 quid a month down I kind of need to cut my costs a bit. Ks flap jacks came out all nice and crunchy something like this .

I suspect mine were on too high a heat setting because they came out more like this :{

Never mind though they still tasted okay, they were just very crumbly, I did take some to uni this morning and they did the job of filling me up without giving me any high sugar reading. I'm hoping that my next batch will be

slightly ever more so successful, as my attempts at making soups for uni have. 

I was talking with M  from my course today and we've both been surprised that the course has had a positive effect on our lives. Ive started to cook healthy nutritious foods for myself again where I would have just lived on biscuits, crisps and toast. I'm having loads more exercise by biking it into uni, but even on the days when I do take the bus in for whatever reason I tend to walk home, unless it is raining really heavily. I must say though the university is set  around some pretty amazing grounds. I cycle through this park generally as the quickest route home but the woodland, river and duckpond combined is pretty amazing.

There are other routes I can take that take in some really grand estates, that overlook the rest of hilly city. Today M and I took a different route home, It wasn't one where I probably should have taken the bike, but it was fun and as we got out of lectures early we spent loads of time in the grounds of an old hospital by a lovely lake just chatting. The walk home normally takes about 50 minutes, this time it took about three hours but we did stop and take a lot of detours which was really nice. As I got to see a lot of hilly cities countryside that I

haven't had the opportunity to explore for quite a few years now. 

I think im a little bit sad that our placements are in may right in the middle of summer, it would have been so nice to spend the lovelier summer months exploring these places but alas as of the beginning of may its our cohorts turn to go out onto our first placement.  Placement has been a real source of anxiety to me, I feel incompetent at times and I know this has come from having way too much work assigned to me at Big scary care home, and this is generally not the fault of the carers but a management issue. However whilst I was working there I could suppress a lot of what I felt about the quality of care, but now Ive left its all coming out in my head which has made me feel worse. I genuinely want to deliver high quality care, but wonder how in any care sector that can be provided where staffing ratios are 10 to one on a good day and 15 to one on a bad, as well as tying to cope with all the domestic chores as no support staff are employed. Anyway I met my placement mentor on Wednesday morning and even though the care setting is similar to what I have worked in before things do seem so much better. My mentor was very happy that I visited before placement started and has made me feel very welcomed. I was advised by my practice tutor to tell him my worries about placement, as they involved some pretty bad experiences and he was very positive in trying to show me that my placement is nothing like my old workplace. To the point that to every 10/11 residents there is two support workers a nurse and a whole host of laundry and kitchen staff. I was pleased with this as it means when I'm on placement I can do what I'm there to do and actually take care of the peoples.

I'm off now to actually attempt to study biology, this should be fun I haven't been to a lecture for it in four weeks:P

Lifes got a bit arghhh

I'm feeling pretty anxious at the moment, and its all because I decided to quit my job. The weird thing is though Im not worrying about finances, its more just a general sense of anxiety. Some pretty awful things have happened to me there in the last 5 months and I guess I have really struggled to adjust to me actually taking actions to say actually Big scary care home this is not okay that you treat your staff like this. Its think its awful that I feel so anxious about the simple fact that I have quit, yet I know it was the right desision and I should have left months ago. The crunch came when I  burst into tears at finding out my first practice placement at university. I have been looking forward to going out on placement since starting the course,but when I found out my placement is the same kind of setting as big scary care home, I was really upset. Its not that Im unhappy that ive been given  this particular sector to work in, I just think I have been so worried that Ill end up taking bad practice across whereas if I had been given a different health sector I may go in there with little prior knowledge and actually learn good practice from scratch. Anyway I spoke to my placement liason tutor, and they have given me really good advice. But this has meant Ive not only quit my job, Ive left without working my notice as I need a break from this setting so my anxieties can settle down before I go out on placement.

Ive been at university for three months now and I have been loving it, there is loads of reading to do but im okay with that as I love reading. The lectures are really interesting as well there is the odd bad day where they try and teach 6 million things at once, but in general these things are few and far between.  The only real complaint Ive got about the uni is the fact they couldn't organize they're way out of a paper bag. The lecturers all communicate with students in different ways via different systems so you have to log into different things to get different announcements, And then theres the lecture hoping, where you go in for a timetabled lecture and find that its been moved to a different day.

Its all good though Ive passed my first assignment at 58% which I'm happy with, in fact most of our cohort passed.  I think the best part about uni though is that it is having a very positive effect on my lifestyle. It has made me engage in the counselling process more throughly so that I deal with the crap from childhood.  I'm getting more excercize as I'm  cycling to uni which is about 4 miles away and sometimes even catching the bus in and walking home. As well as eating better, making my own soups and curries to take into uni and eat at home I'm still eating an inordinate amount of crap as well though!! Its given me another job that I absolutely love. It doesn't have enough shifts to really support myself financially, but I do it anyway as it involves a lot of supporting people out in the community.

Wow writing this has been very theraputic, Ive been feeling pretty negative recently and anxious but hey without big scary care home life can be pretty good :D

Conversational Woes

So I had some interesting conversations today.

The first one goes like this


JM: Hey nice boss am I going to get the dementia course training, because all other happy care staff at big scary mansion care home seem to be on the course except me.

Nice Boss: I'm sorry JM I didn't order enough booklets for all the staff at big scary mansion residential home, you and the housekeeper are the only ones not on the course yet.

JM but nice boss I am a care assistant at big scary mansion and deserve to be on the course with all the others. .

Nice boss Well you're going to university in January JM and you should get a lot of dementia training in the mental health course.

JM: Um not necessarily and even if I do I might not get it for another two or three years . And Id like to learn  how to deal with the new residents you're bringing in now.

HMM ever feel like you're banging your head against a brick wall.  The situation at big scary mansion is really annoying me now. I started there two years ago and even though I was promised training, its never really happened. The induction pack that every new employee has to complete was finished and handed in in may 2009, to date its never been marked and handed back. I got so fed up of waiting 9 months to start my NVQ2 witch never started that I dragged myself back to college and got an Access to Higher Education Diploma in Health Studies and it seems because I'm willing to train myself then I don't get the paid for company training.
Its not as though I'm even asking for the earth just training which allows me to do my job properly.

Rant over lol

First Post

This is my blog I suppose, I'm not writing it for anyone else really I just find that to get on in my life I need to write things down. I used to keep diaries but going through the expense of  buying a new notebook(it has to be a pretty girly thick thing with a nice matching pen.) only for the diary to fall by the wayside after a few months

Anyway its important for me to write things down and record them as they happen so thats what I will be be doing here. Recording my way through life as a mental health nursing student.
Well that's it for now folks Happy Sunday :)