The Perks of Living and Working in the Northwest

I've always been a "come early to work" kind of gal ever since my first job at the swimming pool. Even after all these years my coworkers from the previous shift always find it necessary to comment on my early arrival. I leave early on purpose to avoid traffic and have some time to relax before work. In the Spring, Summer, and early Fall before it gets dark; I like to take walks around the campus and arboretum before starting my 12 shift.
University of Washington Medical Center just so happens to be right next to the oceanography building and right on the ship canal. A few days ago as I was walking by this is what I saw:

After watching the fish for awhile I decided to pick up the pace a little on my walking a get some exercise to help we muster up enough energy for the night ahead. They say taking the stairs in a great way to get exercise but it's 10 times more fun outside and next to water. I call this the "Stress Test":

I've certainly noticed a difference how I alert I am during the shift and even my attitude toward working on days when I have a nice walk and days that I don't. I'm thankful that I work at a place that is so interesting to walk around.

Thanksgiving Just a Little Early

The last day of July I got an email in UW mailbox saying that all UW employee's who have used a certain amount of tuition exemption in the last year will be taxed for the worth of the tuition as if it were income. For graduate student who took classes every quarter including summer, that amounts to quite a bit. What's even worse was that we would be taxed for a years worth of tuition all in the month of August. Of course I had just quit my ambulance job and my renter had just gotten married and moved out. My paycheck for August turned out less than half of what it usually is!
A few weeks later one of the clinical instructors at Northwest tripped and broke her ankle while a t clinicals. While that is terribly unfortunate and I would never wish that to happen, it did give me a contract for this semester at NU. It's by no means a whole lot of money, but just enough to pay to bills. It's amazing how God provides!

The Exploitation of Graduate Students

I just realized I hadn't posted in a while and thought that I should at least type a quick something. Truth be told I can't really think of anything that exciting to say. However, sometimes we just need a platform to vent. I thought that this might be the answer as I don't think many people read this on a regular basis and you can always choose not to read it.
The other day I was talking with one of the full time faculty members at Northwest. She discussing a conference she wanted to go to but the conference was during school hours and was a several day event. She went on to say that this seems to happen frequently; a great conference of nursing faculty comes up but it's always during school hours. "How can anyone attend these conferences?"
The answer is simple, it's all about the exploitation of graduate students... "Mentor" a graduate student and then make them teach your class while you go and do your "research" and poster presentations. It's all about cheap (free in most cases) labor.
So... School has started for me once again. This quarter I'm taking 9 credits, five of them are teaching credits and 4 are related to my thesis. I tried to get my clinical teaching hours back at Northwest but I was told by UW that they wanted to keep me here. I met with my new mentor on Monday (who incidentally has 2 of us grad. students) and we devised a schedule for my clinical hours. I would work in the lab on Mondays and teach clinical on an occasional Tuesday. Thinking that I actually had a bit of a jump on things and had worked out my schedule to accommodate this, I was actually starting to get a little excited about what I might learn this quarter.
So Tuesday morning I made my way to clinical orientation. Tuesday night I went to work and after work I went to school ALL DAY LONG.
While in my education class my colleague (fellow grad with the same mentor) and I were approached by our instructor who told use we could no longer work in the lab and must do our hours teaching clinical at Swedish hospital cherry hill campus on Tuesdays. BLIN! So you mean to tell me that I have to teach somebody else's clinical all day Tuesday then go work that night and school the next morning. After 27 hours of no sleep and thinking about everything that has happened to me in this program, it certainly looks like I'm being sought out for trouble. I almost wanted to say: "And when were you going to tell me this? Would you like to call my boss and tell him why I won't be coming to work on Tuesday or would you like me to skip your class?" I'm inclined to think that this scheduling might be a whole lot easier for everyone if I could just go back from whenst I came and do my clinical teaching at Northwest. I would rather be exploited by them anyway.
On a positive I was invited to be on the curriculum committee at Northwest. I'm hoping that this will also give me some insight and experience with curriculum development and evaluation that will help me with my thesis and this quarters teaching project.