Top Ten

A teacher friend of mine is listing her top 10 ten favorite moments of the school year as she counts down to the last day. I thought that was a pretty neat way to end the year. Unfortunately, my school year has already ended, but here are my top ten anyway. (in no particular order)

1. I was once late to my own class, when I arrived I found the students diligently doing clinical paperwork. I apologized profusely and the first response I got was this "Therefore there is now no condemnation..." Wow!
2. On the very last day of clinicals I let the students off early, we went to lunch at Red Robin and then for a walk in the park.
3. During clinical a student ran out of a room to find me in the hall to tell me patient wouldn't wake up. I walked in the room to find the patient nearly in respiratory arrest as she was "over medicated." It wasn't the students fault as she wasn't the one who gave the 2 mg of dilaudid, but we got give narcan! The students then made up a lovely song about it. "Nar-can, you don't have to put on the code light, Nar-can..." It was quite a learning opportunity.
4. A picnic with cheerios and milk at the Kirkland waterfront in the dark after pinning all because we thought the end of year was "anticlimactic."
5. I had my Mexico City students over for fish tacos once to discuss assignments and expectations for the class. One of the students looked her keys in the car and got stuck at my house until 11pm. We ate cheesecake and had some pretty great "rice krispie treat" exchanges.
6. I was rounding the students at clinical one morning and noticed I didn't find one of them on the floor so I asked another student where she was. "Miss M, you just sent her down to the OR about 10 minutes ago." Apparently I asked again a little later that day. Now every time I forget something they just respond with, "Where's Rachael?"
7. The interesting comments the students made during my lecture entitled, "Shock and Awe: Declaring Rapid Dominance Over States of Hypoperfusion"
8. The Christmas party in the skills lab and our clinical evaluations.
9. Hearing, "Miss M., I got the job!"
10. I had spoken in another professors class about my adventures in Rwanda. Later that week I found a bag of coffee from the Bourbon (an amazing coffee house in Rwanda) with a little note, "Ms. M., Just a little to get you by before you go back!"
What an amazing and blessed school year! I will remember it fondly always.