Tag: adult-learning

Dispatches from the Evening Shift end of semester impromptu vacation

The end of the semester can bring up many feelings.

Too often the weeks and days leading up to the end of the semester are busy, busy, busy.

Final projects.

Final papers.

Final presentations.

Yeah.

All of those.

I was gonna contradict myself and say that there were no presentations. But there was one.

I would say the majority of my feelings are exhaustion.

I don’t want to read for school, I want to read for pleasure.

I don’t want to write for school, I want to write for pleasure.

In the past few days, I’ve mostly been reading.

A lot.

Like a lot a lot.

The Women by Kristin Hannah was the first book I read. It is about the forgotten women in Vietnam, the nurses. Oh, so good.

Maddening and tear-jerking all at the same time.

This country did those women dirty.

Oh, and I worked a few shifts in there too.

After my last 10 hours as an RA.

And it occurred just now that I didn’t turn in my last time card.

Oh, dear.

Okay, that isn’t what I said. But drat!

And it was due today.

Bother.

I’ve got to get that in.

Oh, and I’m on my fourth and fifth antibiotic of the Spring. Can I use that as an excuse?

Too late, because I’m gonna.

Tomorrow I will write another Dispatch from Wonderland regarding school life.

I can’t wait to find out what I’m going to write about.

Time card first!

School Me Saturday 4/13/24- Goodbye, hello…I’m late, I’m late, I’m late

It happens to everyone.

And I mean EVERYONE. Including the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. Well, it seems to happen to him a LOT.

An assignment slips your mind or, worse, doesn’t make it onto the calendar. The calendar of assignments that you live and breathe by.

What do you do?

This advice is compliments of my first ACLS teacher. The first thing you do is take your own pulse.

In this instance, taking your own pulse helps you to not panic.

I know wild things are going through your head.

This assignment is going to be late. I’m doomed.

This assignment is going to be SOOOO late. I’m gonna fail.

This assignment is going to be so late that I will have to wail in the afterlife with calendars shackled to my wrists. A la Morley in the Christmas Carol.

Yes, a little book mixing that you didn’t know was possible.

Take a deep breath.

It will be okay.

First things first, email your instructor.

They are people too and they know that life happens. Life definitely makes a habit of getting in the way of adult learning because you probably have a job and responsibilities. Maybe even children.

Now that you’ve emailed your instructor, read the assignment and make a plan to get it done.

Often points will be deducted because it was late. But it is late and this is the way to minimize the fallout. You could just not do the assignment. But then you won’t learn the Student Learning Objective that is often a building block to the next SLO.

Email your instructor and get to work on the assignment. Because points are points.

Do not panic.