Sorry to keep banging on about work work work but I've finished everything and have already started on my Xmas load. Workaholic much? Nah, I'm more like... relaxed enough to sit down and do some work.
Finished everything. That's something I honestly thought I'd never hear the end of it.
The main thing is though, I've submitted my masters application *cries tears of joy* it's been a long 3 months of preparation up to it, drafting and re-drafting my personal statement, going to the open evening in the rain, applying for volunteering/placements to gather experience to write about in my statement. When I finally got around to amending my CV (which, mind you, hasn't been touched for about 3 years), I was surprised by the amount I was able to add to it, every section has been bulked up so much that I didn't realise the reality of how many opportunities I've had these past 3 years.
Stroke placement - now, if you've been following this blog, you'll know how excited I was to be given the opportunity to do voluntary work in the stroke unit at Charing Cross hospital with Imperial College. I started last Thursday and yes, I was nervous, I hadn't met the people in the unit before, the staff, the patients no one. I was nervous because I realised I would be meeting about 10-15 new people including staff and patients. Being thrown into a place where you know no one, you have to make the effort to get to know others. Luckily, the ward is really nice, the staff are really friendly, the ward manager/head nurse is a really kind Filipino dude who let me choose what I wanted to do and kept saying he's glad people are volunteering to help the ward out. The other nurses are lovely too, I met a particular nurse that actually lives near me, I was talking to her through lunchtime feeding. She's from Jamaica and she has the most awesome personality ever.
So basically, the first day pretty much consisted of me running around the ward getting to know people, initiating conversations is something I'm quite bad at, the awkward silences when people are not talkative. I mean, I'm used to it by now because you get a lot of this working in a care home, when people are disinterested or when people are just having a bad day. I really think I'm developing in terms of talking to people, there were about 2 patients who I talked to a lot on that day. One was an old man who was really really talkative and one was a lovely old Italian lady who showed me pictures of her family on her phone. Was so lovely. Though, there were some who just weren't talkative which made things a bit awkward, especially if anyone saw, but you know, you just brush it off, let them be and move on to the next person to talk to. These individuals aren't ordinary individuals, they've suffered from stroke and have been transferred from the hyper stroke unit over to the acute stroke unit (where I'm placed). I think that I need to develop my skills in cheering people up as well haha. Overall, it was a good day, I realised I learnt so much in one day when I went back to my application for masters and wrote a whole paragraph on my experience.
I'm having a rather relaxing weekend actually, I've spent since Friday doing almost nothing (apart from finalising my application and tweaking parts of it, emailing my referees to let them know the deadline, sending them documents to write my reference etc etc). I just looked at the post title and saw that this whole post is irrelevant to it. What I mean by 23 papers is that I've collected 23 papers to read for my dissertation. I was actually in the middle of summarising it but realised how long it is and came onto here since I haven't written anything for a while.
Hope you guys are having a blissful weekend. BLISSFULLLLL.
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