Kindness and Simplicity

Spring break is almost over :( It makes me sad. I feel like the week just flew right by. Go figure. One the plus side, my resume is done (officially this time) and I have a cover letter ready to go out to one of the place I am applying to. The first cover letter is the most difficult to write. I am sending it out today! Now I have to keep track of all the places I am applying and remember to make follow-up phone calls to them.

This week has also got me thinking about things other than school. I always talk about wanting to improve myself, but I mean it every time and I do try, even if I don't always accomplish it. My current efforts are going to be in an attempt to be nicer to everyone, and I do mean everyone, not just the people I am already nice to. I have decided to be more sociable and nice and polite to everyone, even those who have wronged me in the past or do not currently like me (I know it's hard to believe that there are people like that out there, but there are). As a professional, I really can't afford to have people out there who think I am rude or stuck-up. Therefore, I have decided to make the change and be more outgoing and friendly to everyone. I'll keep you updated on how it goes, because this is not going to be very easy.

Another change I am making is to embrace simplicity. It probably sounds pretty ridiculous, but I've downgraded a lot of the extravagant things that I thought I needed. I downgraded my cell phone plan that I had with Verizon (and being nice to the people at the store helped me convince them to give me the full price of my phone when I returned it). I now have a very basic, pay as you go, doesn't do much extra cell phone and plan. It's good enough for me and I'm saving $65 per month and still have unlimited text and calling. I've decided that all of the things I want, I have to work hard for and not just throw them on the credit card in order to have them. Of course there are things I dream about having: a house in the country with a front porch, finished basement, and 2 car garage, a brand new Ford Fusion hybrid, a couch that has reclining seats, etc. All these things are just wants and I'm not going to have them until I can afford them, and if I never can afford them, then so be it. Life isn't all about the things you have. Sometimes people respect you more when you have the self-control to live within your means. Remind me of this when I get my first paycheck as a licensed PT.

Someone hold my head in place

Ugh, so today I don't feel very good. I don't have the flu or anything, but I have a headache and feel dizzy. I don't think it's anything to be too concerned about, because I've had these motion sickness / dizzy feelings off and on for years, but it's no fun when it happens over spring break. Today would have been the perfect day to go out for a run. The weather is amazing, even if it is not sunny. I just walked to the grocery store for some orange juice and Excedrin and was amazed at how warm it feels outside. I even have a window open.

On the not-so-good side, this headache is making it pretty much impossible to study my review book for boards. I can only study little bits at a time before my head starts spinning, but I'm still plugging away at it. One of my former CIs emailed me his letter of recommendation for me today. I read it and printed off a copy. It was a really nice letter. So even though I feel like crap today, maybe the letter will give me an edge next week at the job fair.

Money saving tips

Ok I am ready for spring break to start being awesome. So far, it has been nothing but stressful. Thanks to Verizon Wireless, I am now out $330 to have decent cell phone service at home. Could I have suffered through another few months with no service? Sure. But do I want to have no cell phone service when I am putting my cell phone number on my resumes? No. So in order to be able to answer any potential calls from potential employers, I am currently spending $330. Boo that. I am also still in the process of perfecting the most amazing resume and cover letters ever written, because being the perfectionist that I am, I refuse to send out anything less than the best. So let's all keep our fingers crossed that this pays off in the end and I can convince anywhere within a 30 mile radius to create a job for a physical therapist, even if they weren't planning on hiring one. This is absolutely vital because I am a) poor and need the money to continue to LIVE and b) unwilling to relocate unless absolutely necessary.

With that being said, any money saving tips would be very much appreciated. Here are few of the ones I have come up with so far...

• Drop Verizon wireless because they are outrageously expensive and Straight Talk provides 10x better service for half the price - DONE.
• Stop buying groceries at Walmart. This would save the normal individual money, but it does not save me money at all, because I always end up spending over $100 in Walmart, even if I go in there to buy one $15 item. I will spend $100+ every single time I step foot in Walmart. Therefore, my new goal is to never ever ever step foot in Walmart again....or until I need to purchase an item that can not be purchased anywhere else in town. This will only be an issue until we get our Dollar General. Then, I am never leaving Fayette to shop for anything other than clothes.
• Recycle, Recycle, Recycle. I am not a big fan of saving stuff for recycling, because it is a huge pain in the butt that we do not have curb-side recycling here in Fayette....However, if I would just recycle my plastic bottles and cardboard, I guarantee I would save a bunch of money on garbage tags. I already recycle my pop cans. It wouldn't take that much more effort to set aside other containers for plastic and cardboard. And since I have a garbage disposal, there is really no reason for me to even throw anything away at all. Who knew saving the environment could actually save money...
• Stop going out on weekends. I've pretty much given up on going out to the bars on the weekends, because it is a) 99% of the time boring and b) a waste of money...well I have decided that going out is too expensive. I went out last Friday night to celebrate the end of my clinical and ended up spending $40. That is ridiculous. Maybe it's because I haven't gone out in a long time anyway, but $40 in one night is outrageous. I have decided that there has got to be much cheaper ways to go out and have a good time and I refuse to spend $40/night going out to bars in Fayette anymore.
• Bust some butt. Hard work has to pay off at some point. My goal is to work as hard as I can to find a job close to home so that I can start making money as soon as possible without having to drive very far. I need to get these student loans paid off ASAP. That means, I need to study for boards pretty much non-stop, get that resume perfected, and do whatever I can to kick some butt on interviews and get a job lined up. I'm willing to give up spring break to do that. I'm willing to give up my nights and weekends for the next 8 weeks to make sure that happens as well. Wish me luck.

Spending money to make money

After two days of being entirely lazy, I have decided to get off my butt and accomplish some things today. I went shopping this morning for some new clinical clothes and an outfit for interviews (this is assuming that I will get asked on interviews - which I better). My shopping trip was pretty much a dud. I was having bad luck everywhere. I decided to stop at Target first, because they supposedly were going to have all kinds of swimsuits on sale for $14. Well, all their swimsuits sucked, and then I realized that I shouldn't even buy one until I find out if I am going to get a job where I'll need to do aquatic therapy, because in that case, I'll need a one-piece anyway.

From Target, I went to Old Navy, where every single shirt was v-necked and flimsy...not the kind of shirt I can wear for a clinical and clip a name badge to. At the mall, every store was the same way and the dress shoes at Payless sucked. I ended up having to pay $20 for a pair of dress shoes for clinical and to me, that is not paying LESS, so the store shouldn't even be called that.

From there, I stopped at the food court for lunch and ordered from Magic Wok. I sit down to eat and realize that my chicken is barely even cooked through. It was cooked, but BARELY, so it tasted nasty and I had to throw most of it away.

I went to the Verizon store to cancel my plan because they suck and the manager tells me that it's going to cost $330. Um NO. I shouldn't have to pay that much at all. The paperwork I signed said $175 and I shouldn't even have to pay that after what I've been through with their crappy company. He finally told me that if I take all my equipment back to the store in Wauseon where I got it, I might be able to get a better deal. So now tomorrow I have to do that.

I ended up finally finding some decent dress clothes at Express, so go figure. The only clothes that looked decent were at one of the most expensive stores in the mall. So I ended up spending $150 on two outfits for interviews. I hate that, because it is so nerve-racking to spend so much money on clothes for interviews when you need the JOB to PAY for the clothes for interviews. Ugh.

I get home and start looking at my resume and realize that, although one of my instructors at school reviewed it and said it was good, it actually looks like crap when I print it out. So I called my uncle and asked him if he would look over it. I had him take a look at it, and luckily he had some really good suggestions for making it look better, so now I am spending the remainder of my afternoon fixing the resume that I thought I had done. At least I got a second opinion on it before sending it out, because I am pretty sure that I would have gotten ZERO job interviews with the one I had. I think it will look much better once I get the changes made that he suggested. After that, I'm preparing my cover letters. Should be a really exciting evening!

8 more weeks!

Well I survived and passed my most challenging clinical so far. I feel pretty great about that. My CI gave me really good reviews on the CPI and basically rated me at entry-level or above for everything, which pretty much means that he feels I am ready to enter the field and work as a PT on my own. That's a great feeling to know that he felt I was capable of handling that setting on my own. He also said that he would be a reference for my resume, which means I can officially start sending those out this week. I'm excited.

So this week is my last spring break ever. I'm not going anywhere fun, just staying home to tie up all the loose ends that got thrown to the back burner during this past clinical. I need to get organized for graduation and get my butt in gear. As fast as clinicals go by, I know that the next 8 weeks are going to be like a whirlwind.

In other news, despite the fact that I have tried so hard to improve my life in many ways, there is still one thing I need to work on - forgiveness. I have a really difficult time with that. I have forgiven many people in my lifetime, but there are still some people who I have a hard time forgiving. I've ignored a situation for a long time in the hopes that it would just go away, but it won't. I have to tell myself that it is not my place to punish people for what they have done to me. It's my place to forgive them and move on. It isn't easy, but letting go and moving forward is better than spending my life angry at someone who doesn't even deserve my time. So, in addition to my current projects, I am currently working on forgiveness.

I don't recommend taking Precor

One more day...time really flies, even when you are counting down the days. This week has gone by pretty fast, but I won't complain by any means. I am going to thoroughly enjoy my day off today. I finished all of my assignments for this clinical last night and turned them in and today I just have to fill out the CPI (clinical performance instrument) for myself, which is never fun, but can be done in a half hour, and get the rest of my paperwork ready to mail in. It's getting hard to believe that just one clinical stands between me and graduation. I better not take it too easy during this next week that I have off. I really need to get my resume perfected, write up some cover letters, and start sending those out. I've also been pretty lazy for the past 2 weeks about studying for boards, and as much as I don't want to, I had really better start reviewing.

Tomorrow a bunch of us are going out for lunch to CiCi's for Sara's and my last day. It should be a good time. I know we are so busy tomorrow though with patients, I find it pretty hard to believe that we are going to have enough time to even take much of a lunch, but we'll see. I also have to go over the CPI with my CI tomorrow, so wish me luck that I actually pass it and do a decent job.

So basically the next time I post, I will be done with the most challenging clinical I have had so far. I will have survived 11 hour days and not seeing daylight for 8 weeks. In the spirit of that, I will leave you with 2 great experiences that I had yesterday. I think God was playing some kind of practical jokes on me since I am getting close to the end of my clinical.

• I was evaluating a patient who had both back pain and knee pain. She said that she first started noticing her knee pain when she "started with the Precor." I thought this was so odd, and basically thought she was crazy, because what kind of medicine causes knee pain? So I let her get through her description of her pain and what makes it better and worse and she tells me that she has "stopped the Precor." So I say, "so since you stopped taking the Precor, you're knee pain has gotten better?" and she just looks at me like I'm an idiot. My CI was sitting in the doorway observing the eval and says "Precor is the namebrand of an Elliptical." haha oh wow, did I feel dumb....but at least we all got a good laugh out of it after the patient left. That's by far my biggest "blonde moment" of any of my clinicals.
• I was calling a young patient and his dad back from the waiting room for the son's initial evaluation. When I bring people back for an initial eval, I always introduce myself to them and explain that I am a student physical therapist working with a physical therapist. So I say, "Hi, I'm Maren. I'm a student physical therapist...blah blah blah." The son doesn't even really care and just walks right by me, but the dad looks at me with a creeped out look on his face and says, "Maren? That's kind of scary! Like the priest in the Exorcist! Oh my gosh!" So, being as how no one has ever associated me with the exorcist before, I just looked at him, smiled, and said, "Yep!" I wanted to be like, "and I have a sister named Reagan" or some sarcastic comment back. So then the dad was acting like he was scared of me the entire time. It made me want to be like, "now at this point in the evaluation is where I usually perform the exorcism" or something. Some people are crazy....But now I am forever going to associate myself with a horror film. Awesome.

Home Stretch

2 more working days. I am starting to get a bit sad about leaving the people I've been working with, even though I will not be sad at all to leave these long hours and not getting home until 7:30pm. As much as I have enjoyed my Thursdays off, I will gladly go back to working 5 days a week just to be able to enjoy some daylight. And this week, I'll be spending the majority of my Thursday off finishing up my assignments and submitting them for the clinical, so that's no fun.

I'm also not too thrilled with the email I received this evening from our clinical coordinator. She wasn't demanding anything of us, but just states that she is "taken aback" by the fact that we have not all contacted our upcoming clinical sites and spoke with them about the clinical that we are starting in 2 weeks. First of all 1) we are all working full time and this week is especially crazy given the fact that we have all of these ridiculous assignments to turn in during the last week. 2) SOME of us are working 12 hour days and our clinics are closed by the time we get out of work and have a chance to call. 3) That clinical doesn't even start for another 2 weeks, not 2 days. 4) If you wanted us to contact our clinical sites so far in advance, you probably should have sent out an email saying so, because I don't remember ever being told that I was supposed to contact them a MONTH ahead of time. 5) Some of us received information from our clinical sites saying not to contact them until ONE WEEK before the clinical begins, so this is pretty contradictory in my opinion.....So I am a little "taken aback" by the fact that I was scolded via email tonight. But I guess that's just how some people are. I guess if it was my JOB to be the clinical coordinator and I was getting paid to coordinate these clinicals, I would have sent out an email to my students reminding them to contact their clinical sites, but whatever...

My week also isn't going the most spectacular because of the fact that I've got one of the worst back aches of my life and it absolutely HAS GOT to be taken care of by the time I start my next clinical. I stupidly decided to rearrange my living room furniture by myself on Sunday and, although it looks very nice, my back is now paying the price. Luckily, I've been taking my Bayer back and body faithfully and that's making my days tolerable. I think it's safe to say that my living room is going to be arranged this way for quite some time unless someone comes over to help me change it around next time.

On the plus side, the past couple of days at work have gone by super fast. Most of the time, I would not like to be so busy, but being busy has made the days just fly right by. Yesterday our last patient cancelled, so we got to leave early and today we were extra busy at the end of the day, so it went by very fast. I'm sure tomorrow we will be double booked all day long, which isn't always a great thing, but maybe the day will go as fast as today did and then I will finally get to my day off to work on assignments all day. Yipee. I just have to keep telling myself that only 2 days and one more clinical stands in the way of me and graduation.