We've just finished our first week as student nurses. I say first full week, I mean welcome week, the kind of week that you don't know whether you're coming or going but you get a load of free stuff and a metric ton of information to process whilst trying to figure out your way around a city that you go to on a regular basis but somehow have forgotten how to get from a to b.
I'm very, very lucky in the fact that my and my son, Mylo are able to live with my mum about 30 minutes away from Bangor, so I drive there and back every day.
This week I have been picking my friend Nicky up on the way, I used to work in one of the aforementioned nursing homes with her husband. I have enjoyed the company and it means I haven't felt the need to blast my Mamma Mia CD and inflict the sheer agony of me singing Abba songs on anybody. Silver linings.
The week started with a welcome talk, I arrived just in the nick of time after getting stuck in traffic (of which my Mum ensured me there wasn't any) and found my friends from my Access course last year. It was the usual rigmarole, what they expect of us, what we expect of them, that kind of deal. The week has kind of blurred in to one to be honest.
If anyone has ever studied at Bangor University, they will know that there are different campus buildings dotted all over the city, with about 17,000 (feels like) unnecessary (also feels like) hills between them. I found it slightly unnerving that I could navigate my way around Bangor better when I am drunk than when I am sober. I began to idly wonder how long it would take us all to become fit as fiddles and be able to jog up Bitch Hill without a backward glance...right now it seems to carry on in to an eternity.
There has been a lot of bilingual provision for us this week. I am Welsh, I understand a lot of the welsh language and I can hold a relatively basic conversation, but I am completely shafted when it comes to writing it; I always throw in an extra 'w' or 'y' for extra measure.
But yes, we are obviously in Wales and for this specific field, studies have shown that knowing as little as 6 words in Welsh can bridge the language barrier between nurse and patient.
On Thursday we went on a Welsh trip to Nant Gwtheryn on the Llyn Peninsula. For days I heard horror stories floating around campus about a really steep drop along a cliff that you have to drive down to get to the old little village. We left the campus on two buses that were quite possibly older than me. As we got closer, students that had been to Nant Gwtheryn before began to become fidgety and panicked about the steep drop edging closer to us. By the time we were just about to approach it, we were all in a blind panic and convinced we were all going to tumble off the edge in to the Peninsula never to be seen again. I have to say, I am a rather dramatic person myself but those students weren't lying. I thought I was going to vomit going down the drop which also contained a hairpin bend. Shudder.
We were put in to groups according to our bilingual ability and assigned tasks. I really enjoyed the group work and role play aspect of it, it was a bit of a refresher for me really, being able to name body parts etc in Welsh which I hadn't really done properly since school, and also brushing up on my basic conversation skills in Welsh.
I guess the aim of the first week has been to break the ice between the cohort, with just Adult Nurses alone there are 51 of us, there are obviously more with Mental Health, Learning Dis, Child, Midwifery and Radiography. I have met some really lovely people this week, and only encountered a few rude people which I reckon is an absolute result.
We're all chomping at the bit, ready to get down to it and begin studying and placement and learning and finding out about assessments etc, which we will find out more about real soon...I JUST WANNA SAVE LIVES ALREADY GODDAMN IT!
Watch this space...
Emmy x
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