Thursday, June 14, 2012

One of those weeks

Not a good one.

Yesterday I had one of those days where I felt like nothing I said came out the right way. As in open mouth, insert foot. Bible study is not a good place for this to happen. I apologised to someone I realised I may have said the wrong thing to, but there may be others whom I may have inadvertently offended. Sorry.

Today, I discovered a student who was in my tutorial sessions last semester has complained about the way her assignment was marked and has demanded a re-mark. Well, actually, she signed an affidavit so her mother could complain on her behalf. I think that says it all, really. But it still hurts. I wonder if I could have handled her situation differently (probably not), or whether it would have made no difference either way.

The subject I am tutoring this semester (which starts next week) appears challenging. To give you some context, my area of specialty at work is paediatrics, in particular young children with delayed development. This subject involves practical lab sessions where I will be teaching the students how to assist adults with strokes or other physical impairments to transfer and move around in bed, how to prescribe wheelchairs and pressure cushions, and how to use equipment to assist with dressing and eating. Part of the assessment is viva based, so I assess their ability to do some of these things in a practical scenario-based session. Think "blind leading the blind" and you have a pretty good summation of how I'm feeling about that right now.

Chris has offered to set up some equipment at his workplace so I can practise beforehand, and hopefully not look too stupid when the sessions come around. I am filling the shoes of someone who had vast experience with all this stuff. I am not in the same league.

The kids' school was seeking people to take billets from a high school band that is visiting the primary schools in our area next week. They are only billeted in pairs and we only have one sofa bed so I didn't say yes to start with. But when nobody offered to help and they got really desperate, I thought I should stick my hand up to take somebody. So now we have two male trumpet players staying at our house for two nights next week. They're aged 18 and 16. Good in that I'm thinking they've toured before and should be relatively responsible. But they probably eat a lot. And we'll all have to be on our best behaviour for those two days, which means the days after that might not be pretty.

Sorry. That's all pretty grumbly. But that's life here this week. I'd better get praying for patience, calm, and the ability to quickly get up to speed on how to position an adult stroke patient in a bed and chair.



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