As August is rapidly approaching, there is one thought that crops up in my mind every single day. One thing that has me wishing for those days when you wake up to grey skies and chilly breezes. One thing that has me wanting to go out and buy pens, pencils and every beautiful notepad that paperchase has to offer.
As the weeks pass by, I am getting closer to the start of my Midwifery course – and frankly, I couldn’t be more excited if I tried.
The closer I get to the start of the course and the more I hear about it, the more I know that this is the absolute best thing for me to be doing, and it makes me more excited every single day that passes as I get closer and closer to the day when I pack everything into the back of my little blue citroen and whizz my way up the motorway to Cambridge to start the next part of my life!
This week in particular has really boosted the excitement and the need for the summer to just pass by already because this week I had my pre-course day.
This is such a brilliant idea and I can’t quite understand why more courses don’t do it – maybe it only works because it is such a small cohort….or because a lot of the students are mature and so aren’t waiting for A Level results to confirm their place etc….I don’t know. All I know is that heading up to Cambridge this week to spend a day with the ladies who I am going to be studying with for the next 3 years had me absolutely high as kite. I got to find out more about the course, find out the dates of our holidays (which, on a medical course, are very minimal – not the usual 3 months of summer that most uni students get, we get 3 weeks!) and the dates of our placement. We got to hear stories from current students about their first deliveries and some hints and tips, we got to buy some reduced price textbooks (which I’m now going to spend the next 8 weeks reading – cue instagram image of me lying on the beach in Italy in a few weeks time with a midwifery textbook!) and we also got to do all the administrative stuff you normally have to do on your first day – checking of identity documents and education certificates etc – it’s always so time consuming and stressful to do in the busy first week, it just makes so much sense to do it months in advance!
Meeting the women who I am going to be working with was also a hugely exciting part of this day – though some of us have already met on Facebook (and had chats about complete drivel, shared pictures of ducklings and hedgehogs and generally had a bit of a giggle) there were a lot that I hadn’t met. These women all have their own stories, and their own reasons for doing this course. I think midwifery is one of those courses that you choose to go into, not just because you are interested in the subject, but because your life has led you to that particular calling.
I know for me, I always struggled with some of the more impersonal aspects of working in theatre – the cattle call auditions and being known as numbers in dance calls etc – and being a person who invests in people, as soon as I decided to move on, moving into a field based around your communication and care of others as individuals was such a simple decision (even if it look me a while to see!)
In our first week we are all going to be asked to tell our story – our journey that has led us to that first day, and I just know that it is going to be one of those days when really amazing stories come out and we all learn huge amounts of respect for each other simply by knowing what each other has been through to get to this point. (apart from anything else, Midwifery is one of the most in demand courses to get into, with an average of only 5% of applicants actually getting a place on the course!)
I was sitting down last night getting so over excited about starting this course and literally counting down the days until I step through those doors as a student midwife (and to putting on that oh-so-attractive uniform!), that I ended up making a colouring-in countdown calendar, a bit like an advent calendar, but with squares to colour each day, just to keep me a little more sane…..though as the weeks pass and the start date gets closer, I just know I’m going to be more more and more impatient as I wait for this incredible journey to begin.
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I am going to be documenting my journey to becoming a midwife on this blog, however I want to emphasise that everything I post will follow the Nursing & Midwifery Council social media and publication guidelines on confidentiality and professionalism (see the full guideline document at https://www.nmc.org.uk/globalassets/sitedocuments/nmc-publications/social-media-guidance.pdf) and I will never give out names or details of any individuals or publish anything that may bring any establishment into disrepute.
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