Midwife Mondays 14: Take A Break

Well, here we are on Boxing day! This is only going to be a quick one today as, despite all my best intentions, writing this post got left to the last minute with all the rushing around pre-christmas and so I am writing this with about 20 minutes to spare before my cousins arrive for our annual boxing day piss up (hic!)

People underestimate students. People hear that you are a student and think you spend all your time drinking and watching american TV shows. Granted, I do watch a fair bit of Grey’s anatomy, but it is generally whilst writing up notes from the day or sending emails etc. A lot of my friends, when they did their degrees, had less than 10 hours contact time a week, and the majority of the rest of the time, which was meant to spent studying, was spent hungover, eating cold dominos pizza and watching movies.

As a student midwife, there is no such luxury, at all – we average 37.5 hours a week contact time, as opposed to 6 or 7! And, personally, I am incredibly glad of it – I would hate to spend all that time sitting around (though it would mean that my blog posts might be slightly better planned and organised!) Now that I have had a taste of what this course and this job has to offer I want to be doing it all the time – I would not deal well with only having 6 hours of it a week – I’d get proper cabin fever and I would be so bored (and probably really really fat too from all the lying around and inevitable boredom eating!)

I am loving the course so far. I love how full on it is. I love that we have been hands on from the word “go”. I love that we have been given such amazing opportunities already. I love that we haven’t been treated like first years – I was concerned that starting this course as a mature student, it might feel a little like a slow start, or that I might feel a little patronised or feel like I was being held back and “cushioned” at the beginning, but it hasn’t been like that in the slightest – I have felt inspired, challenged and trusted from the moment I started the course, and I couldn’t be more thrilled!

That said, as every single day I am learning something new, and the shifts are long and so full of adrenalin, by the time it came to last week and the end of my final shift before Christmas, I was absolutely SHATTERED. I mean, literally, I don’t think I have ever felt so tired in my life. It would get to 7pm and feel like midnight, my brain was barely functioning enough to get me out of bed and dressed in the morning, and I hadn’t even started THINKING about christmas shopping – frankly, I needed a holiday – big time!

I have always said I think it is important to acknowledge when it all gets a bit much, and so when I got back to my parents house on the 20th, I put my laptop and textbooks away, and decided to give myself a whole week off from uni work. No thinking. At all. And it has been absolute bliss. I mean, obviously, I’ve talked about what I’ve been doing – I had a lovely catch up with my oldest friend the other day and we had a proper chat about all the things I’ve been up to etc, but there has been no academic work at all – and it has been bliss.

Christmas is an exhausting time for all of us – long days, lots of chatting and (at least in our house) a huge amount of energy gets exerted in hundreds of over-enthusiastic games of charades – needless to say I will be using the few days between Christmas and New Year to chill out a bit more, finish the essay I’m working on (but that I’ve just had a week away from) and generally rest myself up for the new year. 🙂

I’m not really sure what the point of this post is – it has turned into a bit of a boxing day ramble….but maybe thats ok, after all, it is boxing day – it is hardly the day for serious academic thought! I guess the main point I wanted to make from this post is that it is ok to take a break. Give yourself the rest that you need. Acknowledge that you are only human, and sometimes you need to take a step back – and you will feel so much better for it!

I hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas, and that you have a brilliant week ahead – I’m off to nibble on canapés and drink prosecco like there is no tomorrow!
Happy New Year when it comes! 🙂

Image by feliperizo.co | heart made

To read last week’s “Midwife Mondays” post, click here