Oh my god, can you believe it, I’ve officially survived First Year. And, scarily enough, I’m now a Second Year Student Midwife!
Our first week back kinda didn’t feel like a traditional “first week back” purely because we have been on placement for the last two weeks so we weren’t coming straight back in from holiday, but it was still very very exciting to see everyone and to meet some of the new first year students – I haven’t met all of them yet so if you are of the new students in the year below me on at my uni (I don’t state my university name on here for confidentiality reasons) then Hi!
In fact, if you are reading this and you are a first year at any university and have just finished your first week, Hello! Congratulations on your first week – hope you’re enjoying it! Do say hi in the comments below if you fancy!
So, what did I get up to in the first week of second year?
On our timetable, this week is labelled as “Welcome week” so I was anticipating a bit of a gentle one. Fool. What a fool. Yes, we had a bit of admin, but we also had two full days of learning from our new modules! Ha!
The majority of Monday was spent as an entire cohort, which was fun. We really rarely get to spend time together as all three years of Midwifery, so spending the day all in one lecture hall together was lovely! We had a bit of a welcome talk, of course including lots of cake, and then the now third years got up and each did a short presentation on what they did over the summer for their Midwifery Elective placement (I have been booking mine over the past couple of months and can’t wait to share it all with you guys!)
It was really exciting to hear about all their electives, whether in different trusts in the UK, or in hospitals in all sorts of different countries all over the world, it was fascinating to learn about the different ways that people work – and it made us all more excited to do ours!
On Tuesday we had a bit of a recap from the library administrator – the library website has changed slightly over the summer so she wanted to check we can work it all. We then had a talk with one of our lecturers as the online learning platform (where all the slideshows and documents are) has changed over the summer so we have to get to grips with a whole new site – so she was showing us where everything is on that. I think it’ll take some getting used to but we will get there!
In the afternoon we were with the third years, talking about things like lecture ground rules, and more details about placement paperwork etc etc – lots of admin stuff really!
Wednesday was our day off, so I spent the day doing all the life admin things I’d been neglecting in the two weeks of placement. Emailing some people back (I still have about a thousand emails to reply to so if you are one of the people waiting for a reply, I will get back to you asap I promise), finding out my shifts for my next placement, sorting out the second key for my car (which has been an administrative nightmare since I bought the car nearly 9 months ago!) etc etc. Generally keeping track of your life on this course is something that I’ve still not quite got my head around (or maybe it’s just cos I do so many different things….but I wouldn’t change that!) – my filofax and I are completely attached at all times!
Thursday was the introduction to our Public Health module. We were talked through the learning outcomes, the assessments and due dates etc and learnt a bit more about what we are actually going to be learning. It sounds like it’ll be quite interesting actually, though I still have no idea what we have to include in our 3,500 word essay! I’m sure it’ll all become clear soon….I hope!
On Friday we were introduced to our Complexities module. Again, we were talked through all the learning outcomes and assessments – we have an exam on January 5th – ouch! It looks like there is gonna be LOTS to learn but it sounds so so interesting! Can’t wait to get cracking on this module properly – it really feels quite a lot like advanced midwifery. It covers all the more complex situations – mothers with diabetes or neurological conditions, reading a CTG fetal monitor, bleeding in pregnancy etc – it’s exciting to be learning it all!
It is starting to feel like we maybe should know what we are doing now – and I guess we do to some extent….maybe we just don’t realise how much we have learnt….but right now it all seems a little scary. Exciting, yes, but scary!
We only have one more week in uni and then we are back out into practise – no rest for the second years eh!?!
Image by Alisa Anton
To read last week’s Midwife Mondays, click here:
No Comments