Orientation Day: Maybe I am sick

Both my ears now seem to be all cleared up. The left one was bothering me today, so I used the magic ear drops and it's fine now. Thanks to 'RT Student In Chicago' for telling me about the magic ear drops. I've been so focused on my ears being clogged up, that I seem not to have noticed how sick I am.

I went to the College’s Orientation Day this morning and had to sit outside for the first half hour because I was all light headed and sweaty. It was 13C (55.4F) and I was outside, in a tshirt, sweating like a madman for at least 25 minutes! For a while there, I thought that I might end up being “that guy” who passed out during the welcome to college speech. The welcome to college speech was all that I missed this morning.

When I went back inside, everyone was directed on how to get to the program information session for their respective programs. The RT Program information session was good. There was a lot of useful information and very little blah blah blah. We were also fitted for and ordered our scrubs. It looks like I’ll be wearing XL sized scrubs. I was surprised by how well they fit and how comfy they were.

I was given a Student Information Manual that has a lot of useful information in it. I was pleased to see that it went into a lot of detail about the clinical rotation sites. We will be doing our clinicals at one of 9 hospitals. Our preference for sites will be taken into account, but a lottery system will come into play if certain sites are preferred by too many students.

These are some other things that I learned during the orientation for my program:

• We will be job shadowing RTs during the first three semesters. This will be done at sites close to the college.
• In the fourth semester we will be doing “High Fidelity Clinical Simulations”. Apparently the simulations are fairly intense and stress people out. There was talk of people crying.
• We're not allowed to take any pictures or video without permission :-(
• In addition to our regular exams, we will also be writing composite exams at the end of first, second and third years. Each exam will be cumulative and can be used to test us on any of the material from previous semesters. If you fail a composite, you can’t continue on with the program.
• During our clinical rotations, in third year, we will have to come back to the college a couple times for 3 days of additional training.
• I won’t need a stethoscope until second semester. Damn it. All I want is a reason to buy a stethoscope. Is that too much to ask for?

After the orientation I was supposed to go to a barbecue. I didn’t go because I didn’t want to be “that guy” who passed out at the barbecue.

I didn’t get my student card this afternoon because I didn’t want to be “that guy” who passed out while in line to get his student card.

I didn’t go on a tour of the college because I didn’t want to be “that guy” who passed out during the college tour.