Marking blues are here again...

It's been a while since I've blogged regularly. My sporadic posts have been ordinary and I felt like I was forcing myself to write them. I've felt like I've had stuff to say but I've been too exhausted to put it into words that make any sense. I make no guarantees that this will make any sense either but Ben has just announced a blogging comeback, and I was feeling inspired reading about it. So here I am.

Life has felt very full on for the past few months. Work has been demanding...both the teaching at Uni and at the same time learning all the skills I need to rehabilitate people who've had strokes, fractures and amputations. An interesting world. I'm going to blog about some of the memorable moments and the ups and downs of working with old people when I get going again.

In the meantime, I'm in assignment marking mode. I have two assignments left to mark out of twenty. You would think that would be incentive to knock the last ones over and get it done, but instead I find myself looking for ways to get out of it (you know... I haven't blogged for over a month, but now that I have to mark stuff, blogging becomes a far more important priority...). This assignment involves prescribing a client a wheelchair and an electric mobility scooter. Since I started marking them, I find myself analysing every wheelchair and scooter I see when I am out and about. We live in an area heavily populated with retirees so there are plenty of them out there.

Tomorrow's Uni teaching session is on dressing techniques for people with disabilities. There's a big focus on doing things one handed. I have reviewed fastening a tie and putting on a jumper and a button up shirt one handed, and I have finally mastered the art of one handed shoe lace tying. I didn't quite get there last year, which led to a few embarrassing moments in the tutorial, so I was determined to fix that up this year. It's actually pretty easy, and kind of cool. So cool, in fact, that I'm going to teach my kids how to do it. If I can find some pictures online, I might even blog it so that you'll all know what to do when you have a stroke or your hand gets amputated.

Enough procrastinating. If I can get through one more paper before bed, I'll be feeling great about having just one more to do tomorrow.

Here's what happens when you leave a tutor with poor motor planning skills in charge of a tutorial on wheelchair mobility...

A multitude of blunders, of course.

Today I managed to tip a student out of a wheelchair going forwards down a kerb. Not quite the demonstration I was hoping for. Luckily she had a quick reaction speed and managed to jump free before she hit the ground.

That was after I'd fallen at the last hurdle of disassembling and reassembling a manual wheelchair. All was going well until I got to putting the footplates back on at the end. There's nothing worse than having twenty pairs of eyes watching you struggle with what should be the easiest part of the whole job.

And all of that happened after I arrived somewhat underprepared, not having watched the mile long list of videos on using various items of equipment that are part of the required pre-reading and viewing for the session. Every other week I've watched them. I didn't get to it this week. So obviously it would follow that a student would ask me about a piece of equipment from one of the videos, that I had sitting at the front of the room and couldn't work out what it was or what to do with it. I'd hoped that I might be able to ask my teaching partner later about it so I could show the students in a future session.

So the student asked if we were going to have a demonstration of the equipment (something that I now know is designed to assist with lifting a wheelchair into the boot of a car). And then I had to own up and say I didn't know what it was. I ended up having to get her to demonstrate to the rest of the group. Embarrassing.

One of those teaching days that I would like to erase from memory forever. Or the next best thing, I hope I'll learn from all the mistakes and do a better job next time around.

I'll be praying for a better day tomorrow, when I have to do a formal memory assessment with a guy who's had a stroke and now has some memory loss. I've never done the test before. I looked at it last week and thought it wouldn't be too difficult. Hope that turns out to be true.

I feel like I'm on a really steep learning curve at the moment. It's not an easy place to be.

Easy and yummy winter dinner

Lamb shank, fennel and pearl barley scotch broth. Recipe here.

Apart from all the labour intensive chopping of vegies to go into it, it was a pretty easy dinner. I made it in the slow cooker and I didn't bother browning anything, I just threw it all in and cooked it on low for about six hours. By then, all the lamb had fallen off the bones so all that I needed to do was take the bones out and serve it up with some bread. The fennel had mellowed out so there was just a hint of its flavour rather than having an overpowering aniseed taste.

You can add other vegetables to it if you like. I had a few over-ripe tomatoes on the kitchen bench that I used up. We got an extra bag of potatoes in our online shopping order this week so I chopped up a few of those and put them in as well. An extra carrot or two. A bit more pearl barley than what the recipe said. It easily served our family of six with enough for seconds and probably a bit more for me to take for lunch at work later in the week.

Yum. Just the right dinner to sustain me for the evening ahead as I'm revisiting how to prescribe a wheelchair ahead of the student tutorial tomorrow morning (not a topic I'm overly familiar with...)

Blog silence

Sorry, folks. The blogging well is a bit dry at the moment here. I'm on a steep learning curve at work sorting out all the oldies going home from hospital, and I'm also busy revising bed mobility and hoist transfers for this round of teaching the first year students.

I have also been distracted by the discovery of a rather addictive game called Bejeweled. One of my patients at work (95 years old, with a stroke that has knocked off a reasonable amount of her language and cognition) used to play it in her pre-stroke days. When her daughter showed me the game on their laptop, I thought I should download it myself. To investigate its therapeutic potential, of course. Now I can't seem to stop playing it.... And when I tried to use it with her at work, I realised how much damage the stroke had done. Her processing speed was too slow for it to really be useful or even enjoyable for her anymore.

So now I am going to have to cure myself of this annoying addiction. Thank goodness the kids have the iPad at school during the day so I can get a few other things done....

Attention students.. (warning...grumble ahead)

No, you cannot all have High Distinctions for the assignment. The bell curve doesn't work that way. And believe it or not, some of you didn't even answer the questions you were asked. That is why you failed.

And to those of you who are haggling for what amounts to maybe an extra half a mark if you are very lucky, why carry on about it when you aren't in any danger of failing the unit? It is a waste of my time to review your assignment over little quibbles that don't matter. Move along, people, just let it go. Put your energy into studying for the exam so you can blitz that instead, it's worth half the marks for the unit so you're better off doing well in that.

Sorry to everyone reading this, none of whom are likely to be students from my tutorial group. But I just needed to vent for a moment. I have put in many hours of time marking over the last couple of weeks, we had to put off a birthday party for one of our children so I could get the majority of the marking done, and now, having gotten all of the marks into the grade centre, I have come down with a bad cold and I can't go to work at my other job tomorrow. At the moment, the contract I am on doesn't include sick leave so if I don't work, there is no pay. And even though I am not at work, I am probably going to spend at least part of my day (that is supposed to be spent in resting and recovering) in addressing people's silly assignment questions.

My husband was having a conversation with a student supervisor from a different University at work today, but it went along very similar lines to the above. Students these days want to question everything, even when the feedback they are given is blatantly clear. I don't remember ever questioning any low marks I got when I went to University, you just took it, dealt with the disappointment, acknowledged that you hadn't put in as much effort as you needed to and used the feedback to improve the next paper.

Sigh. Times have changed. I blame the University for encouraging it though. When you change your tag line to "Where it's all about U", then I guess the students really do start thinking it's all about them....and then respect for the teaching staff disappears. It's a slippery old slope.

I just signed up for a workshop on using iPads in the classroom....

....for learning support and special education (information here). I'm really excited about it. It will be great to have up to date information on good apps when I take the next round of OT students back into the school. It's looking like I will be returning to the same school as last time, which is good too. Now that I've done the hard yards getting to know the teachers, it will (hopefully) be much easier to get into the classrooms and work with them. I'd really love for us to be able to do lots more performance analysis in situ this time, looking at the kids doing a task in class and doing some joint problem solving to address difficulties in a more "on the spot" way, rather than withdrawing the kids to work at the side of the room, or in the library like we did last time. It would be great to think we could leave the teachers with some skills so that they feel like they can take some steps to address kids' difficulties themselves, rather than relying on the therapists for a quick fix (and it's very rarely a quick fix, by the way....sadly, we don't possess any magic bullets here).

So now we just need to buy the iPad and I'll be all set to go.

Nineteen assignments marked

Image from here.

And I am finally finished. The last one I did was one of the best papers I have ever read on the topic of roles, activities and occupations. Such a lovely way to finish marking after having to push through some complete rubbish during the past fortnight.

Just a tiny bit of final checking and some whole group feedback to complete tomorrow, and then I am going to read a book, edit some photos I took at a very enjoyable first birthday party this afternoon, and hopefully sort out the three year old's poo refusal dramas.

No rest for the wicked here.

Something I've been thinking about today

Yesterday, a couple of students in my tutorial group disclosed to me that they have Asperger's Syndrome. It got me thinking about whether someone with Asperger's could make a good health professional. The ability to take the other person's perspective, and empathise with another's situation, is often not great among this population. I've noticed that one of these students can become quite argumentative when I've challenged or questioned them about a point they've made. I thought at the time that teamwork might be a bit of an issue for this person in the future.

I suppose the answer to my question is that it depends. On the person, where they end up working (some OT jobs are quite structured, a person with AS could probably cope in that kind of setting), on how flexible they can be and whether they can learn to cope with change.

I'm still not sure though. I think they could get through the OT course. They might even make it through a job interview. But I think they might struggle in an actual workplace. One of the things I love about OT is that every day is different. There might be some people with AS who would find that very difficult to deal with.

So...we're really all the same, aren't we?

Here's a direct quote from the essay I've just been marking:

"Most of us in Queensland do similar daily activities due to our culture, background, economic position, personal interests, values, the climate and lifestyle."

Well, I'm glad I no longer live on the Queensland side of the border then.

Considering this essay is supposed to be about individual differences in interpretations of people's occupational roles and activities, I actually found it rather funny.

This person hadn't referenced the above statement, so my comment on it was that they needed to provide a source to back it up. But I also said that I didn't believe it was true.

Ah, first year Uni students of the "just out of high school" variety. So little life experience, so much of the world they have yet to discover...

It's assignment marking season again

The less said about that, the better. It's going to be an awful week or two while I try to sort out people's weird logic on what occupations, roles and activities are. Not to mention their unusual referencing skills.

On the bright side, my new job started well. Because I've never done rehab before, no one really expects me to know anything. So I can watch other therapists and learn from them, something that I haven't done for ages. My first client was a 96 year old, a bit of a change from all the little people I'm used to seeing!

It also seems to be a pretty relaxed environment, although at present the ward isn't particularly busy. I guess if it filled up, it might seem more stressful. But I'm noticing that in rehab, they're happy for everything to take a long time. Most of my experience working with adults has been in acute hospital wards, where the pressure is on to get everyone home as quickly as possible.

The other good news is that the two occupational therapists I'm working with there are both Christians. One of them is moving on to a different caseload in a few weeks' time, but for the next week or two it will be good to be able to talk to them about church stuff without feeling too awkward.

Rehab...here I come!

Well, sort of.

Tomorrow, I'm starting a new short term contract at work for a few weeks until the next student supervision round starts up in another school in June.

So it's off to work in adult rehabilitation I go. After fifteen years working almost exclusively in paediatrics, I'm a little bit nervous. Even when I did work with adults many moons ago, I didn't ever have a physical rehabilitation caseload. So it's all going to be brand new.

I keep telling myself the process isn't much different. Assess, set goals with client, treat, work on getting them back into their own environment and performing everyday activities safely. I can do that. How hard could it be? Hopefully I'll be able to work shadow someone for a couple of days so I can get the hang of it.

And it's in Murwillumbah. It's a very pleasant commute to get there and back home again. Some nice little cafes to have lunch in once I feel like I know what's happening. And it's looking like my next school job may be there as well, so it will be good to get a bit of a vibe for the place. So far my experience of Murbah consists of shopping in the main street (some quirky little shops to explore down there!) and taking the kids to the pool a few times. Watching the kids perform with their school class in the local eisteddfod. We've had one visit to the library. I've enjoyed it so far. I hope that working there won't change that.

Here's a boring way to spend an evening

I'm looking for a YouTube video of a preschool or early school aged child putting on their shoes and socks. You'd think it would be pretty easy to find one. Sadly, that's not proving to be true.

Sorry for the silence

There's been a bit going on. That's an understatement really. I'm currently enjoying a couple of quieter weeks on the work front so that is good. I even managed to take myself off for a lovely pot of tea in a cafe this morning. All by myself. Sitting in the front window seat gazing out at the beautiful river flowing past. No one else in the cafe except the two women who run it. Bliss.

I did get a call from my Uni teaching colleague while I was there. But somehow, even talking about work seems like fun when you are in such a peaceful environment.

I should have resisted the call of the cake cabinet though. I haven't been eating much sweet stuff lately, so the coconut lemon meringue slice (I did have it without cream and ice cream) tasted a bit too sugary for my liking.  Had a tiny lunch to make up for it.

Teaching has been going okay this year. My tutorial group is much smaller and most of them seem reasonably switched on. Although teaching them from four until six p.m. can be a bit of a challenge when they've all been there since the eight a.m. lecture in the morning.

I'm thankful to God for providing me with some more work for the next couple of months. I didn't get the permanent position I applied for but there is a short term job I can do at the local hospital until the next student education contract comes up. This also solves a transport problem. We are still without a second car but for the next little while I can go to work with my husband and we actually don't need the second car as desperately as we did a few weeks ago. Of course, Murphy's law (or God's sovereign plan) says that this is probably when we will find another one. Chris is off to check one out tomorrow afternoon. I hope it's good. It's a blue one, my favourite colour, so I'd be happy to take it on that basis alone. But I suppose the mechanical condition is also important.

And somehow in the middle of all the craziness, being sick, being buried under a rather large workload and dealing with all the usual family dramas, I've managed to continue my morning walks. Not every day, but at least three times a week. I'm even doing a bit of jogging for part of the way sometimes. And I have lost five kilos in the process. And about five centimetres off my waist measurement. My original aim was to lose five kilos but I'm feeling so good, I'm going to try and lose a few more.

The C.B.R.P. went off track for a little while. Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy were hard going. I just started Joshua last week. But I'm still trying to read along as much as I can before I forget what I've read before.

So that's me for the past few months. Just popping up for some air before it all starts again next week. Hopefully the blog will get a bit more attention now that I'm back into the groove of going to work.

Busy busy busy

I'm glad this student supervision contract is only a short term deal. Two more weeks to go after tomorrow. After that I'm not sure what I'll be doing. I've applied for something else and have an interview for that next week. It's not really my preferred area of work though so I have my doubts on whether I'll get it. And they want someone to work three days. I can only do two because of child care. That's the reason I'm giving them. The real reason I can only do two is because I don't want to do any more than that. More than two days a week of me working tips up the very delicate balance of keeping my family (and me) sane and functioning. So I think I'll have to either blitz the interview and blind them with my outstanding awesome-ness as a therapist, or I'll get laughed at and told to go away.

Time to bring out the negotiation skills for a bit of dusting off, I think.

Just need to mention too that I am in love with my new oven. It takes about three minutes to preheat. After waiting for around fifteen minutes for the previous one to heat (often unreliably) three minutes is sheer luxury. Now I just need to find the time to do some cooking in it!

Boring times

I'm writing a job application. It's not much fun. I'm trying to see if I can just cut and paste from a previous application I did a few months ago but unfortunately the selection criteria aren't really lining up nicely so I can do that. I'm not sure whether I want the job or not which is not helping with motivation.

My tutoring job starts up again on Tuesday afternoon. I'm teaching the same subject as I did this time last year. Referencing is the first topic they cover. The best bit of the whole tutorial is the getting to know you activity at the start where we find out what superpower everybody wants to have and how they ended up in occupational therapy. I'd love to hear a few more creative reasons than "I really want to help people." Not that that's a bad reason to be in the course, but after I've heard it eighteen times I'm craving new ideas. There are a few repeaters from last year, including a few of the spectacular failures from my last group. Fortunately most of them have joined the other tutor's class so I don't have to go through the ordeal of teaching them again.

And the OT students at the school are coming up for their halfway assessments this week. On Friday, one of them was off sick, just as I discovered this person hadn't documented progress notes on any of the work that they had done. This person had been sitting with all the others while they all appeared to be busily writing notes, so I'm trying to work out what he was doing for all of that time. It will be time for some hard words this week if the notes aren't up to date by the time I get back in on Thursday. The word "failing" may have to be mentioned.

I do miss the days of deciding what biscuits I will make, or what book I should read, or which DVD series I should watch, or which room I should think about cleaning (and then not get around to doing it). No more maternity leave ever again. It's very sad.

Here's a good up to date handwriting assessment

Whenever I have an OT student, I feel this need to make sure I'm actually using the most up to date resources and assessments. It's part of making sure that I'm at least one step ahead of them at all times. That's part of the reason I enjoy having students, although the constant thinking does wear me out ...and may lead to periods of extreme crankiness at home....

Last night's internet searching yielded the McMaster Handwriting Assessment Protocol. It looks pretty good. I'm not sure why I haven't heard more about it around the OT world. I suppose I have been on leave for a while. And I haven't done any professional development on handwriting for some time.

It's pretty detailed. It covers composition, near and far point copying, dictation and writing from memory, as well as giving a writing speed in letters per minute. There are a few Canadian and US-centric words like "candy" and "jar" in it that I might need to change. I don't know if we'll be able to use all of it with each of the kids we need to screen. But I think I might look at using parts of it. It looks like a good way for the students to consider that handwriting is a bit more involved than just copying the "quick brown fox" sentence out once (which I think has historically been standard practice for many OTs, including me....).

Survived the big first day

My four OT students arrived today, so work has ramped up to a new level as I've been busy sorting out their caseloads and putting them into classrooms. I'm about to crash on the couch to recover while my wonderful husband cooks pea and haloumi fritters for dinner. He took the day off today since I won't usually be working on Mondays.

The school was buzzing all day. The new Kindies all arrived for their big first day at school. Lots of photo moments out in front of the school sign. One of the mothers hung around outside her kid's classroom for the entire day because she was worried he might get upset without her. Her husband brought her lunch and a drink at lunchtime. It'll be interesting to see if she's still hanging around for that long by Thursday when I go to work again.

And now for two days off. Although there is plenty of thinking still to be done before Thursday....

I'm going back to work

I've been in a slight state of denial about this. I think perhaps I may have drastically under-estimated the amount of preparation that might be required.

If I was the sort of person who was really good at winging it, I think I'd feel a bit more comfortable. Over the last few years,  I've certainly improved in my ability to jump in and do something without having it planned to the tiniest detail. I think that happens when you have children. Nothing much is predictable with kids so you just learn to go with the flow a bit more.

But there are a lot of unknowns about this job. It's all a bit experimental. I'll be going into a school for a short period of time (six weeks) to provide an occupational therapy service to kids in Year 1 and 2 with mild to moderate learning and motor skill difficulties. So far, so good. I've long thought that the services I provide in an office block a long way away from the school environment where the kids spend the majority of their week are not particularly relevant. The hard part is that I'll be doing this as a clinical educator. This means I'll be taking a group of four Occupational Therapy students with me into the school and the service will be provided by them, under my guidance. This is where it can get a bit tricky. I've worked in a University student clinic previously. A lot depends on the competence of the students. If they're not much good or not very organised, things can go bad very quickly.

And the school I'm going into is a school where I don't know anyone. Again, not necessarily a bad thing. It's good to know that I'm not going to be running into the kids (and their parents, that's usually the harder part) we'll be working with when I head out to the shops. But that means I'm going to have to build some relationships with the staff pretty quickly. I get to start when school goes back next week. The occupational therapy students don't start until the following week. That gives me two days to meet the relevant teachers, get started on building a relationship with them, and talk to them about how they would like us to work within their classrooms before the OT students turn up on the following Monday. This would all feel much easier if the school kids weren't all starting the new school year, and the teachers weren't having to get to know them at the same time as they are getting to know us. We are due to do another one of these short term contracts later in the year (a ten week block with fourth year students for that one) and I really think the timing of that one will be a lot better since the school year will be in full swing, the teachers will know the kids quite well and things will generally be far more settled and organised.

So there are a multitude of relationships to be negotiated here. There are two other therapists job sharing this position with me (one I know already, the other I've only met once), I need to get to know the staff at Community Health who are providing funds for the placement, and the project co-ordinator who is based in yet another organisation. So far, she seems to be a bit absent-minded when it comes to remembering to organise stuff for us. Not ideal.

It all looks a bit overwhelming at this point in time for little old introverted me, which might be why I've had my head in the sand for a few weeks about it happening.

I need to concentrate on the positives. The money I earn will be helpful for paying for the multitude of extracurricular activities that my kids are doing. The school seem encouraging of us coming in to do this. The Learning Support Teacher is very friendly and supportive. Hopefully that reflects what the other school staff are like as well. I will be able to be flexible and accommodating of what they want. Anything is better than nothing since these kids wouldn't be accessing a service anywhere else, so whatever we provide will be useful. I'd also like to be optimistic and think that the OT students won't behave like selfish Gen Y's, but that one's still a bit up in the air.

And I need to pray that it will all come together and that I will feel a sense of peace rather than a sense of frustration when things take longer than I'd like them to. This is a situation when I can't be in control of everything. But if I can remember that God has things in His control then perhaps I won't feel as anxious about it all.

The University at which I work has just rebranded itself

And in the process, it has acquired a new tagline:

At "S.C." University .....  "It's all about U."

I don't like it much. It all looks a bit self-centred to me.

Sadly, from my previous personal experience of some of the students there, it appears that they are already well acquainted with the philosophy of University being all about them. Forget everyone else, it's all about ME!

As if they (or we!) needed reminding....

A great promotional video for Occupational Therapy

For anyone who has ever wondered what it is that occupational therapists actually do. Because we're not always great at explaining it.

Just putting it in here in case I need it later.