Mid-Training Update

Staff training is pretty intense, but more useful and relevant (at least it seems to be so) than I feared it might be. I feel like I'll use a lot of the information we're learning about. All in all, the whole thing seems more serious and more work than I ever realized as a resident - and that's probably part of the job, acting like it's all easy. :)

Since training is from 7:30 - 10:00 every day, and they really encourage us to get 7-8 hours of sleep, that leaves me with about 90 minutes each day for personal hygiene, keeping my room tidy, continuing to get my stuff organized, cooking (I am starving by the time training ends, and cooking is my relaxing comfort activity :D), and, oh yeah, anything we're supposed to do like making schedules to send our Student Coordinators, or doing work on our bulletin boards. Ahhh!! Okay, so we don't usually have too much in that last category, and I am surviving, probably because I am getting about 7 and a half hours of sleep each night, cooking pretty simple things, and putting showering and things with looming deadlines first. It's all a test about how we manage our time, I know it! :D

My room depresses me, though, because I have a goal to be organized this year, and I think it would be a big help if I thought of my room as an organized and tidy place from the get go. But I really have no time to finish unpacking - I can't rationalize making it a priority. As a consequence, I'm getting more and more used to the sight of my room in shambles.

I'm also an idiot and forgot several important things either at the lake or my storage bay. The lake things are mostly small (shampoo? duh...), and I'm just buying most of them, since I won't be back there for a while, but the storage bay is almost accessible (except that it's only open during the day and I can't go alone...), and the things I have in it are a bit bigger (towels, for example), so I'm having a hard time with the idea of buying them.

I also have to buy a landline phone, and want to buy a printer (doesn't matter how basic), and a rolling file cart thing like Laura Thal has. It's awesome. Also a dish drying rack, since I have a bathroom now, and some ordinary office supplies like notebooks and new pens. The ones I have with me went to Japan and are almost out of ink.

Tonight I made cheddar broccoli macaroni (from a mix) in my rice cooker, and also wanted to cook some chicken breasts. Since I brought my big skillet, but not my spatula or even my wooden spoon, I improvised tonight and cooked with chopsticks for the first time. It worked quite well for stirring and not even terribly for flipping. The hardest part was definitely cutting them into smaller pieces to see whether they were done, but even this wasn't too bad. I think the tender and thin cut of chicken that I used helped, but I just sort of stuck the ends of the chopsticks in there and moved them apart, ripping the chicken more than cutting it. On further reflection it would probably be better to cut meat (or whatever) into small pieces BEFORE cooking them, if using chopsticks. Oh well. It was yummy.

The other people in the South Staff are awesome. A few of them are hilarious, and I think that we will all work well together.

So, things are going okay. Even though I'm sure the next year will bring times that are even more stressful, I am eager for the residents to arrive and the year to begin. I think it will be more energizing to be doing the real thing, interacting with real people, instead of just talking about theory and bracing ourselves.