A Work in Progress

I have been working for the past few months on a genuine ambulance, as opposed to being the ALS chase car.  I had not realized how much nonsense I'd been shielded from over the last eight years.  So many silly calls that I was canceled on before I even got there.  But now all of those calls are mine.  The good and the bad and everything in between.  So, I must thank all of those BLS crews for keeping my standards high, prolonging my faith in humanity, and staving off my own insanity. The general public would really not believe what people call 911 for.  Growing up, my career goals were fed by Rescue 911 and ER. Fed by the genuine, 'I'm stuck in a laundry chute', or 'I am inches from death' type emergencies. I still remember learning how to call 911 in kindergarten (or somewhere around there) and from then until I became an EMT, I believed that, like me, people only called 911 in an actual (universally agreed upon) emergency.  When I started really r...

At part time work, I hang out in the ER, see patients as they come in, and help with triage as time allows.  The last time I was there there was a worrying trend. "Hello, how can we help you?" "Yeah, I was at my doctors' yesterday and I was diagnosed with the flu and I just don't feel better so I came in to get seen." "Whoa.  Let me stop you right there.  If you wouldn't mind, could you put on one of those yellow masks there?  Yep.  Just like that.  Thanks." I know the flu sucks.  You are not going to feel well.  You will not be healed overnight. It can take a healthy person a good week to fight off the flu.  The people I saw coming into the ER with the flu were not old or young or immunocompromised.  They were between 25-35 and just didn't suffer well. Please stop coming into the ER and spreading your germs.  No offense meant. Also, don't come to work, go to wal-mart, or Applebees.  Please.  That being said, the flu ...

Yesterday I was able to cross something new off of my list of things to do: survive an earthquake. Of course, I thought I might be somewhere more exotic than the Mid-Atlantic to fulfil this one, but I'll take it. To be fair, it is only amusing and exciting in hindsight. In real time, I felt, and I don't admit this often, but, scared. I hated the feelings the experience gave me. And I've come up with several reasons why. But I guess I should begin with the story. Several things happened at once. I was in our local mall for the first time in literal years, so I entered it like a foreigner, interested to see what had changed. Secondly, I was surprised, with no offense to her, (because I certainly didn't know where we were going) that my mom immediatly escorted us to the exact place we meant to be without any fuss. Marveling at the mall and our swift arrival with the neice and nephews in tow, the third strange thing happened, in that the floor began to shake. I...

Academically, things are going fine. I met with my supervisor last week who is awesomely and annoyingly hands off. I am very glad not to have a supervisor who wants to meet every week and check up on my progress every five minutes. I'm also glad to have one who cares, but is happy to leave me alone. But, I kind of need a little more discipline as I am in actuality, a terrible student who is easily distracted. Hence, I have been more interested in writing blog posts and booking trains than finishing my case studies. He seemed happy with my progress, and was unhurt that I have already conducted a couple of interviews and nearly finished my lit review without him. So, I am about half finished now and if I actually bother to read stuff and 'critically analyze' it, I can easily be finished before the due date. As for my wild-ass plan within a wild-ass plan, I have booked my flight home (woot!) Eurostar tickets, a few overnight trains (yeah, it would be faster and cheaper t...

I had intended to have the rest of the vacation posts written by now, but dear old lappy broke. With much joy I can report there is life in her yet! We're also running windows 7 which I am still, mere hours later, undecided about. But it's a change. I feel like an old mare set in her ways, unable (more likely, unwilling) to change. I'm sure that my computer usage can be as adaptive as the rest of me. (but why can't I make my start bar anything but blue!?) I've also found, after trying hard to get into it, that I am having a hard time getting out of vacation mode. My mood probably has something to do with feeling in the home stretch of this WAP which truly fills me with mixed emotions. In the last two days I have felt appallingly sorry for myself (again!) watched too much TV and ate just enough ice cream. Also in this time I have had the first glimmer of communication from my dissertation supervisor. After three emails of increasing irritation and panic, ...

Well, they saved the best class for last. We finished up our last classes learning about natual and environmental hazards and laughing off the sheer terror that climate change fills us with. The lectures were interesting, engaging, and I learned stuff that I will remember for more than five minutes, which is more than I can say for a few of the other classes. We took a field trip to Ironbridge to learn about um, kind of how that whole town has the potential to slide into the river. To prevent that, we saw their multi million pound anti erosion project. They also have multiple seasonal flooding problems which were interesting to learn about and on top of these problems Ironbridge is a world heritage site and relies totally on tourism for its income, and is home to the worlds first iron bridge (as mentioned at Christmas) . They have good reason to prevent the town from sliding into the river. It was a very worthwhile outing and I was happy to see Ironbridge in the spring when it was...

I arrived in Coventry six months ago today, wide-eyed, nervous, and excited. I am still wide-eyed, nervous, and excited , just in smaller doses...and not every day. I don't honestly have much to say about this momentous occasion, but I figured I'd mark it with a blog post. Today, I am only panicking a little concerning the several assignments I must finish in the next couple of weeks. I have just completed my sixth module, (don't make me explain the strangeness of the class distribution for this degree) marking that I have only two left before embarking on my thesis research! (don't tell anyone, but I've already started) This most recent module, I'm sad to say, marks one of the most boring and seemingly pointless weeks in my academic career. Well, it may not be true, but when classes are squeezed into a five day period, the boring parts are more obvious. The high point of the week was a good old fashioned field trip to London to help the London Fire Brig...

For a non business person, business continuity management and its associated everything is entertaining for a limited time. It is a very interesting concept, and as one instructor put it is "common sense written down and put into practice" or something like that. I'm a big proponent, although if it ever has a practical application for me I will be surprised. Any business I start will not be big enough to warrent an official continuity plan. Luckily, most of our instructors this week have unconsciously strayed from the topic, leading to more intersesting things. We watched a video about 9/11, and learned about some of the causes of things going terribly wrong (outside of terrorism). In my imaginary buisness I think I will adopt shouting "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" wherever I go to keep people on their toes. This should prevent holes from forming in our defenses. After reading parts of the 9/11 commission report (for fun?!) I have decided to retire from reading fri...

Our department is relatively small. Each of my classes has had about 20 students, all requiring resources provided by one third of one shelf in our library. Our modules start on Monday mornings and by Monday afternoons, every relevant book is gone. I don't know how people do it, they must be paying impressionable undergrads (5 quid to check out every book with "Risk" in the title seems fair.) The shelves have an echo and are completely bereft of useful information, down to the dregs of books published 20 years ago on topics that even the best writer couldn't begin to stretch into something useful. I've heard that in other courses, books are taken off of the shelf and hidden somewhere within the library so that everyone thinks it's available but really only the devious student knows where it is. This evil act does eliminate the chance of someone placing it on hold, requiring it to be relinquished prematurely. Our classes are comprised of a few local full ...

I've now finished two more modules toward my degree. Unfortunately the assignment from the last module has lingered and I'm still not finished. So, while enjoying classes this week, in the back of my mind I am still wondering how to finish. The last module was about risk assessment and management. The classes varied from an Italian expert telling us about evaluating seismic risk, to a business expert telling us about corporate risk. Needless to say, some of that was horribly boring for me. I was reminded of my undergrad when we had to take a class in hospital administration and we all struggled (at 8am, no less) to make the subject have any relevance to our lives. As I do not intend to make corporate risk part of my life, I found that lecture brain melting. Happily, the research for the assignment has been far more interesting, dealing a lot with the psychology behind how different people perceive and accept risks. The writing has been tedious and extremely slow, half d...

Day two of Disaster theory was a very informative day. There was lots of stuff about theories, and disaster models, and other stuff that's not extremely interesting. We also had a discussion about disaster recovery and comparing that of first world to third world nations. We were given our assignment for this module, which so far seems very doable. Before lunch we watched two short videos about hurricane Katrina. This is definitely an excellent example of everything we want to and are going to learn. What I didn't expect was while these videos played, I suddenly wished for a hole to open up in the floor, so that I could drop into it. I felt so full of shame watching Americans struggle without hope from the government or each other. I watched helplessly at footage of the superdome and convention center that was simply awful. I know Katrina was awful, but for the first time I felt like I really stuck out as an American. They even showed all the moronic clips of Brown and ...

Today was the first day of class. I met a lot more of my classmates and had a pretty nice day. My class is about 20 students strong, all from different backgrounds and regions of the world including several countries of Africa, Cyprus, France, UAE, the UK and the 1 from the US of course. I'm very happy to be getting what will be a global education both socially and academically. This class is also a mix of part time and full time students. Some of the full timers started last January, and some, like me are on their first module. There are eight modules between now and the spring, this week is Disaster Theory and Practice. Classes go for one week every day 9-5 and are a mix of lectures and group work, then we have three weeks for self study and to complete our module assignment (a 4000 word essay or report). Our main lecturer is from Canada (who has worked in the UK for 25 years) the other is from South Africa, who I think will bring a unique perspective. There are no required ...

Today I had my official "induction" which makes it sound like I had to perform a ritual killing or something. Well it was pretty long and a little torturous, but not all that bad. I got my class schedule which sounds pretty awesome, but I am sure I'm in for hard work. It starts mid October, which right off the bat is pretty great. I have one class at a time, and each takes about a month. I have a full week of class time then a few weeks to complete the class assignments. This makes me pretty nervous, as the entire grade is based on an essay or a report, and well, what if they don't like what I do? There is nothing to fall back on, not even my American charm and good looks. The guy who gave us the orientation is the head of the department. He's Canadian, and a bit long winded, but seems like a nice and fair guy. The class has about 14 students in it, most of which I didn't officially meet today, but those I did seem cool. There is another Ellie in the c...