Chapter 4: Workplace

“Pay attention, Yuan! We have a busy day today!” Yuan quickly snaps out of her daze, and rubs her eyes. Lin, the head nurse of the Oncology department, shook her head and quickly resumed her summaries in the nurses’ meeting. Yuan never liked the nurses’ meeting. Lin would always start off by asking one of the night shift nurses to report any entering patients, patients ready to leave, and patients that have passed away. Yuan has become desensitized to death. Being in the Oncology department, she’s seen many patients, most of which were elderly folk in their 70s or 80s, pass away because they came to the hospital with a late stage, untreatable cancer. Their stay in the ward was never really extended; Yuan never really became attached to any of them. After all, most of the caretaking was done by family members that stayed with the patient. In fact, Yuan started viewing the patients as simply bed occupants and having a patient either pass away or leave the hospital just meant another patient waiting could come in and occupy the newly opened bed.

After the initial reports are made and all patients and beds are all accounted for, Lin then proceeds to reading through particular patient charts that have been giving the nurses and doctors problems. Yuan pulls out her notebook and writes down a few notes on the beds that she has been assigned, and walks out of the office into the wards. It looks like a tattered battleground, the wards; the off-white colored walls dirtied from the scuffling of makeshift bed frames against them. The rooms, aching for renovation, fit anywhere between 4 beds to 6 beds, with a small shared bathroom next to an outside patio. Although the attending physicians keep the same room assignments, the nurses rotate through the different rooms, further distancing the nurses from the patients. Yuan looked down at her notebook where she scribbled down which rooms she had today. “Rooms 1, 3 and 5”—she was lucky, each of these rooms only had 4 patients.

Chapter 3: Past Choices

Yuan doesn’t plan on staying a nurse for the rest of her life. Helping people get better is nice, but the pay is only decent, and it’s definitely not something that she wants to keep doing. She chuckles to herself, as the sole reason why she was here was because she didn’t really have an idea of what she wanted to do exactly. Coming out of high school, Yuan wasn’t the most competitive student in her graduating class. Yuan was pretty content with being slightly above average. Unfortunately, in a nation where there are millions of students are applying for higher education, Yuan wasn’t bound to go to a top college, unless she was one of the top students of her province.

Of course, Yuan didn’t let that this statistic defer her, she went to a secondary, vocational nursing school as part of the Nanchang University Hospital; it was a short-track program designed to provide technical knowledge and a nursing skill set at a secondary level. Granted, she had no idea which track she wanted to do; she just scribbled in “Nursing” almost as carelessly as an afterthought. She does know that nursing, working in the hospital danwei is a stable, albeit extremely busy line of work; however, as she continues to work day by day, she is growing increasingly apathetic towards her selected profession. She dreams of perhaps going back to school to learn business, or as a friend joked, marry a handsome and rich man that would sweep her off her feet. Come to think of it, maybe that isn’t such a far-fetched idea after all…

Chapter 2: Family Life

Back home, Yuan is a single child, the little empress of her parents; was, anyway. Yuan found out on her 18^th birthday, after having entered nursing school, that her mother was giving birth to another child—a baby boy. This came to Yuan as a complete shock; wasn’t the one child policy applied to her family? It later became apparent that her father wanted a son to carry on the family name. Her family ended up paying a hefty sum in fines/taxes in order to have the child, but for a reasonably wealthy businessman such as Yuan’s father, this wasn’t really an issue.

Yuan wasn’t very close to her father, seeing as he would always go off on business trips that last weeks at a time. Her mother’s health wasn’t exactly the best, and her father’s smoking only made it worse. When Yuan asked her mother why she stuck with him, she told her that “your father is incredibly stressed at work, and he needs to relax when he comes home. When he goes away on business, he’s forced to drink and smoke during those meetings; these habits build up, and so I don’t blame him. At least he doesn’t hit me or you, so he’s already really good.” Yuan didn’t really accept this answer; she couldn’t understand why her mother would stick with a man that seemed to foreign, so uncaring for her.

At any rate, Yuan’s parents didn’t have too many expectations for her. In reality, they cherished the fact that she grew to be independent at a young age, managing her school work, her social life. Unlike most parents that seemed to get over-invested in every ticking second of their children’s lives, Yuan enjoyed being left alone to her own devices. The birth of her little brother actually further drove Yuan away. She can’t really explain why, but she didn’t even list Jiujiang as a potential place she wanted to work. Perhaps it was because she was no longer going to be the focus of her family anymore. All she knew was that she wanted to get away, away from all this, a fresh start on her own. She told herself, I’ll find someone when I’m like 26-27, someone who actually loves who me as a person, not just for my good looks.

Chapter 1: The Routine

The alarm rang. As Yuan pulls herself from her bed, she glances over at her laptop’s clock: 6:15am. This was pretty standard for Yuan, as she needed to be at the hospital, ready for the nurses’ meeting at 7:30am, right before rounds at 8. She quickly showers and picks out her outfit from the crowded little closet in her one room apartment on the top of a relatively run down complex building. It wasn’t much, but the hospital provided it for her, so she thought nothing of it. She grabs her bag and runs down to the ground floor, and on the way to the hospital, she picks up breakfast from a local street vendor selling fried dough (youtiao) and soy milk (doujiang). As she makes her 15 minute walk to work, she takes in the sights, the heart of Nanchang already beating, bustling and hectic even this early.

Yuan was a 20 year old, working as a nurse in the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University’s Oncology department. Although originally from Jiujiang, she travelled to Nanchang for a 3 year nursing school program after high school and stayed in town for a job. She wasn’t particularly intrigued by the Oncology department, but it was a department where nurses were always in high demand. As she walked to the 3^rd floor of the Oncology building, she moved to the nurses changing room, where she puts her bag and jacket in her assigned locker, and puts on her white coat, nurse’s cap and face mask. She thinks to herself, another day, another shift.

Short and Sweet

Sometimes, the simplest, shortest things have the most meaning.

I wish I had someone who would be willing to sit with me outside, and just gaze at the stars, talking about whatever comes to mind.

It's depressing how shy the stars are tonight.

Sounds of the Night

Tick, Tick, Tick.

Time on the clock is perpetually winding down.

Staring at all the work, the kid says, "Frick."

Instead, he looks outside, only to see the moon frown.

Tock, tock, tock.

The text in his books getting small and blurry;

He looks at a blank paper, writer's block.

The kid rubs his forehead; his mind a flurry.

Drip, drip, drip.

The kid hears from across the suite, the leaky sink;

The most inconceivable, yet irritating blip.

The ruckus, the writer can't think.

Drop, drop, drop.

Why won't this paper write itself?

He looks at his bed, covers and pillows on top.

With a sigh, he puts his books back on the shelf.

Creak, creak, creak.

The boy closes his room door, and off goes the light.

"Perhaps sleep will give me the answers I seek."

Good night.

Living Ostensibly

I've turned a ethnographic report into a creative writing exercise. When I get the chance, I'll post it chapter by chapter. Stay tuned.

Living the Day Up, and Learning From an Old Mistake

One thing that I really enjoy, is being able to go through highs-and-lows during Max Out. Today is the epitome of having both highs and lows.

Let's start with the highs:

A GREAT speaker event (Parry Shen is awesome) on Friday, and after taking Parry back to the airport, I was able to go to Uncle Bill's, and really catch up with a close friend of mine. We used to always have a bunch of classes together, so this semester was really weird not having him within close proximity to talk to and chill with. This was a much needed time to just really get back in touch, a break from our equally busy, hectic student lives.

Today was ResCollege Olympics, and needless to say, I was there to play soccer. Granted, I didn't mind playing for any particular rescollege, so I ended up playing on both the RUSoFo team, and one of the Park-Mudd teams. I haven't been able to really get out and exercise much, because I've been so busy ironing out logistics to make sure Parry Shen's talk (see previous high) went as smoothly as possible. Soccer has definitely been used as a stress reliever; great weather, and just being able to do some physical activity was much needed on my sanity. I played a total of 5 games of soccer, had a lot of fun, even though our teams didn't make it to the finals.

Went to Journey's Easter weekend service, and I really enjoyed the speaker, and the verses that were covered (Phillipians 3:1-10). I particularly enjoyed this service because I felt it applied to my life so much sooner and recent than usual (see low). And to be expected, I just love worship, because I'm so musically inclined. There's always that warm fuzzy feeling with a side of goosebumps when I hear a musical and/or lyrical phrase that I really like. Anyone have music they can give me/recommend? I'm always open to new music, be it Christian or not.

Finally, I got to catch dinner with one of my close friends, and she also happens to be one of my favorite people. We have both been really busy lately, and having MCATs imminent has stressed both of us out, her especially. It was definitely good to just get away from all the work, and just be able to sit down and talk over a nice light meal at St. Louis Bread Co. and then cap off the night with Fro-Yo. I feel like why I enjoy her company so much, is that we can literally talk about everything; our experiences and backgrounds are similar so that we can relate to stuff that the other is talking about. I definitely want to make time so that we can have more of these short catch-up times.

On the flipside, my only real low:
After RCO soccer ended, I rested up and prepared for my intramural soccer game. Initially, I was excited because I had been playing so much soccer today, that another game was just adding onto the joy. It turned out that the team we were playing was literally a ragtag band of freshmen that decided to organize a soccer team; most of them have not touched a soccer ball in however many years, if at all. Honestly, one would think that playing an easy team would be more relaxing, less stressful. Au contraire, ma cherie. Our team started out playing pretty slow, and being not used to playing a truly competitive team, we played incredibly sloppy, and as a result, the first half score ended as a 0-0 tie, despite many good chances and potential opportunities blown. To cap off my frustration with this, the other team ended up trash talking us because they knew the only reason why they were keeping up with us was because we were playing so poorly.

I can't quite explain it, but this really set me off. The trash talk went straight to my head, and I found myself yelling at my own team, language barrier turned off, the whole nine yards. It was only sometime in the second half, that I realized it was negatively affecting how I was playing my game, and including the game of others. With the insight and input of some of my teammates, I switched off the field, and literally cooled my head by pouring cold water on myself. We finished the game 4-0.

This game was a real eye-opener for me. I haven't felt THIS angry at anything in a very long time. I suppose I believed that I changed that part of me, that I could control my temper, that I wouldn't let anything of the sort phase me. How quickly the temper re-emerged during this game, over an essentially trivial matter, really scares me. I really got to reflect on this during dinner with my close friend (see above); it definitely put stuff into perspective.

It indicates how much further I have to go from committing oneself to one's religion, versus surrendering oneself to one's religion. I have a long way to go, but at least the thought and realization is comforting.

Sorry about the wall of text. Busy day, no?