And I remember that day that saved us…
The way you kissed me, and the salt, it filled my eyes.
And we remember our California
The night we slept along the shore and washed away…
I finally graduated.
Yes, this is another one of those posts that I guess the title could be a little ‘click-baity’ cause it has nothing to do with what I’m blogging about. My bad. I’ve just been watching this show on Netflix called Switched At Birth, and I’m starting from the very beginning, Season 1, that I guess started in 2011 or so? And a lot of the songs I really like… so I’ve been on a bit of a musical binge of the ‘soundtrack’ lately, and that particular lyric stuck out to me.
But has nothing to do with this post…
I finally graduated.
Some of you may or may not know how touch-and-go my schooling was during this last 7 weeks, and so I figured I’d take this post to summarize it a bit, and have a little mini-celebration of actually finally graduating.
Externship is the last part of your education process at my school. You’ve had 9 months in the classroom, and now it’s time to spend a month and a half at an actual office, putting your skills into practice. In an ideal world, they’ll send you to an office that’s hiring, and you’ll use that 6 weeks of unpaid work to make a good impression on them and wind up being hired on at the end of your externship. (Or heck, even DURING it, if you’re willing to put in additional hours other than the 30 unpaid externship hours each week.)
I began my externship in a specialist’s office, and spent three weeks there. The first two weeks were great. I was having a great time and I thought I was doing well. But during the third week, things started to change. I would say that I’m not sure what it was, but I know exactly what it was. During the first two weeks, the office manager had developed this… habit… of trying to utilize me like a staff member when someone was out sick or had to leave early? Rather than calling in a replacement like office (and corporate) protocol dictates. Now, I’m a student. And while I’m flattered, I’m also… not allowed to work alone like that. Especially in an office that is entirely running on electronic health records that require employees to login. Students don’t have a login, and so I cannot in good conscience be logged in to a staff’s account, without that staff member’s supervision. And the office is far too busy when it’s short-staffed, to pull whomever is supervising me back to wherever the office manager was trying to put me.
During Week 3, when it appeared that she wasn’t going to stop this behavior, I finally spoke up and said something. She told me I’d have to go up front for the last part of my afternoon, and I asked, “Is someone going to be up there with me, because I’m not allowed to work alone.” Her response, complete with tongue clicking and hands-on-hips, was, “Well, you won’t be alone in the building. But up front? Yeah, you’ll probably be alone.” To which my reply was, “Then I will have to speak with my Program Director about that, as it’s not something I’m allowed to be doing.”
Magically, when I stuck up for myself as being only a student and not her employee? Magically she began to have problems with me. Including but not limited to, spraying Febreeze right in front of my desk while I was working… and I’m allergic to Febreeze. (I kinda joked about that this morning with my Program Director during my exit interview, “Well, she did already try to kill me once. Sorta.”) She called the school three separate times on three separate days. And no matter what issue she had, and no matter how ridiculous it was, we tried to make the changes to oblige her.
Finally, during my last day there – though I didn’t know it was my last day at the time – I was so stressed out. I finally broke down in tears at lunch back in our break room. Which warranted a, “Oh please, no no no, please don’t cry. If you cry, I’ll cry…” from one of the girls I’d been working closely with. I finally just broke down. I told her I didn’t know what the office manager wanted from me, but that I was happy with front-office work. I said if it would make the office manager happier for me to finish the last 3 weeks in the front-office, I would love to do so, but I was concerned about my evaluation, and how it would reflect on my back-office skills. That I hoped they would be assessed based on what I had the ability to perform, and not marked down.
Apparently that day’s complaint from the office manager was that I was ‘bragging’ about my skills and said I was ‘too good’ for the office and the work I was being ‘made’ to do. (Erm… I’m sorry… if I thought I was ‘too good’, then why would I have an issue working alone, logged into someone else’s account?)
Either way, I got moved to a different site, and things went well there.
However, the bomb was dropped on me a couple weeks ago: I may fail my externship without the evaluation from the first site. And as of that moment, the office manager hadn’t bothered to send it in yet.
After a few conversations with school administration, and a voicemail from me, she did finally email it over. And when I talked to my program director, she told me that it wasn’t passing, but that it didn’t matter. It would even out with the evaluation from the second site and I would still pass externship. I was THRILLED!
Until my exit interview today.
I saw the evaluation… and I had fully intended to get a copy of it, for when I pursued a complaint with her HR department about the way she treated me. (The specialist’s office is corporately owned.) However… she’s a crafty bitch. She failed me… without failing me. Instead of honestly assessing the things I was able to do there, she assessed SOME of them… only marked a single item negatively, marked 10 skills as being ‘met’ (the positive grade you can get) and then marked everything else as ‘no opportunity’, even if I not only had the opportunity, but performed the skill! Basically, the department of education says that even if by the marks you pass the evaluation, if the evaluation isn’t based on at least 70% of your skills… then it’s a failing evaluation. So even though of the 11 skills she marked, I only got 1 negative score and should have passed, because 11 out of however many skills isn’t 70% of what was on that paper, it was an automatic fail.
Now granted, I passed the other evaluation with flying colors, but that eval from the first site? Gave me a C- for externship… and that C- was enough to pull me off Dean’s List for graduation. It pulled my GPA down far enough that I am no longer able to graduate with Dean’s List honors. That… I think is the irritating part.
BUT I SURVIVED. And at this point, that is what matters. And because I survived, I wanna do something awesome for those of you who put up with my ranting on Facebook/here on my blog, as well as put up with my spaces of no posts while I was fully engaged with school/externship.
The hair I’m wearing in this post today is the first of a new group that Truth is rolling out with for his store. The Truth VIP group costs L$265 to join right now, and each month he will release a special fatpack of hair that will only be available for that month, and to members of that group. This hair is the first one, and I love it so much. There are so many options. You can wear it as just a side pony over the right shoulder, or you can tack on the left side like I did. There are even bangs that you can use as well.
I’m running another raffle through Rafflecopter that will last only a short time. It will run from NOW, until 10pm SLT on Friday, November 11th. (Again, sorry for the strange time. Rafflecopter is based on my RL timezone, so 10pm SLT is midnight my time.) I will draw TWO winners, and to those winners I will simply pass the lindens to be able to join the Truth VIP group. In addition to the special hair each month, the VIP group also gets you 24 hour early access to any special sales Truth might run, so I’d say the L$265 is TOTALLY worth it.
If you’d like to enter the Raffle, you can go HERE. There is one mandatory option, that you must be a follower of this blog, but you’ve got other ways to gain additional entries as well. Good luck!
*~* Confession .40. My Blood Flows Faster With Every Thought Of Everything That Happened Here… *~*
..:: Shape ::.. Mine
..:: Head ::.. Tumble Basic Head || Catwa
..:: Skin ::.. Kazumi (Polar 03) || Glam Affair || We ❤ RP
* The skin applier DOES include the running mascara on the right eye, but does NOT include the small tattoo on the left eye. The credit for that is listed below.
..:: Eyes ::.. Deadshine Eyes (Wight Iris; Natural Pupil) || IKON
..:: Ears ::.. Olympe Mesh Ears || L’Etre || recent release!
..:: Hair ::.. Deja (Browns) || Truth Hair || VIP November hair!
..:: Body ::.. Lara Body (v3.5) || Maitreya
..:: Face Tear Tattoo ::.. Tears (Faded; Left) || Facade || Sad November || free gift!
..:: Dress ::.. Turtleneck Dress (Black) || Kaithleen’s || Sad November
..:: Boots ::.. Drucila Boots (30 colours) || Phedora || Sad November
..:: Pose (full body) ::.. The Citrine Series Three (Mirror) || An Lar || We ❤ RP
..:: Pose (closeup) ::.. The Citrine Series Four (Mirror) || An Lar || We ❤ RP
..:: Location ::.. Hazardous
..:: Blogging Tune ::.. “The Night That Saved Us” – Automatic Loveletter
Antisocial Darwinism 