Practical One

Tonight my students have their first "practical" exam. As we talked about it on Monday night, we could tell the students were jittery about the upcoming test.

The test involves us giving each student a requisition with certain tests ordered. They then have to pick the correct tubes, come in and treat the artificial arm as if it's a real, live patient and show us how to draw. They only have to draw one tube, not multiples; they've all completed that task at least once successfully.

However, it's gonna be a train wreck, more or less. It always has been, but it really gives them a wonderful foundation to work on for the next practical. They'll all be fine in spite of their fears.

This class has several students who are over 40. I love seeing that. But, I remember how scared I was at going back to school as an older student. We have one student who is a research assistant at the U. If she doesn't pass this class, she loses her job. Harsh as far as I'm concerned, but that's the way of it. She's so scared she's overstudying, and she's not allowing herself to be right; she second guesses herself and changes answers on her tests. And, you know it...she changes right answers to wrong ones. *sigh*

Another student has a marvelous "touch" and will be a good phleb if we can get him through the academics. He is a foreign student and there's enough language barrier that he's missing too many things on the tests and exams. On the first exam, he missed 23 out of 47. Jan and I are still figuring out how much additional time we can give him (if any) to take the exam under the circumstances.

Another student does everything in her power to ask us questions which might require us to answer her in such a way we'd give her the answer. She's finally getting the idea our answer will be, "We can't talk about that."

I'll let you know how the practical went when I get home tonight.