Page 14 - QARANC Vol 14 No 8 2014

12 QARANC THE GAZETTE
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
I stood in the queue ready to be processed like the rest of the snake that wound down the corridor towards the person at the desk. It was hot, I was tired and we were all nervous about what lay ahead. Many, like me, just wanted to get the job done and then go home at the end of it. For some it was a new experience. I had a lot of experience of standing in queues – this was nothing new. However, the scars of that experience remain: tennis elbow, piriformis syndrome, a torn left triceps and bilateral rota cuff tears are still new and twinge now and again as the nights are drawing in.
I could have been on an arduous deployment – but that’s not so; although, it did feel like a very long – year long – deployment at the time. No, a year ago I embarked on a full-time MSc in Advanced Nursing Practice. It involved nothing more than sitting at a desk for 14-18 hours per day, 5 days a week followed by weekends spent on the Intensive Care Ward (ICU), to maintain my clinical focus.
I didn’t really think about the effort that would be required. It was after putting the phone down from that conversation with Jan that I realised the educational obstacle course I had to overcome – a 15,000 word dissertation and eight 3,000 word assignments. I had to write a minimum of 39,000 words in a year – basically a novel. I’m dyslexic, I hate writing. In the end I calculated that I had written over 67,000 words; one assignment alone had an appendix of 10,000 words. Despite the small seed of doubt I quickly realised that my objective and aims were nothing compared to those on the Part-Time (PT) MSc. I was regularly greeted by them to the chorus in the corridor of, “you lucky, lucky, luck,*******”. Consequently, the small seed of doubt didn’t have time to flourish in the relative shadow of the demands of their course.
Other plusses to a FT MSc were the fact that I had single accommodation in the Mess which allowed me to, selfishly, maintain my own focus without any domestic distractions. It does mean hours of reading and writing but the positive lack of distractions became all too obvious when talking to other
Major Hazzard on a skiing holiday. (I wish)
NHS students who had been on the pathway for five years.
By being FT I managed to get to know the tutors and my supervisor very well, not just in my own faculty but in the University and in other Universities. It is said that studying for an MSC is like being self-employed – it’s all up to you! Consequently, this means getting ‘face –time’ with the tutors and the best way to do that is to ask for their opinion on a subject. Like a good Colour Sergeant, secretly, they love displaying their knowledge; this means you can mine it for all you are worth because you have time to go into college and discuss issues (as long as you pay for their Starbucks). In the end I found this tutoring worth its weight in gold as it lifted my performance by at least an octave. Being able to study in the week had many more advantages other than just meeting the tutors.
Whilst I studied in the week I carried out my clinical placement at the weekends to fit around the University. I needed to see the tutors in the week and like the ‘Top Corridor’, the tutors and lecturers weren’t available in the evenings and at weekends when you needed them. This was an efficient way of working as the ICU was much quieter at the weekends and allowed you to focus on nursing the patient rather than trying to fit around the
waves of Drs etc., and their blue sky thinkers club otherwise known as the multi-disciplinary ward round.
My advice if you want to do an MSc is: do it! Get to know the tutors and other academics and challenge them. Carry out your clinical at the weekend and create a study environment – namely a room in the Mess. But, whatever you do don’t jump out of your chair every hour and do thirty press- ups and sit ups for 14 to 18 hours. Don’t spring from your inactivity and run 10 miles or Kenyan Hills without first warming-up. Moreover, keep your military sense of humour when the lecturers asks you to look again at V15 of your assignment or when your supervisor asks you to change the whole format of your dissertation two weeks before it needs to be handed in – just smile. Good Luck!