Pushing Along

Its been an extremely busy month for me, from the past couple weeks running from 8 AM to 3AM designing in my studio, to squeezing in time in the mornings for volunteering at the Kitchen. Despite the busyness, it's been fun. I'm hoping that I'll continue to find time in this busy semester to keep up a weekly visit to the clinic.

My most recent trip to the Kitchen had me performing "secretarial duties". Being a more behind-the-scenes type person (Gold in color for those that get this), I'm not especially great at making phone calls to patients; however, for my first time I think I did pretty well - especially with the occasional person who hadn't quite mastered the English language (or at least that was my impression). At least it was an opportunity to practice my person to person skills, which is always a good thing.

As spring break looms ahead, I'm hoping to squeeze in a few more hours at the clinic. It's been a fun year so far living and volunteering - even if admittedly I'm not especially interested in the medical field - in Summit Park, and I think as my Architectural design project wraps up before spring break, I'll be able to devote more time to my volunteering.

FebruANY

This month has been great. I was able to be quite useful as I began to pick up on what I can and cannot do. I have now been rooming patients regularly and am beginning to like the real patient interaction. I am also beginning to see more of the personal side of the staff at the clinic. Prior to this month, I had just been one of the volunteers, but now I am beginning to maybe see the staff opening up. We always discuss weekend plans and they show me shortcuts on the work I am doing. It is great getting the support of the staff as I volunteer at the clinic.

Time is Flying

Jon's shot of the Grand Teton's

Time has flown. It's uncanny how it's been five weeks since the beginning of spring semester, and doesn't seem to be showing any signs of slowing down. Hopefully, with the remaining time we have volunteering at the Kitchen Clinic, we will continue to make a difference in the lives of the staff, and the the visitors. While we still haven't officially decided how we will spend our allotted budget, we hope we can provide something to the clinic that will have a lasting effect. I personally don't think it'll be what we spend money on that'll make the largest impact, but how we treat the visitors and the staff. If we can leave knowing that we made a sick patient smile, or showed the value of hard work, maybe it'll rub off on those visitors and instill a need to serve in within them. Giving is always so much greater than receiving.

With a busier schedule than last semester, I haven't had the opportunity to go the Kitchen Clinic personally yet; however, the other members of my group have. My plan is to begin serving beginning next week during some morning free time I have. It'll be nice to get back into the swing of things and let the staff know that I'm still around. Last semester I spent my time as an escort for the patients. In that position, I escorted patients from the waiting room, to the clinic rooms; where I would take their blood pressure, pulse, and temperature. Towards the end of last semester, I had a chance to try my hand at more administrative work, where I checked the voicemails, checked medicare statuses, and general administrative work. From what I've heard, this semester, I'll be doing a variety of both Clinic and office work, which should be a nice switch up. 

Devil's Tower rises 1,267 feet off
the valley floor.

During Summit class, one activity stood out to me, camping. Camping is my all time favorite activity, I can't get enough of being immersed in the outdoors. Last summer, my family took a 5,000 mile camping trip across the upper Midwest, visiting the Badlands, Black Hills, Devils Tower, Yellowstone, and the Grand Tetons. Over the course of the trip I took 3,000 pictures, and none of them could do justice to the reality that is actually standing in front of the Grand Teton. Camping has always been fun to me, and is definitely going to be my favorite part of the semester. 

Last semester I think I improved my leadership abilities a lot, through both the working at the Kitchen Clinic, and through my Architecture Major. It's a bit intimidating to lead somebody who is often time much older than you to a patient room, and possibly a bit embarrassing to the patient to have a kid taking their vitals. It's those facts that I think forced me to be a stronger leader when directing people into their clinic rooms by showing the respect and care as I did my job. My Architecture major has placed me in a position of leadership, especially when I'm talking to an underclassmen about their design, or working on drawings as apart of a team in my own studio. I'm not really sure how I'll adapt my abilities for my own Summit Park group yet, but I think it'll become clear very soon as we progress further into the semester.

So far, this semester has been great. I've enjoyed working on my Architecture projects, had fun in our Summit class meetings, and I'm looking forward to starting my volunteer work next week at the clinic. Before I know it, the semester will be over and I'll be looking at a new year at Drury, and maybe with any luck we'll keep making a difference at the clinic.

Put my straw in your milkshake.

OK, I'll admit that the catchy title of this post has nothing to do with our work at the Kitchen Clinic. Its from the movie There Will be Blood and I found myself watching it the other morning (at about 5am) and that line caught me off guard and has been on my mind ever since.
         This semester at the clinic, I would like for us as a group to be able to clock more hours than all other groups and be the top 4 hour accumulators for the spring semester. A little time on top never hurts and the clinic is a deserving place for us to give our time to.
          The greatest experience  I had at the clinic recently was my adventure to the basement, where I might have gotten slightly lost and been down there for about 20 minutes walking in circles trying to find the stairs. Its a scary basement in case you were wondering.
           As I always seem to say, time is the greatest challenge for me to be at the clinic. Class from 9-5 daily is a bit of a hamper on getting to go to the clinic and work, but dropping a class seems to have helped.
           As for the Summit class, I'm rather excited for the 24 hour "Amish" experience/ technology fast. It sounds like a code phrase for get out to Arkansas and go camping or back to the Heifer ranch. I wouldn't mind either so its all good.
            This last semester with Summit has made me a stronger person as a time budgeter. I also have started to also try to and sleep daily. As a leader, I have honed my delegation skills so I can now have others do all the work while I supervise (MODOT style). Just kidding.
Ben

Stepping Up

This semester has already has had a interesting but better start. It was a little rough in the beginning with the weather storm preventing us from going to the clinic. However, as the weather cleared, I was able to make to the clinic. Not a whole lot had changed over the winter break. So it was great to get back into the flow of things. I started doing my normal routine of entering received medications. As I was working, one of the doctors asked if I had heard a heart with a mechanical valve. Having never heard one, I was curious to hear it. It was really awesome to hear the swoosh sound heard by the valve. After that experience, the nurses asked me if I had roomed a patients. They were surprised to see that I hadn't roomed a patient. It was what I have been waiting for. Under the supervision of another volunteer, I got to room my first patient. I am excited to see what this semester will have in store.

January-February

So far this semester as individuals and as a group we have mainly been focused on readjusting to our new schedules. In particular, I've taken time to warm up to my new class schedule as well as my new and interfering track schedule. I am now in season for track so I know its going to be slightly more difficult to find time to make it to summit class but I've been working around it in one way or another. So its definitely been a slow warm up to the totally different schedule. I've made it to the Kitchen Clinic only once so far just this week but in my one time I did manage to accomplish a lot with figuring out how to use our budget which is great being that I'm in charge of that in our group. Although we took a long time off this semester as a group from the volunteering, we still have a lot of time to make a difference and I'm very confident we will.

The one thing I would say I look forward to the most this semester with the summit class will be the upcoming camping trip. I don't know if I'll be able to make it because of track but if I can that will be very exciting. I love camping, my family and I go camping a lot all throughout the year. Camping is always a good way to get to know people better.

Based on my experiences with the Summit leadership community I would say the most influential thing that this experience has given me is better people skills through working with the summit community activities and our volunteer work at the Kitchen. It has opened my eyes to working with a large variety of people from many backgrounds which will be awesome for me in my future career as a Physical Therapist. I plan to use what I've learned in my future career and on the track as an athlete to help better my team.

Paul

Semester in Review by Jon George

Well I am finally moving up. I started volunteering by taking down messages left on the voice machine. I have now been able to enter prescription arrivals in the computer. Though it is still not patient interaction, I am hoping that it will slowly happen. I think one of the reasons that it will change next semester is my schedule change. I was volunteering along with other MSU nurses and pre-med volunteer students. So work may have been very limited. I will also be working more hours since all of us have all the paper work done. Next semester looks very hopeful.