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.

For the most part the duties at the Kitchen have been pretty steady this month. Nothing major has changed since I began this semester. I roomed patients and filled out paper work for various perscriptions and that has been the just of my day every time I go in.

My best experiences so far with the Kitchen have been the encounters with the all the people from many different walks of life. I've enjoyed working with these people and hopefully being a positive influence on them. It gives you a sense of purpose you know. The toughest experience I've had so far has been scheduling a regular time to get in to the clinic to help. I've had a lot of homework, projects and test this month since its the end of the semester, and a track meet to top it off with lots of practice so its been hard working around those things to make it in steady this month. 

I feel like our project with the Kitchen will for the most part stay the same next semester. The only things that should change is us fixing the problems of last semester. We'll have better communication between each other and the Kitchen hopefully. We will also hopefully be doing a lot of good with out alloted funds next semester. Otherwise though I think we'll continue to do what were doing, going in and providing them with as much help as we can outside of our busy schedules. Us being there to help goes a long ways with a small stressed out staff.

I've gained better people skills from this experience so far with our project, being that I must work directly with people every time I go in. That will go a long ways for me too, because I plan to become a physical therapist so I'll need to be good with people. I've used it to learn how to interact with people so that they feel comfortable. I also gained some experience living with the three other people in my group. Its helped me to learn how to work around conflict with others outside of just my family. Although my brother is one of those people I still have two others that I've never been with so its been good to develop experience living and working with others. That will help me in the future.

I really enjoyed the experience and introductions to the various stress relieving type strategies. Some were strange to me and I probably won't get involved in them in the future but aside from that still fun and I went in with an open mind and took from it what I could. I think most would agree that the message was their favorite out of all of the experiences. As far as the program on the computer goes, well I'll be honest, I didn't have much time to commit to those exercises. I tried a few times but it was very hit and miss. It more stressed me out than doing what it's supposed to do, just because it just added on to the already mountain of things I had to do every day. In the future I would probably suggest not including that or at least just making it optional so there is still that important exposure that the program was going for. Overall though the whole experience was fun and interesting and I would likely do it again. 

Over break I'm looking forward to just relaxing and enjoying time with family and friends. If you mean after break, then I'm looking forward to starting out a strong semester both academically and in the volunteer field. I hope that as a group we can start out strong having fixed our previous issues. I'm also looking forward to a very exciting season in Track. 

Paul

December update

            This past month there havent been any special events at the clinic besides normal operation. I have gotten to spend more time doing pharmacy tech work and I really like it. It's tedious but needs to be done and I am getting good at it.
             With the semester ending is a week, I can look back and say that the best experience from the clinic is being able to observe how the clinic operates as a whole between the nurses, doctors,and the front office. The most trying experience was getting ready to work at the clinic (lets face it, no one likes HIPPA)
              In the spring we will be able to hit the ground running and start back staffing at the clinic as soon as possible. We all have our classes scheduled already and that is in order.
              As a result of being in Summit, I feel that I am becoming a better communicator. With all the presentations we do, I have started to become more comfortable with it.
             Stress Free Now was a pain in the butt all semester. It was a good program, but I just don't have the time to devote to it so I get the full effect. I do however, like the tai-chi and yoga classes.
             The thing I am looking forward to winter break most for is getting to sleep. I normally am up till 3AM and I have a class at 8AM so its been tough.
Ben