Growing up I knew I always wanted to do something in health care. I had two family members who were always in and out of the hospital battling with cancer and other health issues. Seeing how much nurses and other health care professionals help my family members really opened up my eyes. In sixth grade, I had to get surgery on my eye and I became extremely interested in anesthesia. From sixth grade to my sophomore year of high school that’s all I could talk about and all I wanted to do. Throughout my whole life, I was an athlete, I played volleyball, softball, and for many years of my life I was an equestrian. In high school, my volleyball team went to states three years in a row. Finally in my last year, we won. That whole season took a lot of determination and hard work. Playing these team sports has helped me develop communication skills, leadership skills, and how important teamwork is. I was raised with the mindset you don’t know what other people go through at home, and to be nice to everyone. Though I am a very patient person, I think that I would not like med surg at all. My junior year of high school, I got the opportunity to shadow a nurse anesthetist at Maine Med Portland. That sparked my interest in nursing, and continued my interest in anesthesia. I started to look into nursing even more, and found out about how versatile it is. Later, in my senior year we had to do a senior internship. Due to the rules changing at Maine Med, I wasn’t able to get back into the OR. So I decided to intern in a couple different units. With becoming a CRNA as my end goal, I started off in the ICU. I was able to spend a day in the Neuro ICU, and in theCardiac ICU. I found both of these units extremely interesting and I felt as if I could fit in there very well. Another day, I spent with a sort of float nurse, or a 900 nurse as they call them at Maine Med. I went all over the hospital, spending some time in PEDS, the ED, Med Surg, and the outpatient surgery floor. Though I like things fast paced, I don’t think I belong in the ED. One of the nursing professions I want to go into is anesthesia. My ten year plan as a nurse is to get my CCRN and get into CRNA school. Though I couldn’t find a chapter on nurse anesthetists, I know that you have to work in a critical care setting for a couple years before you can even take your CCRN. In Opportunities to care: The pfizer guide to careers in nursing I found the chapter on ICU nursing. Reading this chapter has helped me figure out that this is what I want to do, and I have the skills to do it. Currently because I haven’t started clinicals yet, I don’t have the ability to intubate or do any of the fun stuff, but I do have other important aspects. I am able to talk and communicate extremely effectively with family members, I am a very fast thinker, and I am just as fast on my feet. I am also able to work with a team extremely well. I also do extremely well in fast paced, high pressure environments. I also want to care for the sickest of the sick patients, because that’s who ultimately helped my grandmother towards the end and who made the biggest impact on me. Another unit I could see myself working in is a pediatric or any oncology unit. I had a friend when I was younger suffer from cancer, and then this spring it came back. She was in and out of the oncology unit for a couple weeks, and she finally had surgery and the cancer was gone again. This summer when I saw her, she talked about the nurses and how they ultimately saved her. Everyday they would go out of their way to make her day just a little easier, and find ways to brighten up her day even if it was just for a couple minutes. Those nurses had the biggest impact on my friend. In Opportunities to care: The pfizer guide to careers in nursing, the oncology chapter often brings up the word empathy. I believe that I am a highly empathetic person and I can easily connect with people. My friends often come to me for emotional support, and I enjoy being that person in their life. Overall, I want to be the person to be the positive difference in someone’s life, no matter who it is.
Author: lfluet
Sexual Harassment: It’s about power, not lust and When saying ‘Yes’ is easier than saying ‘No’ share a few key themes around consent, power dynamics, and the societal pressures that influence women’s sexual experiences. Both of these articles examine how women may navigate sexual encounters, often feeling trapped in situations where they may not fully desire the interaction, yet feel compelled to proceed due to external factors. In the theme of consent in these two articles, they both address the nuanced gray area of consent. In the “It’s about power, not lust”, it focuses on the way sexual harassment operas within power structures where women are outnumbered and in positions where they feel unable to say no. In “When saying ‘Yes’ is easier than saying ‘No’, the author uses the term “gray zone”, explaining this is where women may say “yes” but feel uncomfortable or even coerced into doing so because of societal pressures. Another thing both these articles do is they critique the cultural forces that shape how women navigate these situations and explore the emotional consequences of interactions that may not align with their true desires. This covers a lot of the #MeToo movement that we have talked about in class, especially the conversation around consent.
Serano discusses something called “the predator/prey mindset” in men and woman. What I believe the predator mindset is, is that men have this sort of power over woman and consistently try to hold it over them. Like an example Serano used, men often objectify woman sexually and make sexual advances towards them. The prey mindset is about woman. I feel as a woman, we are often walking on eggshells with our actions. This is because a lot of times it feels like men have this power over us, like I said before. The prey mindset is often about how no matter what a woman does, she will always be objectified, and viewed as a sex symbol by men. Often times the prey stereotype leads to discussions like “oh well what was she wearing”, or “she was asking for it”, or even just the negative stereotype of woman being “whores”. The predator stereotype can be negative, because not all men are like that, but as human we group all men like that, because of how many men are like that. This binds the nice guy/asshole stereotype she discusses later. Nice guys don’t get attention from girls, and are often over looked. The assholes are guys who always get female attention, and are never overlooked. I think that part of this is because of how we grew up, and we are so used to unsolicited male comments, so it’s almost weird if a guy is to nice.
I mostly agree with the film’s central premise that technologies represent an “existential crisis” to our lives. In some ways they are over reacting, I do not believe that a civil war is going to happen, or the world is going to end due to social media. I do believe though that we are slowly losing ourselves and humanity to the digital world. We have forgotten how to interact with others outside of social media. We can’t put ourselves in other peoples shoes now, because social media has made us more self-centered. I don’t think that there is a permeant solution to fixing how these technologies run. There is always going to be this constant cycle of like buttons, or threads, or videos everywhere. Even if technology companies tried to make a change, people would find ways around the changes and rules.
- When Turkle wrote that we are undergoing “a flight from conversation”, I believe that she meant people don’t want to have face to face conversations anymore. Most of the time, people try to stay out of situations where they are faced to have long conversations with people. We are undergoing this because everyone is chronically online, and the only way we know how to interact with people is through texting. I do agree with most of the arguments that Turkle makes about how digital conversations are affecting our daily lives. I think that it’s much easier to get distracted, or not listen to what people are saying due to the fact of always having our phones in our hands. Not within the people my age do I see a lack of empathy, but in the younger generations, I do see it. Kids are unable to grasp emotional cues from other kids, and I mostly think it’s because they are so enriched in their screen time they don’t have face to face conversations with kids everyday. This makes it hard for kids to understand body language and facial expressions.
