Documenting my journey through the mental health system

I’ve completed nearly a week of grad school. The program is public health and is accelerated.

So far it has been research practice, reading and writing. I’ve spent time scouring scholarly journals as I have total access to all of them. I’ve taken part in class discussions – conducted online of course – and I’m attempting to get to know my classmates – through the internet. I’m working on a PowerPoint slideshow of glossary terms. I’m nearly complete with a 5-page research paper due Sunday. So far, I am keeping up. But I have to be disciplined and use a lot of time management.

I am very grateful to have my VA job. I do those long 12-hour shifts and that gives me a lot of downtime when all my work is caught up and rounds are done. I still do a lot of work, but I use every spare minute I have doing schoolwork. I am still kind of in awe – I can’t believe I am in grad school. I can’t believe I had the guts to try this again, especially after everything that happened so many years ago.

Sacred Heart – where I ended up detained, in their psych ward for two weeks, after I lost my grad program and attempted suicide – does not offer as much downtime. I have many more patients, for one. Anywhere between 13-16 patients. I work quickly and thoroughly but generally stay busy throughout the eight hours. Tonight was a little quieter and I was able to work on some things and do some textbook reading. I made several PowerPoint slides and read through more of the textbook.

I am intimidated. This is only the first week. It feels like so much. I have to do an APE later – applied practice experience – and essentially do some kind of internship. I’m hoping I can incorporate one of my current jobs into it. In fact, that’s really my only hope to meet that requirement. I’m not sure how all this will go down. It will likely be one of the harder things in my life. But obtaining my masters was always a life goal too.