I'm about halfway through my second round of embryology, and being a second years means I've got more assignments and clinical days. Funnily enough, one of these assignments involves sitting around for three hours every week at a children's daycare centre to observe "developmental behaviour".
- I hate psychology. Believe me when I say I don't use this word lightly.
- Kids have a discomfort/awkwardness radar. This attracts them.
- I am terrible with kids.
- Kids are nothing like they used to be. Back in my day...
So, besides spending most of my time devoting Larsen's Human Embryology to memory, I have to somehow come up with meaningful observations and interactions with little people. Do you have any idea how stressful this crap is? And is it just me, or are all kids kind of nuts? And how come some people are so good with them? And why are they all so tech savvy? Do their workaholic parents teach them how to make excel spreadsheets?
There is no reasoning with children. Don't call me crass. We're not talking general theory of relativity here, we're talking "So what did you have for breakfast today?" (Which was met with a rather angry "I don't want to tell you!") For chrissake, pumpkin pie. Sigh. Here are some excerpts.
Kid: Why are you wearing lots of blue? Are you going to a party?
M: No? And my jumper isn't blue. Don't you think it's more purple?
Kid: Like grapes?
M: Yeah. Like grapes.
Kid: I hate grapes. Mum makes me eat them. [gets angry]
M: What's your favourite game?
Kid: THROWING!!!
M: Ok, I'll see you next week.
[Kids laugh manically]
I'm really paranoid that these little gremlins are plotting my demise (i.e. they'll find my corpse facedown in the sandbox, with a plastic spade wedged between T5/T6). I'm a little concerned about this fixation on "moulding kids" at pre-school, too. Yeah, fine motor skills are great, but it's not a neurosurgery training program. Just ease up a little on the Fruit-o-Mathics booklets and give them more room to explore their mutual craziness. I'm no Piaget, but it sounds sort of logical. It's not that often your life gets to revolve around play dough and wood blocks.
I mean, it's how pre-school went for me and I turned out pretty normal. (Snicker.)
3 comments:
Woot! Piaget.
I found embryology really difficult to study for. It was possibly the textbook. For later years remember gubernaculum, foregut, midgut, hindgut. Then sorted.
But good luck with the minor hurdle of embryo exam/assessment.
Get them moulded nice and early I say. That way they'll be less likely to rebel.
All I can remember from preschool is sleeping, and I'm pretty sure that is all I did. Resting in advance, for the years of late nights and rotations/I was probably just lazy.
Good Luck with the assignment. The good thing about psychology is that you can always make up something and it usually flys. It all about how you word it, to make it sound really insightful.
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