I'm not sure how I did this the *first* time.

I'll say this for Sunnydale General and our sister hospital, Holy Kamole: the peeps are serious about the internships.

Even as a seven-years-under-the-belt nurse, in the speciality in which our CCU specializes, I still have to go through the entire fourteen week internship: everything from new employee orientation to the final days of evaluation.

(I asked, by the way, why they wanted to pay me my current inflated hourly rate to show up for something I've already done, and the internship director said, "Because we think you can be a leader."

Dude.

You've spent the last seven years trying to chain this particular loose cannon down. I'm from the unit which is widely acknowledged to be the weirdest, rule-breakingest, fuck-you-ing-est unit in the whole damn system, and all of a sudden I'm supposed to be a leader? Are you drunk? AGAIN?)

Anyway. I remember dimly that my first internship was challenging. This one doesn't look like it's gonna be any easier. The first week will be a comparative breeze: only five twelve-hour days in a row, doing things like learning computer systems and filling out Gubmint paperwork. After that, though, we start on the real meat: two or three classroom days a week, combined with two or three clinical practice days. Tests. We're having TESTS. As in, one now, one in three weeks, and one at the end of the internship.

I haven't studied for a test in...well. It's been a while.

So. This morning I showed up, bright and early after getting my teeth scaled like a horse does, to the Sunnydale General Investiture Meeting, and met the leader of the particular group I'll be in.

I am not making this up: his name is Dante.

What it took Alighieri seven days to accomplish will take us fourteen weeks.

I am, quite frankly, more than a little concerned by all of this. I don't know that I have the stamina to make like a new nurse again. I mean, a whole lot of it will be (presumably) easier, since I already know the routine and where they keep the tubes and stuff, but still. I don't know the charting. I've not worked with a ventriculostomy in years. I'm not sure which end of the stethoscope goes up the resident's ass. I'm not sure where the bathrooms are. I'm afraid I'll get just plain tired and worn out and have to take a little mental break right when somebody needs me.

Remind me why I wanted to do this, again?

It probably would've been easier for me to deal with had I had a proper night's sleep and hadn't spent an hour getting sharp things poked into my piehole by a nice woman with a cheery attitude. As it was, I stumbled in to the conference room, grabbed a colleague by the lapels, and groaned "COFFEE. I NEED COFFEE." She got me some, and it was all almost okay.

Still. It concerns me, this schedule. When nine hundred years old I am, feel this energetic I will not, hmm?