Urge to relax..

Today has been a very intense session and we're all incredibly exhausted.We worked to prepare Friday's final presentation, both in separate teams and all together.
As we were with no lecturer or mentor supervision, things turned out incredibly chaotic and intensively creative at the same time. And despite the amount of work we've done some/most of us were tired,stressed and exasperated by the end of it.
What also increased the general irritability was Friday's dead line: we all agreed this work should have been started by the end of week one, so to have far more time for summing together individual ideas into the presentation.
It also happened that when we were discussing in small groups everybody had a chance to speak their mind, whilst when we were all talking in a circle often some of the quieter students were overtaken by the loud noise.
So it definitely was for all a nerve wrecking training session about getting along in group work and because I have some issues in working shoulder-to-shoulder with more than 3-4 persons, I might have got something out of this (but since I'm very stubborn it might take me a while guys).

Student assessment in Florence

As I was going through a couple of blogs I realized that we italians haven't been able to explain correctly how students are assessed during clinical internship in our university (also because we are not able yet to present you our assessment papers..typical italian delay).
So I'll try to make it clear here:
every session of internship (2 per year, lasting from 1-2 months) has some assessments that are the same throughout the years (ethic behaviour, confidentiality,social skills etc) and some which change depending on the student's level (practical and organizational skills).
All this is a 4 page print given to the student before entering the ward, and it is useful for him/her as a goal-reminder, but also for the nurse and ward manager to have a precise idea on what do they have to evaluate about the student's work.
We are evaluated in points out of 30 (all the italian universities use this evaluation system), where 18/30 is the minimum score to pass.
We also have an intermediate evaluation halfway through the internship which is usually a couple of lines about what the student needs to improve or what he/she is doing good so far, and
this is really useful because the student understands his weak spots in time to work on them for the end of the clinical practise.
So I hope this is helpful to you all, maybe I should have explained it before..

To link or not to link..

I apologise to all for the facebook-linking delay but as you can easily see I wasn't exagerating when talking of my absolute incapability to relate with computers..very embarassing yes.
Also, despite my clownish attitude, I am a very reserved person and I find it hard to write down my thoughts in front of a screen instead of confronting face to face with another human being. It's weird but although I can chat for hours with someone just met at a bus stop, I blank out when sitting in front of a keyboard. I guess I'll have to try my best and improve in the next days.

My personal war with computers

Yes, I am one of those people deeply convinced that, hidden somewhere in the keyboard, there is a self-destruction button..