I am currently in graduate school for a healthcare profession where we are required to complete several externships to accrue hours to meet graduation requirements and be eligible for our necessary licenses to practice after graduation. Every single externship we complete is unpaid, and we are expected to work the exact same hours as our supervisor. If our supervisor works 50 hours within a week, which definitely happens, we are expected to as well. If they come into work on a day they usually do not work, we have to as well. Not only this, we are still required to complete graduate level classwork. We are not allowed to miss any days at our externship site. Although we do not see a dollar, our supervisors are allowed to bill for each session even if the student, as expected, is doing all the work of planning and conducting therapy. I am not exactly sure why I am writing this outside of to say I am sick of it. I am jaded towards my school and externship sites. I do not want to put forth the effort. I am struggling to find it in me.
I am a stubborn person and will speak my mind if I notice an injustice occurring. I also have very strong boundaries that separate my personal life from school life. However, externship sites and my university despises this. If I am told to do something by my supervisor or clinic director at the university, I do not hesitate telling them no. I am the only person in my program and probably one of the few people in my program to have ever told the clinic director or their supervisor no. Let me tell you, it has gotten me in a ton of trouble. I am told I am unprofessional for this. I am told that what I am doing is insubordination. At this point, I strongly believe my clinic director has a vendetta against me and does everything in her power to catch me slipping up. Because of this, I have to be on my A game at all time.
This semester, my last semester, my externship has been hell. My supervisor is kind and caring to an extent. She tries to be your friend which I am not a fan of because I have seen her use I what I tell her against me. On a Friday this semester, my supervisor told me that I yawn too much, and that it is noticeable by her and the patients. She knows I go out dancing on Thursday nights as this has come up in conversation in the past. She told me I should not dance on Thursday nights. I told her that I do not plan on stopping this as this is my personal time. I followed this up with if she believes that my performance was affected to which she responded no, but she could tell I was moving slower and more fatigued. I asked her if any patients mentioned this to her to which she replied no. I think she pulled it out of her butt as I don't fall asleep extremely late everyday and usually come in to work on limited sleep. I explained very clearly to her that I am on a medication, an SSRI, that has a history of making people yawn. She wrote it off. Another day, I was having difficulty reading the laptop to chart due to the age of the laptop and the grainy screen and the tiny desk they give me. To compensate for this, I used a second chair in the room to prop my feet up so I can bring my knees up and rest my laptop on my knees to read the screen easier and be at eye level. Some staff member in the hospital complained about this. She told me it was fine and to close the door to her office. So, taking her for her word, that is what I did, and I did not think anything of it because she told me it was fine. However, I never did it after that because I could tell how weird of a situation it was. Another day, I had a neurology appointment online that I had been waiting months for. She told me to take the appointment at the hospital in a conference room. I told her no because I was not comfortable with my privacy and the hospital's guest wifi that I would have to use. The thing that tipped the ice, though, was when I told her I needed the day after Easter off because my sister surprised me airplane tickets to visit my family who I have not seen since my grandfather's funeral in mid January. She flipped out on this because I told her I needed the day off rather than asking for it. She went to my clinic director who tore me a new one about my “unprofessionalism.” She did would not listen to my side of the story. I then went to my supervisor and had a conversation about all of this with her as she has never addressed any of these concerns with me in the past. She immediately said that I was attacking her because I asked for specific and direct feedback at the end of the day about what was good and what I should improve on. She also stated that she does not have the time to do this at the end of the day even though it takes five minutes max. She told me she has never had a student as disrespectful as me which she then followed up with that over the course of 19 years she has been doing this a student has never told her no. I understand some of it is due to the unprofessionalism, but I feel like most of it is because I told her no.
I have faced a lot of backlash from my clinic director and supervisor since. She is more concerned about appeasing the externship site more so than the student, so she can place students at this extern in the future. My director won't let me go visit my family for Easter. She said if I miss the Monday after Easter, she will pull me from my externship and push my graduation until August. The biggest lesson I've learned: People in power who think they have the right to control your entire life because you are a student and are expected to bend at their will HATE being told no. But, at the end of the day I refuse to let my life, self-respect, and well being be destroyed by someone who thinks they own me and my every move. My classmates all struggle with this as well and have been taken advantage of by their respective supervisors and the clinic director, but they never have the courage to say no or advocate for themselves. The director and majority of supervisors operate through fear mongering, but with my background growing up I know how to handle it. Maybe if they paid me for my work over the past two years I would be more “professional.” Here's to one more month of hell and hoping I can pull through to graduation at the beginning of May!