Just need to vent (and gloat!)

[KIMMY03]

How do you deal with peers who are mad at the world and take it out on you? There is someone in my class who is just so nasty and has every negative quality you can imagine. I had suspected she had negative energy (I'm close friends with her sister and hear the entire family's complaints regularly) but jeesh! It is the first wk of school and I do not want to call attention to myself by approaching the professor. She has already indicated that she thinks highly of me and I do not want to stress her or be the squeaky wheel...It's just that this individual is sooo negative and pretty much unavoidable (without going into detail), and unapproachable as she welcomes and even relishes drama. (slashing tires & busting windows if you so much as look at her sideways!)

In the past I have never been one to back down from confrontation but from now on I am determined to! I will have to learn how if I want to be a successful nurse but do not want to be perceived as weak (as I am not). NS is stressfull enough without all the added highschool drama! (I'm sooo over it!!). I just want to have a good year!

P.S. Originally I actually did have some gloating to do but decided against it and now I can't change the title. Sorry if it was misleading.

[caringtouch]

hmmm. dare I guess who she is?

[Atheos]

Oh!!!!!! I was expecting some good gloating. Now I am all disappointed.

:down:

:chuckle:chuckle:chuckle

[KIMMY03]

Caring touch, I'll tell you in class. I just didn't want to give details online because I thought it was unfair to her.

Stanley-RN2B...I know right! LOL!

[HeyHeyitsMaay]

honest question..

How come it's bad energy and drama when this person does it, but when people who are in your class read these forums and know you're talking about what appears to be a very emotionally unstable class mate online from your perspective (slashing tires), you aren't concerned or worried about perpetuating the drama?

Be careful?

[KIMMY03]

OhDaughterofZion...

Because the person on this site that knows who I am talking about is not interested in becoming a part of the drama and neither am I...obviously that was the whole purpose of the thread was to find a solution...who better to help me than someone who is actually in the class and knows the dynamics of the situation ?? I am talking (online) about someone who is actively rude, insulting, and negative and the fact that I am discussing the negative things a person has done to me does not make me negative as well. I am trying to find a positive solution to an ugly situation. Should I lie down and take it? Would your advice to me be to grow a pair?

Honestly, if anyone doesn't have positive advice, I would rather you not respond and I'll just figure it out myself. I'm grown and i'm not interested in being lectured.

Thank You

[HeyHeyitsMaay]

I said what I said because, if your personal safety is at stake, and one person from your class is reading the boards, chances are that others are as well.

I'm sorry if I offended you, but the way you described the situation sort of confused me.

My advice would to be consider the source of the problems you're having, and cut it off accordingly.

If others from your class read these boards, the extra addition of you 'talking on the internet about someone' to the already strained dynamic is going to make this problem exponentially worse in my opinion.

I was telling you to be careful because I've already dealt with similar incidences at school as we've had to go to different classes before class officially starts, and it never goes far. Those people don't exist as far as I'm concerned, otherwise, if I'm forced to deal with it, I kill em with kindness. =)

[tothepointeLVN, LVN]

Just ignore it. People like that will dig themselves a hole they can't out of eventually. Just think to yourself "she is not my problem"

[KIMMY03]

I don't think (at least I hope) that my personal safety is at stake. Originally when I wrote the thread it was like 6/7 paragraphs long detailing the entire situation! I later went back and erased the whole thing because I realized that if anyone in my class were reading it, it would identify not only me but the but the other party involved and that would be a problem. Believe it or not, it is general enough that I don't think any of my classmates could read it and guess who I am talking about (they don't know about the whole tire slashing thing).

The reason caringtouch was able to figure it out is because we met online before school, figured out we were in the same school and looked for each other on the first day. I honestly know that she won't go to the other student and discuss this and unless I tell her myself, she could never even guess who this person is!

I'm sorry if I misinterpreted your question...it's just that although the situation is small now, I know how fast these things can escalate and that is what I want to avoid. The teacher seems to be beginning to notice but I don't want to be associated with the girl when the teacher thinks of "trouble" but the girl seems determined to take me down with her. I make it a point to avoid her in class...no one would ever know that we even knew each other...but it's like she goes out of her way to provoke me....sigh.

[lvnhopeful]

There was a student in my class the other students called snap because she was like a walking time bomb. She blew up at almost every student at one time or another, and there were sixty students in my class! She became hysterical in class and caused several scenes.

The teachers noticed, and the head instructor told her that she was in the wrong profession. This student passed with good grades and a sigh of relief from the rest of us because we thought she might come into the class one day with a gun.

Another student, on the other hand, who was quite pleasant to be around at the beginning of the year, turned out to be sneaky and lazy. He never did his work, always palmed it off on whoever his partner was. He started taking drugs and his head would loll on his shoulders in class.

He became weird at clinicals to the point that I and another student told the instructor he was causing a stir at the nurses' station (he was trying to delegate work for everyone and confusing the nurses on duty). The instructor pulled him from clinical and asked him questions. He became belligerent with her, and then we all got to write our sides of the story.

The drug use got worse and one of the students turned him in. He slashed my tires and another student also while we were in clinical. Fortunately there was a witness.

You never know what's going to happen. Usually there is a school counselor that you can talk to, but that didn't seem to help much at my school. Be careful and document. Also, keep track of the times you do talk to your teachers and such. It helps to keep records, and that advice is from my instructor.

Good luck!

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

lvnhopeful brings up a good point. when you are in nursing school, particularly lpn training, the instructors are constantly evaluating you for your performance and not just your test grades. the big and most important evaluation you need from the nursing school and your instructors are a recommendation for your first job. when i was a manager hiring new graduates, and my hospital hired plenty because we had an orientation program for new lpns and rns, we weren't interested in how many "as" you got or how many foley catheters you had inserted. we knew "as" were hard to get and most students didn't get a lot of hands on experience. we wanted to know that you weren't routinely flunking, that you had a natural curiosity and a quest to learn new things, weren't always standing in the back of the classroom, weren't the generator or leader of controversy, had a positive attitude, were flexible, acted like an adult and were willing to learn more and take direction. to help us we asked for a written questionnaire to be completed by the school. the school doesn't have to say anything negative about a student. it's what they don't say that wasn't there that would always raise our eyebrows.

just a word to the wise. treat school as a job. some jobs will fire people for the same kind of drama and shenanigans that go on in school as described above. schools won't usually boot you out for this behavior because you paid tuition to be there. future employers, however, don't have to put up with that drama and most won't. what i saw in the workplace if this happened was that the people involved were separated--moved to different units and shifts no questions asked or they quit or were terminated. we fired people with behavior problems who wouldn't correct them after several attempts at counseling. if during the hiring process a potential employer figures out that someone couldn't control their behavior in school they automatically were out of the running to be hired at that facility.

it's not hard to find out the history of a class conflict from a gossiper sitting before you in an interview. they like to talk a leg off a horse; you just have to press the right button. know-it-alls don't rate very high on the job-hiring list either because they don't like to take directions from anyone and like to impress people with what they know. to work as a nurse you have to be able to work with other people as part of a team. there is a point where you must draw a line between what is personal and professional.

[HeyHeyitsMaay]

Daytonite brought up a very good point.

Our school warned us that we were being watched for every single thing we did. No uniforms except during clinicals was decided upon because they want to see what we think is o.k. to present to people who we're planning on using as job references (the staff and faculty at our school).

We're given extra lee way like that on all sorts of things, and then who we show our selves to really be when we're allowed to relax is watched like a hawk and that's what's used to recommend or not recommend us for employment after graduation.

No matter what this person does to you, stone walling them with sincere kindness when you have no choice but to deal with them is the best course to take. Otherwise, they simply should not exist to you.

The director of our school has told us that she's told hospitals/other facilities point blank that it wouldn't be a good idea to hire a student based upon their behavior. I would think that behavior also includes your response to a gossip/immature person/etc etc.