Rural!

The mystery! The excitement! The lack of information!

Well, kind of.

Tomorrow I am off and driving for 7 hours in my car with my worldly goods in the boot and will be on the way to . . . . 8 weeks of rural.

The first and last weeks will be spent in a larger and central base, where we will have a week of lectures and practical instructions. They have crammed our week into 4 days rather than the usual 5 for some reason, and have told us in an email on Thursday that we may not get time to go out and buy lunch. Now, on my previous rotation (in a city hospital), if we had a lunchtime education session or a session before lunch, the education coordinator would order in pizzas. If it was a bigger grand rounds, it would be sponsored by a company or the hospital would provide lunch.

In the rural education sessions, where we have to leave home, don't have access to our cooking facilities, and now possibly won't have time to leave to buy lunch, they have offered to sell us lunch. However, we have to order it the day before (or in the case of Monday lunch, you need to have ordered it by midday the Friday beforehand - I have already missed out) and pay "with correct money" or something. So, what is for lunch? Sausage rolls and $8 sandwiches. Awesome. I think I'll be going hungry or seeing if I can still slip away.

They have also told us that we MUST ATTEND every single session in that week, and if we are 10 minutes late to a session then we will be marked as not attending and will HAVE TO REPEAT THE ENTIRE ROTATION. (Emphasis not really mine.) I'm starting to smell a frustrated admin person being put in charge of a bunch of medical students and not being happy about it. Honestly. We are not grade 3 students away on camp for the first time.

No, I don't think that we should automatically be given free food. But to be offered $8 sandwiches as an alternative? Somebody should do a Red Rooster/Subway/Pizza Hut run in a car - cheaper, fresher and more interesting. I think I'll be picking up a bag of salad and some tinned tuna from Coles tomorrow afternoon. It is motel room-friendly (I only have a mini-bar fridge) and I won't have to deal with pre-ordering and paying-with-correct-money-in-advance. :P

Fingers crossed that the rural place where I am spending my middle 6 weeks are more accommodating and relaxed. I may not get to update until I get home again, as my laptop doesn't have an inbuilt modem (Macbook) and we only have dialup access, and I don't want to go any more out of my way - I'm just going to work on what I have at the hospital, and I don't think there will be a place for blog writing. ;)