First day of orientation

We all arrived promptly at 6 15 am as we were told for orientation, and the first thing we all had to do was stand in two separate lines to take ID badge photos. We all got our pictures taken by 6 50 or so and, at this point, everyone had trickled over to the breakfast table on the third floor of the Hall of Soldiers and Sailors museum. Silence of the Lambs was filmed in the auditorium where we had our orientation. At around 7 10 am, after having eaten two breakfast plates and having listened to every bank's mortgage pitch and after having collected every free pen and key chain and other nonsense that would later end up in the garbage, I found out that the orientation presentations REALLY start at 8 am. Wow, I thought. Demanding that we all arrive at 6 15 am so that the first orientation presentation could take place at 8. I slept through half the first presentation, and then slept through the 15 minute break in between. After being fully rested, I was much more ready to take in the boring remainder of the morning, which included a somewhat entertaining yet still horribly mundane human resources presentation. Like many orientations before it, I think these orientations could have easily been done with a well-written series of e-mails. There was no celebration or festivity whatsoever (apparently that is still to come, as the psychologist for our specific UPMC site has a scavenger hunt planned for us).

Then they usher us all downstairs to stand in two separate lines to wait for our ID badges to arrive. We wait for about 35 minutes and, when they finally do arrive, they aren't all there. I stood in line for 40 minutes for absolutely no reason whatsoever, only to find that my ID badge was going to be handed to my program coordinator the next day. Why didn't they just do that for all of them? It appears as though, no matter how far out I go from high school, administrative bodies will always be significantly inefficient in some way, shape or form.

We went to our family medicine center and I found everyone else already there filling out paperwork. I too started filling out paperwork, and this was around the time we received several books on resuscitation and Life Support courses. I have 3 nights to start and finish the neonatal resuscitation manual, which is about 250 or so pages long. Hopefully there are a lot of pictures. I scanned and uploaded to my laptop every other seemingly important piece of paper, and have yet to start on any of the various online activities mandated by the generic UPMC orientation committee because I haven't yet received my employee ID or social security card. I imagine all things will befall me in due time.

All for now, more later as I have to catch up on sleep and yet still wake up at 5 and ride tomorrow. I figure if I'm going to be hitting the hospital eventually at 6 30 am, may as well get into the habit of waking up at 5 even though tomorrow starts at 7 30 am.