The time has come to enter the senior lottery, the scariest part of this program. Of course, when the list of our options came out, it was not what I had expected. In the last year, the University has made some changes in an attempt to improve the support they give to students during placements. In the past, we were able to choose any midwifery practice in Ontario that was taking students for the particular placement. Many students were experiencing problems with their preceptors and due to some clinics' distance and the University lack of familiarity with some of the areas; the program was not able to provide better support to those students. With this in mind, they divided the clinics concerning its proximity to the university you are associated with. Though I can understand this reasoning, it has also created a limited amount of choices for students. Another change that was made is that many clinics are clumped into one choice. For example, Burlington and Oakville are considered one choice, the two clinics in Waterloo and the two clinics in Kitchener are regarded as another choice, the two clinics in Cambridge and the two clinics in Guelph are considered yet another choice. If you are interested in Cambridge and put down this as a choice, you may end up with Guelph. This is horrible, especially for people where moving is a major problem. In all, we only have eight choices of areas, and we have to identify our first top four. Then, it is up to the lottery and your luck to find out where you are going.
Have I said how terrified I am of this lottery? Way more terrified than the one in the second year. First, in second year, all of my four top choices did not involve moving. I would only have to move if I fell out of the lottery by not being chosen for any of my top four choices. For the senior lottery I’m about to participate now, there are only two choices that I would not involve moving. So, I have to choose two places I don’t want to move to as part of my top four picks. It is horrible to have to think about moving when the fact hasn’t happened yet. Second, the last placement was only for four months. The senior placement is three sets of three months with a month off in between, which means I would have to have other living arrangements for basically one year. Also, what is making me nervous is that in the second year lottery, my designated placement ended up being my fourth choice. So I know there is a real chance of me not getting my first two choices, meaning there is a real chance I would have to move and leave my five children and husband for almost a year. I don’t have any family in Canada, so I can’t count on any help. Imagine that.
There is also another factor aggravating the situation, and that is, the closest midwifery clinic to me, which is Burlington and Area Midwives, will declare a conflict of interest with me being a student there. This is because I had my last baby with one of their midwives and also had a business relationship with the clinic when I used to teach prenatal classes. The university says that if the clinic or the midwife feels that they cannot adequately assess a student for whatever reason, they should declare a conflict of interest. So there you go! No Burlington clinic for me. What makes it even harder is that the Burlington and Oakville clinics are clumped together into one choice; Halton. So I’m not entirely sure how this is going to be affected if I put Halton as my first choice. Can I just say it? This sucks! Big time. I’m still not sure what I’m going to put down as my first four choices. Then, the wait. Yes! Three weeks until we find out where we are going. Is this torture or what?
Did I mention how much this sucks?
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