Aches and Chills and Coughing, Oh My!

It officially feels like flu season to me now… why? Because I officially have the flu. There’s nothing like that feeling of aches/chills/fever/cough/stuffy head/everything ever mentioned in a cold medicine ad feeling that makes me just want to stay in bed until my body’s back to normal. But now that I’m in a position that isn’t as easy as calling in a substitute server to pick up my shift or emailing the professor to request the notes for the lecture I’m missing, I wonder how others feel about being sick in the workplace.

Is it better to be a person who never misses work and hunkers down, risking contaminating others and making the illness worse? Is it better to take time off to rest and heal and risk the boss wondering if you’re a big baby? Is it better to use up those sick days at the beginning of the year if that’s when you need them or is it better to try to hold off just in case you need them later?

While I know that most agencies don’t have a set-up to work from home, I sometimes wish it was an option for us all. In this age of technology, it only makes sense that, if half of the classes we took to get this degree were available online, shouldn’t at least half of our work be available that way too? Of course, I’m not advocating for anyone to hang a shingle with the agency logo when they’re sick at home, but sometimes I wonder if paperwork couldn’t still be completed online, allowing the person to heal and quarantine him/herself while still being productive. At the same time though, I wonder if doing such would lead already overworked people to continue to work from home during healthy times.

What do you think? If your agency offered an option to complete some of your work from your personal computer, would you do so only when you were ill or otherwise couldn’t be at the office or would it compel you to work additional hours on top of your regular schedule?

Homework

TODAY WAS ONE OF MY DEDICATED homework days. It will usually be Sunday and Monday, but since I had Field orientation on Monday, I took today off.

What happened, though, was life kind of took over.

I spent a couple of hours at the eye doctor, an hour on campus, and an hour regarding a 401K rollover plan. By the time I settled in at the desk it was almost 3 p.m.

Once there, I collaborated with a classmate on our power point presentation for tomorrow morning. We plan to meet for about 30 minutes before class to go over our project one last time. We have been discussing it all week and I feel pretty good about it.

I still have a bit of reading to do for my second class, and I believe I will finish that between lights out tonight and breakfast clean-up tomorrow.

It looks like my eyeglasses prescription has changed and I am hoping the fix will make it easier for me to transition from computer to textbooks while working on papers. I would never have noticed this if I wasn't in school.

So, here it is, nigh past 11 p.m. and I am wrapping up. I hope the rest of you social work students are easing into your fall semesters!

~Ms. T. J.