I don't have the answers

What makes gero education successful? The question should be “What makes gero teaching successful?” By “successful,” I refer to the ability to get messages across to an intended audience—students—molding attitudes, nurturing attributes, and so on. The truth is, after 17 years as a teacher, I don’t have answers to every question about education.

We are supposed to know how to teach, and teach well. We are expected to be knowledgeable about what strategies help students learn. The current trend in education is to focus on outcomes. By teaching content X and Y and using methods A and B, we expect students to attain outcomes i, ii, and iii—the knowledge and skills the educational institution wants students to master by the time they complete a course or graduate.

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The truth is, we can plan on and account for our teaching of subject matter in a certain manner, but whether the actual outcome aligns with the intended outcome is not guaranteed. Humans are not computers. By tapping certain “keys,” we don’t always get output related to those keys.

By gauging test results and grading assignments, we can tell to a certain extent if we have “succeeded,” assuming, of course, the assignments are designed in such a way that they accurately reflect what the students should learn. I wonder if anybody ever questions the validity of these circular arguments. I am not saying that focusing on outcomes is not good, just that the usefulness of outcome-based education has to be put in perspective.

We teach, and we hope for the best. We know some students perform exceedingly well within the academic system while others barely get by, but academic performance is not the ultimate measure of whether a student turns out to a good nurse. I know, because a number of undergraduates I taught have returned to their alma mater to take a master’s program. Some who showed great promise as undergraduates return for another degree intent, it seems, on little else than earning another diploma, while others, some of whom drove me nuts when I supervised their clinical placement as undergraduates, return as delightful nurses motivated to learn more.

As teachers, we cannot know which words we say will strike a chord in which student. Such thoughts humble me as an educator. While they pain me at times, they also remind me that I need to be every bit as reflective as I expect my students to be.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

Introverts make excellent nurses, too!

I don’t know about other countries, but here in Hong Kong, as part of the selection process for admitting applicants to baccalaureate programs, some universities have adopted use of admission interviews. Interestingly, I have never asked my international peers if this is done in their countries. I must do so in the future.

Nursing is a popular profession in Hong Kong with a huge number of applicants wanting to get into our programs. We admit about 180 students in each annual cohort, but there may be nine to 10 times as many applicants. Obviously, we can’t interview each one.

For a number of years, we have conducted group interviews in which approximately 10 applicants are collectively interviewed for 45 minutes and each applicant is given one minute to tell the interview panel about him or herself. The group is then given a topic to discuss on its own. There is no assigned leader, and the group just runs itself until the prescribed time is up.

As you might expect, only those who are outspoken, confident, and articulate get the higher ratings. In retrospect, the group interview process reveals some systemic biases. For example, applicants who exhibit the attributes of extroverts have a better chance of getting into the program. Extroverts are important in the nursing profession. We need leaders, change agents, advocates, and publicists in nursing. Outgoing people often fit into these categories. But we also need other kinds of nurses.

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We often say it takes all kinds (of people) to make the world. But we are only preparing certain types of nurses to look after all kinds of people. That does not sound logical to me. I have come across students who are quiet—they were fortunate to have gotten into the program—but are gentle and kind to patients. I have also come across students who are sociable and assertive but don’t necessarily connect well with people.

The profession needs introverts as much as extroverts. We need nurses who are reflective practitioners. I am not saying that extroverts do not make reflective professionals, just that we need to be more thoughtful in our admission practices to ensure that, as we recruit the next generation of nurses, we admit as diverse a group of individuals as possible. Only through diversity will we grow. It’s not unlike a gene pool, where the more diverse it is, the stronger will be succeeding generations.

Through diversity, we learn about tolerance and the value of accepting people who are different than us. Through group heterogeneity—our profession—we are stimulated not to take things for granted just because those are the norms, but to be creative in meeting the health-care needs of a diverse world.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.

Teachers as entertainers

I try to be myself when I teach. To me, being who you are as a person is just as important as what you teach. But increasingly it seems that, even in higher education, we are expected to be good actors. Like an entertainer, we are to fully engage our audience.

As a teacher, I understand that I need to teach well, but I also realize that, if willing ears are not there, there may be teaching, but no learning.

I know that, as a student or other member of an audience, there are talks and lectures I have thoroughly enjoyed but don’t remember their intended messages very well. A student may remember jokes and interesting stories that a teacher tells but, at the end of the day, what is important is that facts and knowledge required of a trade or profession be gained, not recollection of jokes.

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Who's grading whom?
As I grow older, I have witnessed the gradual invasion of our consumer-oriented culture into all facets of society. Students are now viewed as consumers of educational “services.” As service providers, we teachers must try our best to cater to the needs of these consumers, because they rate our teaching performance in the mandatory Student Feedback Questionnaire (SFQ) and because the SFQ rating is part and parcel of our appraisal as university employees.

What is a teacher? Who is the teacher? Does the teacher teach only what the learner wants to learn? If so, is the teacher a mere facilitator, there merely to guide active, inquisitive minds? I am all for that kind of teaching-learning relationship. I am aware of the modern philosophy of teaching-learning, whereby a child is guided in his or her exploration of the world. Rather than being directly taught, they are facilitated into self-directed learning. Such practice is delightful and enlightening. It takes away the pain of learning, and only the joy of exploration remains. And given sufficient time and resources, such practice is suitable for nurturing young minds.

But given current mass education, where professors teach large classes, funding is limited, and educators have to make do within the prescribed limits of an academic semester, this approach is not exactly feasible. Individuals learn at different speeds and in a variety of ways. If all of a society’s learning opportunities were offered in a facilitated, self-directed mode, it would be extremely costly. Is this necessary in tertiary education?

What they need to know
I regard myself a teacher, not a service provider. I teach what I think is important for students to know about caring for older people, not what they think they need. I do not consider myself a businesswoman who serves clients by giving them what they want. This won’t work, and it is not education. I know that because, a few years ago, when I was leading a team to design a master’s program for community nurses on the topic of community care for older people, I conducted a survey. The results showed that the respondents (potential students in the program) wanted a curriculum plan they could finish in the shortest time and at lowest cost.

To further illustrate my point, our faculty offers an applied ageing studies baccalaureate program. When students were told they needed to study anatomy and physiology of ageing, they questioned why, because they viewed such topics as irrelevant. Yes, I know. It’s hard to believe students enrolled in an ageing studies program would think that way.

What I am trying to say is that education should not be a business, although it can be run using a business model. This is especially important for university education. Universities are supposedly the minds of a society. They are supposed to lead a society in thinking and providing directions as to where we, as a community, should be heading.

When I was a student, recognition of teachers was based on the depth of knowledge they had in the subject matter in which they specialized. Nowadays, much more is expected of a teacher. Not only do we expect the teacher to be a master of his or her field, but also, like an entertainer, to perform well in class. Our PowerPoint presentations have to be interactive, colorful, and punctuated by jokes and stories. Better still, one should show videos—anything that engages the five senses. The teacher has to make classes joyous and take all pain out of learning hard facts, theories, and formulas. He or she needs to have high emotional intelligence, excellent interpersonal skills, and mastery of motivational techniques. Meeting all of these expectations requires, I think, that one be nearly superhuman.

When I am acting out a role or making a joke, it must be for the purpose of trying to get a message across. I can’t act out a role for the entire duration of the class. I know that being a serious person does not fit well with contemporary expectations of a popular teacher, but, to teach effectively, I need to be authentic.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

Learning to observe

I learn how to care for older people in practical ways by observing my mother. I notice how she can easily become tired—progressively so over the years. I see how she has become reliant on others for things she has been doing all her life without help—toileting hygiene, for instance. By watching her, I have come to see what her needs are. I also learn about caring for others by observing people in various circumstances. I take note if they are exhausted, annoyed, sad, or in pain.

As a teacher, how do I help my students value the power of observation, to notice the needs of others? Since we are in a helping profession, how do I teach development of observation skills to students who are engrossed in their own world most of the time?

How do we teach students to really "see" people?

I use public transport to go to work. In fact, I use public transport all the time. Because Hong Kong is such a compact city, I get around easily without a car. On trains and buses, people are engrossed with their smartphones, tablets, and what not, captivated with what these gadgets have to offer. Few people see an older man or woman board the train, much less offer him or her a seat. The same is true for those who are disabled, in the latter weeks of pregnancy, or carrying a baby. Few relinquish their seats, probably because most are busy playing video games, texting, watching movies, and so on. They attend to their own business, oblivious to the needs of those around them.

On those rare occasions when I do see someone offer his or her seat to another, I am sorry to say that, most of the time, the person who does so is middle-aged, not the age bracket of my students. What have we, as a society, done wrong? How do we teach our young—at home, school, in society at large—to care about others?

You will recall that I have made journaling an assignment for one of my courses. The exercise wasn’t as successful as I had hoped. Many students wrote “reflections” of what they had learned in a lecture—exactly what I asked them not to do. Despite including this assignment in my overall assessment of their performance, most students remained unobservant and unresponsive to what was happening around them with respect to elder care. Some did make excellent observations and reflections, but many did not.

My students are essentially good people. I know this when I hear them talk and get better acquainted with them as individuals. But I need to think of effective techniques to help my students “see” what is around them, not just “look” around and then go about their business.

I feel I am struggling against the current. Technological advances have changed our ways of relating to one another. As an educator, I love that technology helps me teach and engage my students in innovative ways. Yet, I am also watchful and wary of the impact that modern communications may have on how we interact with each other—whether we even “see” each other.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

Friends or family?

I respect and value my students as adults. I treat them as friends. At least, this is what I used to do, most of the time.

There are varying degrees of friendship. With some friends, you can talk openly; with others, you may not be able to spill your heart. But all of them are your friends—unique individuals who may or may not listen to you. We give adequate space to our friends, even very good friends.

As teachers, our students are hardly our best friends. With new batches of students passing through each semester or year, they are more like new acquaintances or new friends.

Having taught at my university for 17 years, I have come to learn that, sometimes, being a friend is not enough. Some students seem to respond better if you speak to them as if they were your adult children. I am not suggesting that we treat our students like young children, but I have observed that some of my colleagues do treat their students like their grown-up children, and, for some, this has worked.

We expect our friends to listen to us, to be good to us. Yet, we know that, no matter what we expect, a friend is not a family member. Family members make demands on us. Family members are connected to us on a deeper level. They are part of us, no matter what.

It is not so difficult to manage expectations of students who take a course or two from you. But what if you are their academic adviser? Being an academic adviser does not mean that the students we advise are close to us or willing to talk to us. So, do we simply provide academic advice about which courses to choose, how to study, and nothing more?

What about research students who work with us for a few years? Do we treat them like friends or family? When they repeatedly make the same mistakes, a friend would probably give up and say no more. But a family member would persist. Where do we, as teachers, draw the line?

When I was younger, my students were my friends. That was the way I wanted it. As I become older, I become less sure, and I realize it is unrealistic to expect from my students what I expect from my friends. Younger adult students are not yet that mature, and, if I were only a friend, I would be frustrated. I would demand that they be like me, that they think and work like me. But if I were to regard my students as my grown children who are trying to master particular subject matter, I would be more patient, more understanding, more tolerant of repeated mistakes.

I cannot say which is right or wrong, to coach my students as friends or as adult children. I only know that, with increasing age, my attributes as a teacher have changed. I hope I am now a more effective teacher. But that is for my students to say.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

Intended vs. actual outcomes: Puzzles of a teacher

In a previous post (13 March 2014), I mentioned that, to help my students become more observant of age-related issues, I ask them to write a journal. A natural follow-up question is, “So, how useful is that?” All I can say is, “I’m not sure.” Actual outcomes may be very different from intended outcomes.

When reading my students’ journals, I’m sure that some of them must have been written over a very short period of time, shortly before the due date for submitting them. I also read journals that are purely post-lecture reflections. That is, the entries are discussions of concepts I taught in class, which is not what I asked for. I wanted them to think about elder care outside of the classroom. Sometimes, I read journals that are superficial, mere recounting of what a student has read or heard in the news, but without personal reflection. Such entries are distant and somewhat “cold.”

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So, how to teach elder care? How to ensure that students have learned something? These are intriguing issues.

Through group seminars (oral presentations and discussions), written papers, and tests, I know how my students have performed academically and what knowledge they have mastered. But I can never be sure whether I have prepared them to be better nurses in caring for older people.

Have I helped them develop the right attitude for interacting with older people? In the relatively few clinical practice hours required by the Nursing Council (the regulatory body for registered nurses in Hong Kong), have my students been able to translate what they have learned in the class into actual practice? Have they developed a deeper understanding about older people as unique beings? Do they care about older people who come under their care?

I have no answers to these deeper questions. By interacting with my students, I know for sure that some of them have developed such understanding and care. But, as a teacher, my goal is not to teach just a few; I have been given a class.

My students may have performed satisfactorily in their course requirements. Knowledge can be acquired, but attitudes develop over time.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

On teaching elder care, more reflections

More often than not, a college teacher is someone who is older than his or her students. That means there is already a “generation gap” and that the values and life goals of teachers and students are likely to be different. When there is a common goal, i.e., for the students to achieve certain learning outcomes in elder care, conflicts seem inevitable.

How should a teacher respond to the behavior of those who are younger and less experienced in life? More specifically, how should I respond to those whose values are vastly different from mine?

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I find myself becoming upset when students come late to class and don’t seem bothered by it. I become upset when I see them chatting in class, oblivious to the noise they are making. I get upset when they look at their iPads all the time and don’t look at the PowerPoint presentation on the classroom screen. Often, there is hardly any eye contact. And, certainly, I am upset when the student to whom I direct a question appears unaware of what is going on.

Sometimes, these classroom behaviors make me sad; other times, angry. The way I, as an older person, see it, they have nothing to do with a generation gap. Punctuality and attentiveness are classroom etiquettes expected of a learner in an educational context. To me, they are matters of common courtesy.

In the eyes of the younger generation, however, it seems that such behaviors are no longer expected and that I need to lower my expectations. To get students to accept and open up to me, I must accept what I find inappropriate. Sadly, according to my colleagues, not confronting students about their actions appears to be the new norm.

Nowadays, as a gero teacher, I need to repeatedly remind myself not to impose what I value upon my students. I know we grew up in different worlds and that our experiences shape us. I need to tell myself that being angry or sad will not help me win over my students and that I need to accept who they are before trying to change their behavior.

To know the origins of my frustrations and to stop being frustrated (because frustration will not help my teaching), I need to reflect on my own behavior, attitudes, and beliefs. In addition to knowing my self and my own limits, I must remind myself that, before I can teach the younger generation in a way that speaks to them, I need to understand and accept them.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

Teaching care of older people: Puzzles of a teacher

How does one teach a nursing student how to care for older people, when that student has very little experience interacting with older adults? When I ask my students if their grandparents are still living, many say they are not. Or, if they are, they don’t see them much.

So most of them are getting their notions about people of advanced years from popular culture—television, news, YouTube, etc.—or through their experiences with older people admitted into hospitals where the students are assigned for clinical learning. Younger people nowadays do not know older people the way people of my generation did, and they have limited opportunities to interact with them.

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If a deeper kind of learning is achieved only through experience, how do we help young people learn how to care for the old, when they don’t really “mingle” with them in their daily lives? How do I, as a teacher, help students appreciate the heterogeneity of seniors as individuals when students have perceptions, coming from popular culture, that more often than not are caricatures of certain behaviors seen in elderly people?

Of course, I try. I try to convince them that older people are not necessarily weak, needy, and cranky. I invite seniors to come to my classes and share their stories. My students are in awe of what they learn from these stories. They learn about people over age 80 who volunteer to help others in need. They never thought seniors could be like that. Another story—an individual close to age 90 who still hikes regularly and for long hours, a person who is much stronger than those much younger. My students listen in disbelief. Some even tell me they are inspired.

To foster intergenerational relationships, we need to begin with the basics—getting to know each other in our daily lives. A regular semester in Hong Kong is 14 weeks. How do we teach students who do not really know older people to develop the right kind of attitude and accumulate the knowledge they need in just three-and-a-half months? Is that “mission impossible” for teachers of gerontology?

I don’t think studying hard facts about age-related physiological changes in the aging body will help younger people better appreciate the needs of those who are growing old. Neither do I think that teaching students about common plights faced by older people—concepts such as cascade iatrogenesis, functional incontinence, and atypical presentation of illness—will make them better nurses in caring for the aged.

Well, I try. I try to cultivate awareness in my students of issues related to aging and older people by asking them to write journals throughout the semester. I ask them to write a brief note each week about news reports or incidents they have seen or heard about elderly people that intrigue or fascinate them. By asking students to actively look for such reports on a regular basis, I hope to sharpen their awareness about age and aging in the world around us.

Only when one starts to look will one begin to see. And only when we start “seeing” matters related to age and aging will we begin to ask questions. Questions lead to deeper reflections about ourselves and others. It is the first step that may lead to changes in us and, I hope, to changes in the environment that emanates from us.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

Good noises

Nobody likes noise, but there are some good kinds of noise, too. I notice it whenever kids are around, probably because I don’t have children. I don’t have to deal with their screaming and constant demands for attention 24/7. But as an objective observer, I think I know what I am saying—kids’ noise is good noise.

The aura in a room changes immediately when a child or two enters. They are so full of curiosity and energy. They are always on the move, playing with all sorts of things. They talk to you constantly and ask questions; they yell, and they scream. It is so much more fun when they are around. Their presence adds to the meaning of all that we do. I just love them.

Kids at camp house.

Kids playing Twister.

Little girls playing at Little Gobi in Mongolia

Yours Truly with Team 2 on Sports Day.

I fear for children if they are too quiet. I wonder whether their lives are miserable. Once, I was waiting in line with a young couple and their daughter. The 4- or 5-year-old was simply too quiet. I watch children whenever they are around, and I watched this child while I waited for the bus. She hardly moved at all. During the 20 minutes I waited for transportation, the girl changed her posture only slightly. She was standing too still, and talking with her parents too little. (I believe they were the parents). They, on the other hand, were talking nonstop. Finally, when she did move, walking a couple of steps toward their luggage to touch it and perhaps play with it, she was stopped by the two adults. It was only when they got onto the bus and the woman seemed to show that she cared about that little girl that my heart could rest. Otherwise, I would have carried on thinking of her.

Whenever kids are around, there are sounds of laughter. The world will lose its luster if, in our aging society, there are fewer children.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.

Gender roles and ger building

From what I have observed, Mongolian culture has pretty much prescribed roles for men and women. Males show off their muscles, even when they are small. A few days ago, I saw some kids unloading firewood from a truck. As they did so, they jokingly showed off their “six-packs” and biceps. Their biceps were hard when they flexed and tightened their muscles. Of course, they don’t really have the six-packs, but they were still muscular enough. They are quite strong boys. I don’t think Hong Kong boys would be so muscular. Girls were not involved in this job.

Sara, a staff member, informed me that Mongolian families do not have particular preferences for boys or girls; that boys and girls are treated as equal and females do a lot of the work that men do. I believe this, as Sara did a lot of hard work, too. But as I see it, jobs that require considerable physical strength are always performed by men (such as building a ger), whereas cleaning, mopping, and cooking are done by women. At any rate, this is what I have observed around the camp, in walking around the area and based on my limited interactions with neighbors in the work camp house.

The building of a ger:

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.

The luxury of water

I look at my clothes after work, and, of course, they are dusty. But even when I looked at them before work, they still did not look clean. I think to myself that there will be lots of washing to do when I get home. I think of water gushing from the tap, the pleasantness of feeling clean from the inside out.

I miss running water. We don’t think much about it when we use it. We abuse it, let water run even when we are not, at that moment, using it, such as when we brush our teeth or put dishes into the draining rack after rinsing. We do it all without a second thought. What luxury!

In Mongolia, I miss running water.

There is no tap built into the camp house here in Mongolia. We have to bring water from outside to fill a large plastic bottle fitted with a plastic faucet, and it becomes a mini-water tank with a tap. We put a basin beneath the tap, to prevent water from spilling onto the floor and wasting it. We cook, we wash, and we use water minimally. At home, we may rinse our vegetables and our dishes several times, but here only once or, at most, twice; the same when we wash our clothes.

People come from afar to get water from a spring.

We tend to forget how lucky we are. Water is pretty much free. We pay only a nominal fee for the water supplied by the Hong Kong government. Some of us on this earth have sufficient water, and some do not. I hope I will remember this when I am back in Hong Kong.

How life has chosen us! It seems as if, for the most part, we have no say. I could have been a Mongolian girl or boy, born to a nomadic family, and not taken long showers whenever I felt like it. But I was born to a family in Hong Kong where, although life was hard for my parents, it hasn’t been so hard for me.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.

Digging for meaning

Today was my first day working in the fields. This was my fifth day here, but I was cooking for two days and watering for one, and there was orientation the first day. So it was really only on the fifth day that I was truly working on the vegetable farm.

I was looking forward to it a lot. We were asked to weed the vegetables. We started walking out to the fields at 9 a.m. and probably started work at 9:15. As I took to my job, I dug out unwanted grasses. I don’t even know the name of the vegetable to which I was giving a helping hand. It didn’t look like a vegetable to me, but surely it must have been. It was somewhat recognizable because other members of the team had been working in the fields clearing weeds and unwanted plants.

The field was a rectangle, with lines and rows of small plants in between. So I went to the far end of the fields to start my work. Others had been assigned to a single row yesterday, and I had to start my own. Mostly I sat on the ground to dig, occasionally kneeling or squatting. It is a bit difficult to apply force when you are sitting on the ground.

Yours Truly, all covered up because of the Mongolian sun.

One of the fields.

Another field, this one potatoes.

Sitting out the battle of weeds, in the carrot field.

Before long, the kids came over to check me out. A moment later, one of them came to me with a spade and wanted to switch his tool with mine. He pretended to demonstrate to me how to use the tool, and then said, “Please,” but after trading tools, I realized that their spades were really not very good. But kids are kids, so I switched tools.

In the greenhouse, one of the kids, with a gardening tool.

There I was, repeating the weeding motions—shoveling the earth, digging at the roots of the weeds, pulling them out, clearing the vegetable of the weeds surrounding it, and putting back some soil to provide a small row of higher soil for the vegetables.

My actions did not require deep thoughts and, as time went by, I started asking myself, what does all this mean to me? I am not working effectively. I don’t have strong arms, and my efforts seem so slow. I am working hard, but it is really not such hard labor and could easily be done by someone else. I don’t think that what I am going to do here in four weeks is going to change the local peoples’ lives, benefit the orphans, or change anything, for that matter. So what is the purpose of my volunteering here?

I became a bit sad. Maybe I and the other volunteers are just here for our own benefit—to get a glimpse of Mongolian life.

When I first checked the time, it was already 11 a.m. I considered the slowness of my work. The amount of labor that I put in would probably contribute only a little of the produce. The other day, I asked Sara the price of spring onions. She told me that a bunch costs only 500 tugrik (Mongolian money). I am unable to see the fruit of my labors, and this makes me somewhat uneasy.

As a city dweller, an educated person, I need to see results. It is something that has been internalized by us city people. I need to find meaning in what I do. In our education, in our lives, we often ask or are asked for the meanings of our actions. We tend to think that having a sense of purpose enriches our lives. We teach ourselves and our young to be reflective. We aspire to be thoughtful individuals. But do we really need meaning in everything we do?

Yours Truly, with Senior Baatar.

While we were working, a man whom we called Senior Baatar walked by. (Baatar is a common name in Mongolia. There is Baatar, the head of the Mongolian Workcamp Exchange, and also another Baatar who looks after the farm in Bugus River, where the camp is, year round.) He was holding a small child on his shoulders, probably 2 or 3 years old. He said a few words to us, and then continued on his way somewhere with the baby. I thought to myself, does Baatar ask for meaning in his actions? Do we attach the same meaning to the word “meaning?” Does it really matter if we just live our lives without worrying too much about the meaning of things?

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.

Changing with the weather

Mongolians are very friendly people and more relaxed than others when it comes to time and schedules. While we—or at least I—who came from the city tried to work according to a schedule, the Mongolians seemed less concerned about it. We said we would have a welcome party at 9 p.m., but 9:10 came, and no one had arrived. The minutes went by, and it was 9:30 when we finally started the party.

At first, I thought Mongolians were less time-conscious because Mongolia is a developing country, but later realized that lack of development may not be the only reason they don’t pay as much attention to the clock. It could also be the unpredictability of Mongolia’s weather. In the morning, it may be sunny and hot, and then, in the afternoon, rain.

In the morning, it may be sunny and hot, and then ...

in the afternoon, rain.

One day, we visited the ancient capital of Mongolia. It was a fine morning, but dark clouds were looming in the distance.

Erdenezuu, the first Buddhist monastery in Mongolia,
was built in 1586 on the site of the country’s ancient,
13th-century capital.

By the time we finished our lunch and returned to the car to head back to our ger (traditional Mongolian tent), the weather was stormy, and our plan to ride horses and walk on the sand dunes of Little Gobi was postponed because of the wind and rain. (Tourists visit Little Gobi because of its sand dunes, which resemble those of Mongolia’s Gobi Desert.) It became quite cold in the night for the same reason. So, if the weather keeps changing, maybe we shouldn’t blame Mongolians' flexibility with regard to schedules on the culture.

As I spend time here in the camp and with some of the local people, I am starting to understand the meaning of Mongolian time. What is the hurry? And what is a schedule? In a world where nature speaks with a louder voice, what does it matter if we spend a few more minutes, a few more hours doing other things, improvising our plans as we go along? Maybe, because of the weather, there will be an opportunity for an unplanned visit from a friend or guest.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.