School days...

My friend minority midwife has truly piqued my interest. She speaks of no more midwifery students until programs can support them. I agree five million percent. So we all signed up for this program realizing that we would be traveling for our clinicals. However, we were all under the impression that our wishes to be near family or friends would be taken into some sort of consideration. Absolutely not the case. We might as well have drawn names out of a hat for clinical placement. Please don't get me wrong, I understand how difficult it must be to find good sites for 20 students in a state where midwifery is just not catching on yet. My issue is either don't let so many students into the specialty or don't give us the false impression that the faculty is trying to make this as manageable as possible. Just tell us "hey we don't really know where would be the best clinical site for you based on your personality or skill set, so this is random, sorry." It would still suck, but at least it would be out in the open and our option to deal. An hour okay, but 3 hours twice a week that is a lot. And how are we supposed to afford additional gas and hotel lodging? Oh yes, we have the option of filling out piles of paperwork to get additional LOAN money. Come on school that I am donating $985 per credit hour to, surely y'all can come up with some scholarship money to help negate the expense. Amazing, absurd, whatever you want to call it. This is the life of a midwifery student.